Ottoman Holy War & Conquest: The Battle for Contantinople, 1453

            Secondly, by 1362 the city was virtually encircled when the Ottomans took Adrianople (Erdine in Turkish) 140 miles to the west in Europe and established their capital there. The Christian capital was a Christian island surrounded by Islamic waters. What the Ottomans lacked at the time was an adequate naval strategy to seal off the city and the technology to storm the massive defensive walls. Within a century, this problem was solved.

            Lastly, albeit equally important were the deep divisions in the Christian world. On 16 July 1054, three cardinals from the Catholic Church of Rome sent by the Pope to settle theological disputes, delivered a bull of excommunication in the church of St. Sophia.^[68] Thus began the process of what is known as the Great Schism in Christendom. Without this schism, it would have been unlikely the Western crusades would have sacked Constantinople in 1204. The divide between the Greek Orthodox and the Catholic church continued to grow and by the time it was apparent that Mehmed II was going to lead an assault on the Eastern capital, very few in the Christian West answered Constantinople's call to send forces to repel the Muslim invaders.

            In order to understand the Ottoman motivation behind their decision to take the city, an appraisal of Wittek and Lindner's theses is required:

            Before Wittek's 1938 thesis, the traditional narrative for the rise of the Ottoman dynasty was simple: it arose from the nomadic Oghuz Turcoman tribe, which had migrated to Anatolia in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Wittek substituted a new argument: the source of unity was the religious role of the ghazis and not tribal. Lindner reexamined Wittek's thesis and concluded that the source of unity was based on the tribe. In this sense, both Wittek and Lindner subscribe to extremely rigid and false dichotomies in their theses.

            According to Wittek, Islam alone provided the basis for the formation of the Ottoman Empire; tribalism had no role given the confused genealogy in middle. Lindner claims that religious zeal had absolutely no motivating force in the Empire's formation; it was tribal, formed by the nomadic tribal predatory raider. The proof is the very same evidence Wittek points to - the confused genealogy in the middle is a tribal hallmark. One must ask why is it not possible for both Islam and tribalism to be present? Are they mutually exclusive?

            Equally extreme and unrealistic is their treatment of the Holy Warrior. Reading both accounts, one is left with the sense that one can only qualify for the title if one is thoroughly possessed and persistently fanatic, prancing around the countryside offering infidels a choice between Islam or the sword in much the same manner Gibbons eludes to in his 1968 work, "The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire."^[69] Again, one must ask if there is a middle ground. Are the choices merely between fanatic Holy Warrior and tribal paganist?

            All historians are products of their generation, and gestalt of the time. One is not immune to the prevailing philosophies of one's generation. Lindner argues that Wittek's thinking was heavily influenced by the prevailing currents of scholarly research during the interwar years. However, Lindner was equally a product of his time and the current trend of modern anthropological research, specifically the new anthropological insights based on tribes in Iran and Afghanistan.^[70] One must question if an anthropological approach is sufficient to understand the historiography of either the Ottoman Empire or Islam.

            In overstating his case, Lindner alludes to "the interesting possibility that Osman and his comrades were holy warriors in another just cause, that of shamanism."^[71] In other words, both Osman and his tribe were pagan. However, historical research has already shown that in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, "Islam was adopted by ethnic groups in their own milieu, while maintaining their own cultural identity. There was hardly a break with past traditions, and pre-Islamic customs and beliefs survived."^[72] It is now known, for instance, that when the Mongols first converted to Islam it was a syncretist faith blending elements of Mongol custom and tradition. Those traditions would only gradually disappear.^[73] Given Lindner's narrow definition of Islam, Mongols and Ottomans would apparently not be considered true Muslims.

            Most wars of the Ottoman Empire were directed against those they called infidels and principally against the one great world rival - Christendom. According to Lewis, "This perception is crystal clear when looking at Muslim sources. What the Christian West choose to concentrate on rarely occur in the Muslim accounts - the Moors in Spain, the Tatars in Russia, and the Turks in the Balkans. These words are not found in the Arab and Muslim sources. In the Muslim accounts, the war is invariably portrayed as a war between Muslims and the unbelievers. It is defined as a religious conflict between different religious belligerents. Only in rare cases does Islamic history seek to clarify Christians by ethnicity."^[74]

            According to the Muslim jurists, if a war is legitimate and thus lawful to pursue, it is subject to the laws of war that are discussed both in length and detail in classical Muslim legal texts. The greatest difference between the two types of Islamic war is the treatment of captives and prisoners. In a war against infidels, they are considered booty - to be shared among the captors according to the very detailed laws of war. This means that they themselves (and their families) become booty or essentially slaves. This gave rise to a debate among the jurists regarding the motivation of jihad.^[75]

            Inherent in Lindner's critique is the common misunderstanding that jihad is a war to impose Islamic faith rather than a war for the faith. Jihad is a war to remove obstacles to allow people to choose it for themselves. It is therefore waged to remove the obstacles in the way of choosing Islam as the true faith. Christians were not required to embrace Islam - but the assumption was that Christian governments would prevent them from doing so.

            The concept of holy war is deeply embedded in Islamic tradition and it was no doubt a central motivating factor in Ottoman conquest. The Empire rarely went through the trouble of declaring a jihad to justify a war - it was assumed. They were always justified and usually at war. Jihad was continuous. It is not the mirrored opposite of the crusades. The traditional numbering of the crusades is indicative; the concept of a first, second, or twenty-second ghaza or jihad would have been inconceivable to the ghazi because the ghaza was unending.^[76]

            The doctrine of jihad is that one must continually strive to bring Islam to the world of unbelievers. It sanctions war as an option but does not say that it must be the only course of action. Lindner does not attempt to answer the following: Why can't Islam remain true to the spirit of jihad and ghazi tradition by conquering Christian territories, and economically exploiting the newly acquired population and territory? If a ruling Muslim Ottoman believes that Islam's preeminence is manifest, why may he not conclude that ruling over and living among Christians would lead to their eventual conversion? Are Christians living under Muslim rule living in Dar al-Harb or Dar al-Islam?

            Jihad is accomplished when other religions live within the domain of Islam. Forced conversion is not a tenet of Islam. Ruling over infidels while ensuring Islamic values and codes are prominent while removing the obstacles to making the 'right' choice to embrace Islam is following the way of jihad. If, as Lindner explains, there were many Christians who preferred Ottoman to Byzantine rule, would it not be consistent with jihad to use their apathy to conquer a territory and bring them into the 'house of Islam'?

Lewis explains: "The Ottoman Turks were indeed fanatical Muslims, dedicated to the maintenance and expansion of the Islamic state. But toleration is a relative matter...if we define tolerance as the absence, not of discrimination, but of persecution, then the Ottoman record until the late nineteenth century is excellent. The well-known preference of the fifteenth-century Greeks for Muslim rather than Frankish rule was not without its reasons."^[77] Furthermore, the early Ottomans, rather than regarding their tolerant behavior as religiously unacceptable, had every reason to believe it was properly sanctioned. For the Ottomans, the closest representative of the traditions of Islam were the Seljuks of Rum who in an inscription on a church in western Cappadocia (dated from 1282-1305) suggest the employment of Christians in Muslim service and the tolerance of Christianity by the Muslim state were a normal Seljuk practice. Thus, the early Ottomans behaved in a way very consistent with the Islam of Seljuk Anatolia - which of course was the way they understood Islam.^[78]

            According to Bruce Masters, whereas Anatolia was solidly Christian before the battle of Manzikert in 1071, afterward the process of Islamization proceeded quickly as Greek and Armenian Christians accepted the faith of those who held military and political power. There is no evidence of forced conversions. The pull of the new faith was a combination of economic and political incentives, coupled with the appeal of the dynamic new faith of Islam.^[79]

            Economics and Islam are compatible. It benefited the Ottoman Empire to wage a war of jihad against infidels because given the Islamic rules governing warfare, the vanquished could be taken as slaves and their treasure divided amongst the victors. It was also a benefit if Christians and Jews remained under Ottoman rule because they would have to pay the higher jizya tax rate. The foundation for recognizing the rights of "People of the Book" if they accepted Islam's political authority over them comes from Muhammad. This was embodied in the concept of ahl al-dhimma ("The People of the Contract") that guaranteed the rights of non-Muslims to property, livelihood, and freedom to worship in return for extra taxes and the promise not to help Islam's enemies.^[80]

            Nevertheless, many Christians chose to convert. This could hardly be considered an uncommon occurrence given that the battle was seen as one waged by one god against the other - by one faith against the other. The dramatic and traumatic failure of collective Christian prayers to prevent the fall of the city proved utterly fruitless. The god of Islam had won and shown himself to be akbar - greater. It is no wonder that without forced conversions, many Christians through time embraced Islam. After all, it was victorious. Therefore, the fact that the early Ottomans maintained relations with Christian subjects, and that there is little evidence of forced conversions is consistent with Islam and not, as Lindner suggests, proof that religious zeal had nothing to do with the rise and continuation of the Empire.

            Both Wittek and Lindner are correct when they explain that there was a great deal of retroactive Islamization of Ottoman history. The ulema certainly sought to present history through the lens of Islam. Additionally, newer justifications were needed to present certain decisions as consistent with Islam. For example, the Ottomans presented the Janissaries - the first well-trained, well-organized, professional infantry. They were from the Balkans taken as slaves. The Islamic legal argument was that even though they were Christians, they were considered heathens, recently converted after the appearance of Islam - that is to say that they chose Christianity rather than Islam once Islam was already a choice. This was the Ottoman justification for enslaving dhimma from conquered territories who had submitted to the rule of Islam.^[81]

            Another problematic element of Lindner's critique is his view on stimulus versus justification and his rigid classification that religious zeal can be only one or the other. It is entirely possible that Islam and holy war were present in early Ottoman thought and then subsequently increased in importance according to the later desires of Muslim chroniclers. It is not, as Linder suggests, something that must be entirely absent beforehand (stimulus) and completely invented retroactively (justification). Islam and the Ottoman Empire were dynamic, not static. There is room in the middle.

            Lindner believes the 1337 mosque inscription is a subsequent justification. There is a better question: Does it make a difference? Whether or not ghazi tradition was the cause or justification for early Ottoman conquest and success is irrelevant. More important is the fact that in either scenario, there was a conscious decision to portray the events in those terms - that ghazi tradition and holy war were of paramount consideration. Even if it was retrospectively added to the narrative, it is clear that it was important enough to portray the ghazi narrative as the guiding principal to the Empire.

The war on the frontier was the crucial preoccupation of the Ottomans both in theory and in practice and it is important to remember that of all frontiers only Islam and Christianity claim the whole world as their realm. With the two religions geographically adjacent, theologically akin, and historically consecutive, conflict was virtually inevitable.^[82]

            The most likely scenario is that the ghazis living in Anatolia were both tribal and holy warriors. They functioned as a collection of tribes who shared the collective Islamic memory. Jihad is constant in Islam; the ghazis were mujahids who sought to increase the realm of Islam. It was an important motivating factor among others, such as the desire for conquest, booty, and respect - all of which are permissible in Islam.

            The Ottoman state began with a conscious mission on one of the most historic fronts of militant Islam. Taking Constantinople had long been a Muslim goal as it provided a focus for the imagination of Islam.^[83] "For most Europeans, the loss of Constantinople is a great historical disaster, a defeat of Christendom which has never been repaired."^[84] For the Ottoman Turks, it established Islam's supremacy over Christianity. Both the Christian and Muslim chroniclers described the events in richly religious detail.

            Lindner argued that the Byzantine sources at the time did not mention Muslim holy war or their ghazi tradition. However, this is not surprising after reading the Christian accounts. For example, in Barbaro's chronicle one sees that the Ottoman Turks were classified as faithless, wicked, accursed dogs. More telling in his account is his recognition that "each side had prayed for victory, they to their god and we to ours," yet throughout he refers to the Muslims as "cursed pagans." There was no recognition that like the Jews, the Muslims were in fact praying to the same god as the Christians - they just weren't praying to Jesus and the Virgin Mary as well. Therefore, it is unlikely that Christian chroniclers at the time - who saw the Ottomans as faithless praying pagans - would record a Muslim holy war or attribute a ghazi tradition to them.

            Mehmed II set out to conquer the Christian capitol, thereby fulfilling the Muslim prophecies and establishing a capital for his growing empire. While it is true, as Lowry suggests, that religion and ethnicity in the newly emerging Ottoman capital was less important than one's ability to contribute to the expansion of the Ottoman enterprise,^[85] the Ottoman enterprise was Islamic and it was consistent with jihad. The Ottomans in 1453 were driven by a mixture of conquest, the desire for booty, and the zeal of waging holy war in the name of and on behalf of Islam.