Pressure and slow decline (1683-1800s)

Part oneThe palace and the grand viziers

After Suleiman the sultans rarely led their armies in person. Princes were no longer sent out to govern provinces and learn the work of rule. From the time of Ahmed I, who built the Blue Mosque, they were kept in the palace, and the custom of a new sultan killing his brothers was dropped. That was more humane, but it meant that some sultans came to the throne with no experience at all.

In this gap, the women of the palace gained great influence. The period from about 1533 to 1683 is often called the Sultanate of Women. Kosem Sultan, wife of Ahmed I, served as regent for her young son Murad IV from 1623 and ran much of the empire for years. Later Turhan Sultan, mother of Mehmed IV, held the same role. Like Hurrem before them, these women built mosques, schools and charities across the empire.

In 1656, with the state in disorder, Turhan appointed Koprulu Mehmed Pasha as grand vizier on condition that he be given real power. He and his family, who supplied grand viziers for decades, restored order, paid the troops and won new wars.

Part twoVienna, 1683

In 1683 a Koprulu son-in-law, the grand vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha, led a great army to besiege Vienna, the Habsburg capital. After two months of siege, a relief army under the king of Poland, Jan Sobieski, attacked on 12 September and broke the Ottoman camp. Kara Mustafa was executed for the defeat.

A long war followed against an alliance of Austria, Poland, Venice and Russia. In 1699, at the Treaty of Karlowitz, the Ottomans gave up most of Hungary. For the first time they had signed away a large province in Europe. The empire was still large and strong, and it won wars in the eighteenth century, but the tide in Europe had turned.

Part threeWhy the empire weakened

Historians point to several causes that worked together over a long time.

The first was size. The empire stretched across three continents and often had to fight on several fronts at once. In the 1730s it fought Russia and Austria together. In the nineteenth century European powers backed rebels inside its borders.

The second was a growing gap in military strength. From the later eighteenth century European armies adopted new weapons and training faster. The Janissaries, once the most feared infantry in the world, had become a privileged class that resisted change. When Sultan Selim III tried to build a new army on European lines, the Nizam-i Cedid, they rose against him, and in 1807 he was deposed, and later killed.

The third was money. Once Europeans could sail to India and China, the old overland trade through Ottoman lands lost much of its value. Silver from the Americas drove up prices across the Mediterranean, and the soldiers' fixed pay lost its worth. Constant war drained the treasury.

The fourth came later: nationalism. The idea that each people should have its own state spread from Europe into the Balkans. The Serbs rose in the early 1800s and the Greeks in the 1820s. In an empire built on many peoples and faiths living under one sultan, this idea was hard to answer.

None of this happened at once, and the empire lasted more than two centuries after its peak, which says a great deal about how well it had been built. But by the early nineteenth century Europeans had begun to call it the "sick man of Europe".

The empire lasted more than two centuries after its peak, which says much about how well it had been built.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Hikma HistoryWhy Did The Ottoman Empire Decline? (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Istanbul
• Vienna
• Buda
• Belgrade
• Karlowitz
• Crimea
• Morea

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter