Introduction

Summary

This book aims to open a window onto the successive turns and reconfigurations in Ottoman ideology and governance during the early modern period. To this end, it explores the changing roles and attitudes of Sunni scholars (ulema) in Ottoman lands from the fourteenth through the sixteenth century. How did the Ottomans adapt to the volatile global and regional, ideological and political conditions that shaped their world during this period? What functions did scholars serve in the Ottoman polity at different moments within this larger time? Did scholars help the Ottomans sustain their power? Did scholars exercise authority independently of the government? What policies did the Ottomans adopt in order to coopt scholars? How did the roles and positions of scholars in the Ottoman polity change?

The Ottomans ascended to the political stage by establishing a small principality in Bithynia, in northwestern Anatolia, at the turn of the fourteenth century. The early Ottoman political enterprise can be seen as a product of the conditions and limits set by the advance of the Chinggisid Mongols into the Islamic world. It functioned on the fringes of Anatolia and the Balkans and vied with several principalities to fill the power vacuum created by the collapse of the centralized Seljuk administration under Mongol attack. Its military power to a great extent depended on nomadic warriors, who moved westward to the frontiers in greater numbers after the arrival of the Mongols. Its rulers tried to legitimize their power by using a variety of Mongol and Islamic ideas – a feature of post-Mongol polities in the Islamic world.

The Ottoman political enterprise appears to have transformed from a post-Mongol principality into an early modern empire beginning in the second half of the fifteenth century. The conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul), the time-honored capital of the Roman (later, Byzantine) Empire, in 1453 appears as a milestone that properly marked the beginning of the transformation. This astonishing success underlined the military edge the Ottomans enjoyed over their rivals. Their advantage increased with the growing use of firearms in field and siege battles, a technology that marginalized nomadic warriors. The Ottomans continued to extend their territories in the east and west after the conquest until the end of the sixteenth century, moving at differing paces during various periods and sometimes facing setbacks.