The History of Greece under Ottoman and Venetian Domination E-Book

George Finlay

• Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 501

Beschreibung

The Pergamum Collection publishes books history has long forgotten. We transcribe books by hand that are now hard to find and out of print.

Das E-Book The History of Greece under Ottoman and Venetian Domination wird angeboten von Charles River Editors und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
greece; turk; seljuk; venice; rhodes; knights; crusaders; free; lecturable

Leseprobe

PREFACE.

This volume concludes the History of Greece under Foreign Domination. I have divided the long records of Hellenic servitude, which embrace nearly two thousand years, into six periods, each offering a distinct phase of Greek history:—1. Greece under the Romans; 2. The Byzantine Empire; 3. Greece under the Crusaders, who destroyed the Byzantine Empire; 4. The Greek Empire of Constantinople; 5. The Empire of Trebizond; and, 6. The Othoman and Venetian Domination.

I commenced this work as an introduction to the History of the Greek Revolution. My original design was enlarged by the conviction that in history there is no present. Without an accurate knowledge of the various ties which connect the events we witness with those that have preceded; without a just appreciation of the circumstances which have moulded the characters of both nations and statesmen; and without some perception of the progress of public events which must exert an influence over the future, it is impossible to form an equitable judgment on the history of our own times. My object in becoming an author was to trace the success of the Greek Revolution to its true causes, and to examine the circumstances which tend to facilitate or to obstruct the progress of the Greeks in their attempt to consolidate a system of civil liberty on the firm basis of national institutions.

The records of foreign domination in Greece may be extended to the year 1843, when a popular insurrection put an end to the domination of Bavarian officials, and rendered the Greeks the arbiters of their political organisation. That revolution was perhaps the true term of my History; but the difficulty of combining calm criticism of the acts of living men with an impartial narrative of contemporary events, makes me doubt whether I am competent to be the historian of the Greek Revolution.

“He who the sword of Heaven will bear,

Should be as holy as severe.”

GEORGE FINLAY.

Athens, 1st December 1855.

CHRONOLOGY.

1397. Bayezid I. establishes the timariot system in Thessaly.

1453. Mohammed II. repeoples Constantinople.

Re-establishes the Orthodox Greek Church.

1454. Insurrection of Albanian population in the Morea.

1456. Mohammed II. defeated at Belgrade.

1458. Walls of Constantinople repaired, and Castle of Seven Towers built.

1459. Servia annexed to the Othoman empire.

Amastris taken from the Genoese.

1460. Mohammed II. conquers the Morea.

Athens annexed to the Othoman empire.

1461. Conquest of empire of Trebizond.

1462. Mytilene annexed to Othoman empire.

1463. Argos occupied by Othoman troops.

War with Venice.

1466. Athens taken by Venetians, and abandoned.

1467. 17th January, death of Skanderbeg at Alessio.

1469. Earthquake at Santa Maura, Cephalonia, and Zante.

1470. Conquest of Negrepont.

1475. Kaffa and Tana taken from the Genoese.

1477. Croïa surrenders to the Othomans.

1479. Peace between Mohammed II. and Venice.

Zante and Cephalonia taken by Mohammed II. from Leonard Tocco, despot of Arta.

1480. Othoman army defeated at Rhodes.

1481. Death of Mohammed II.

1484. Venice restores Cephalonia to Bayezid II., and pays a tribute of five hundred ducats annually for Zante.

1489. Catherine Cornara cedes Cyprus to Venice.

1492. Jews expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella.

1494. Andrew Paleologos, son of Thomas, despot in the Peloponnesus, cedes his rights to it and to the Byzantine empire to Charles VIII. of France, but that cession not being accepted within the stipulated time, in

1498. He cedes his rights to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.

1500. Bayezid II. takes Lepanto, Modon, Coron, and Durazzo, from Venice.

1501. Mohammedans expelled from Spain if they refuse to be baptised.

1502. Peace between Bayezid II. and Venice. The republic cedes Santa Maura to the Sultan, but retains Cephalonia.

1509. Great earthquake at Constantinople.

1510. Walls of Constantinople repaired.

1512. Bogdan, Prince of Moldavia, becomes tributary to Sultan Selim I.

1515. Great fire at Constantinople.

1516. Vallachia pays an annual tribute of six hundred Christian children to the Sultan.

1522. Conquest of Rhodes by Suleiman I.

1526. Vienna besieged.

1535. First public treaty of alliance between the Othoman empire and the King of France.

Supremacy of the Othoman navy in the Mediterranean.

1537. Defeat of the Othomans at Corfu.

Barbarossa takes Paros, Skyros, Patmos, and Stympalea.

1540. Treaty of peace between Suleiman I. and Venice. The republic cedes Monemvasia and Nauplia to the Sultan.

1563. Great inundation, caused by rain, at Constantinople.

1565. Othoman expedition against Malta defeated.

1566. Chios and Naxos annexed to the Othoman empire.

Rebellion of the Janissaries.

1570. Morescoes, descendants of Mohammedans in Spain, driven to rebellion by persecution.

1571. Conquest of Cyprus by Othomans.

15th of October, battle of Lepanto.

1572. Tunis taken by Don Juan of Austria.

1573. Treaty of peace between the Othoman empire and Venice.

1574. Tunis retaken by the Othoman fleet.

1591. Thirty thousand workmen employed to construct a canal at Nicomedia.

1593. First commercial treaty between the Sultan and England.

1600. Rebellion of the Janissaries.

1609. Final expulsion of the Morescoes from Spain by Philip III.

1614. Maina compelled to pay haratsh.

1622. Great rebellion of Janissaries and Sipahis against Sultan Othman II.

1624. Cossacks plunder the shores of the Bosphorus.

Piracy prevalent in the Mediterranean.

1632. Great rebellion of troops at Constantinople.

1642. Great earthquake at Constantinople.

Corsairs and pirates continue their ravages in the Archipelago.

1645. Othoman troops invade Crete.

1648. Earthquake at Constantinople.

1650. New island rises out of the sea at Santorin.

1653. Great earthquake at Constantinople.

1656. Great insurrection at Constantinople.

1669. Conquest of Crete completed by capitulation of Candia. Treaty of peace between the Othoman empire and Venice.

Foundation of the official power of the Phanariots by the rank conceded to Panayotaki of Chios, dragoman of Achmet Kueprily.

1670. Subjugation of Maina. Forts of Zarnata, Porto Vitylo, and Passava, armed and garrisoned by Turks.

1671 to 1684. Corsairs and pirates infest the coasts and islands of Greece and Asia Minor in great numbers.

1672 and 1673. Maniates emigrate to Apulia and Corsica.

1675. Disputes of the Greeks and Catholics concerning the possession of the Holy Places at Jerusalem.

1683. Siege of Vienna by Kara Mustapha.

1685. The Venetians commence the conquest of the Morea. Morosini takes Coron.

1687. Athens taken by Morosini. Parthenon ruined.

Plague in the Venetian army.

Great fire at Constantinople.

1688. Defeat of Morosini at Negrepont.

1690. Earthquake at Constantinople.

1692. Fire at Constantinople.

1699. Peace of Carlovitz.

1711. Defeat of Peter the Great. Treaty of the Pruth.

1712. Commencement of Phanariot domination in Moldavia.

1715. Re-conquest of the Morea by Ali Cumurgi.

1716. Commencement of Phanariot domination in Vallachia.

1718. Peace of Passarovitz.

1719. Great fire and earthquake at Constantinople.

1720. Treaty of perpetual peace between Turkey and Russia.

1736 to 1739. Marshal Munich’s campaigns against the Crimea and Turkey.

1739. Treaty of Belgrade.

1740. Great fire at Constantinople.

1741. Fire at Constantinople.

1740. Fire at Constantinople.

1751. Piracies on the coast of Maina and in the Archipelago.

Tumult of Greeks at Constantinople against the Patriarch and the Phanariots.

1754. Great earthquake at Constantinople.

1755. Great fire at Constantinople.

1761. First treaty between Turkey and Prussia.

Persecution of Catholic Armenians at Constantinople.

1704. Insurrection of Greeks in Cyprus.

1766. Earthquake at Constantinople.

1707. Great fires at Constantinople and at Pera.

1770. Great fire at Constantinople.

Russian invasion of the Morea.

Sphakiots compelled to pay haratsh.

1774. Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji.

1787. “War of Suliots with Ali Pasha of Joannina.

Russian privateering in the Archipelago.

1792. Treaty of Yassi.

1797. Ionian Islands surrendered to France by the Treaty of Campo Formio.

Ali Pasha massacres the Christian Albanians of Chimara.

1800. Russia cedes the continental dependencies of the Ionian Islands, Parga, Previsa, &c, to Turkey.

Establishment of the Ionian republic.

1807. Russia cedes the Ionian Islands to France by the treaty of Tilsit.

1815. Ionian republic placed under the protection of Great Britain by the treaty of Vienna.

1819. Parga delivered to Turkey by Great Britain.

1821. Commencement of the Greek Revolution.

HISTORY OF GREECE UNDER OTTOMAN AND VENETIAN DOMINATION.

CHAPTER I.THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY ORGANISATION OF THE OTHOMAN EMPIRE, BY WHICH THE GREEKS WERE RETAINED IN SUBJECTION. a.d. 1453-1684.

Measures of the Othoman conquerors to consolidate their domination—Position of the Greeks in the Othoman empire—Extent of the empire—Degradation of the Greek population—Stability of the Othoman power—Its institutions—Tribute-children—Ulema —First class of institutions: Those derived from the Koran— Second class: Those derived from the Seljouk empire—Third class: Those peculiar to the Othoman government—Kanun-namé of Mohammed II.—Administrative divisions—Defective administration of justice—Nizam Djedid of Mustapha Kueprilij, a.d. 1691—Finances—Haratsh—Commercial taxes—Land-tax—Depreciation of the currency—project of exterminating the Christian subjects of the Sultan—Improvement in the Othoman administration—Murder authorised by an organic law of the empire—Othoman army— Feudal militia—Janissaries—Regular cavalry—Sipahis—Tribute of Christian children—Irregular troops—Christian troops and auxiliaries—Decline of the administrative system—Venality— Wealth—Discipline long maintained in the army.

The conquest of Greece by Mohammed II. was felt to be a boon by the greater part of the population. The government of the Greek emperors of the family of Paleologos, of their relations the despots in the Morea, and of the Frank princes, dukes, and signors, had for two centuries rendered Greece the scene of incessant civil wars and odious oppression. The Mohammedan government put an end to the injustice of many petty tyrants, whose rapacity and feuds had divided, impoverished, and depopulated the country. When Mohammed II. annexed the Peloponnesus and Attica to the Othoman empire, he deliberately exterminated all remains of the existing aristocracy, both Frank nobles and Greek archonts, in these provinces, and introduced in their place the Turkish aristocracy, as far as such a class existed in his dominions. The ordinary system of the Othoman administration was immediately applied to the greater part of Greece, and it was poverty, and not valour, which exempted a few mountainous districts from its application.

Saganos Pasha was left as governor of the Morea and the duchy of Athens. Garrisons of the sultan’s regular troops were stationed in a few of the strongest fortresses under their own officers; but the general defence of the country and the maintenance of order among the inhabitants was intrusted to Saganos, who was invested with the revenue necessary for the purpose. The arbitrary power of the pasha, and the license of the regular garrisons, were restrained by the timariot system. The feudal usages, which the earliest Othoman sultans had inherited with their first possessions in the Seljouk empire, were introduced by Mohammed II. into Greece, as the natural manner of retaining the rural population under his domination. Large tracts of land in the richest plains having reverted to the government as belonging to the confiscated estates of the princes and nobles, a certain proportion of this property was divided into liferent fiefs, which were conferred on veteran warriors who had merited rewards by distinguished service. These fiefs were called timars, and consisted of a life-interest in lands, of which the Greek and Albanian cultivators sometimes remained in possession of the exclusive right of cultivation within determined limits, and under the obligation of paying a fixed revenue, and performing certain services for the Mussulman landlord. The timariot was bound to serve the sultan on horseback with a number of well-appointed followers, varying according to the value of his fief. These men had no occupation, and no thought but to perfect themselves in the use of their arms, and for a long period they formed the best light cavalry in Europe. The timars were granted as military rewards, and they never became hereditary while the system continued to exist in the Othoman empire. The veteran soldiers who held these fiefs in Greece were bound to the sultan by many ties. They looked forward to advancement to the larger estates called ziamets, or to gaining the rank of sandjak beg, or commander of a timariot troop of horse. This class, in Christian provinces, was consequently firmly attached to the central authority of the Othoman sultan, and constituted a check both on the ambitious projects and local despotism of powerful pashas, and on the rebellious disposition of the Christian population. The rich rewards granted by Mohammed II. to his followers drew numerous bands of Turkman and Seljouk volunteers to his armies from Asia Minor, who came to Europe, well mounted and armed, to seek their fortunes as warlike emigrants. The brilliant conquests of that sultan enabled him to bestow rich lands on many of these young volunteers, while their own valour gained for them abundant booty in female slaves and agricultural serfs. These emigrants formed a considerable portion of the population of Macedonia and Greece after its conquest, and they were always ready to take the field against the Christians, both as a religious duty and as a means of acquiring slaves, whom, according to their qualifications, they might send to their own harems, to their farms, or to the slave-market. The timariots of the Othoman empire, like the feudal nobility of Europe, required a servile race to cultivate the land. Difference of religion in Turkey created the distinction of rank which pride of birth perpetuated in feudal Europe. But the system was in both cases equally artificial; and the permanent laws of man’s social existence operate unceasingly to destroy every distinctive privilege which separates one class of men as a caste from the rest of the community, in violation of the immutable principles of equity. Heaven tolerates temporary injustice committed by individual tyrants to the wildest excesses of iniquity; but history proves that Divine Providence has endowed society with an irrepressible power of expansion, which gradually effaces every permanent infraction of the principles of justice by human legislation. The laws of Lycurgus expired before the Spartan state, and the corps of janissaries possessed more vitality than the tribute of Christian children.

The Turkish feudal system was first introduced into Thessaly by Bayezid I., about the year 1397, when he sent Evrenos to invade the Peloponnesus. He invested so large a number of Seljouk Turks with landed estates, both in Macedonia and Thessaly, that from this period a powerful body of timariots was ever ready to assemble, at the sultan’s orders, to invade the southern part of Greece. Murad II. extended the system to Epirus and Acarnania, when he subdued the possessions of Charles Tocco, the despot of Arta; and Mohammed II. rendered all Greece subject to the burden of maintaining his feudal cavalry. The governmental division of Greece, and the burdens to which it was subjected, varied so much at different times, that it is extremely difficult to ascertain the exact amount of the timariots settled in Greece at the time of Sultan Mohammed’s death. The number of fiefs was not less than about 300 ziamets and 1600 timars.

Along with the timariot system, Mohammed II. imposed the tribute of Christian children on Greece, as it then existed in the other Christian provinces of his empire. A fifth of their male children was exacted from the sultan’s Christian subjects, as a part of that tribute which the Koran declared was the lawful price of toleration to those who refused to embrace Islam.

By these measures Greece was entirely subjected to the Othoman domination, and the last traces of its political institutions and legal administration, whether derived from the Roman Caesars, the Byzantine emperors, or the Frank princes, from the code of Justinian, the Basilika of Leon, or the assize of Jerusalem, were all swept away. Greece was partitioned among several pashas and governors, all of whom were under the orders of the beglerbeg of Roumelia, the sultan’s commander-in-chief in Europe. The islands and some maritime districts were at a later period placed under the control of the captain pasha. The Greeks, as a nation, disappear from history: no instances of patriotic despair ennobled the records of their subjection. A dull uniformity marks their conduct and their thoughts. Byzantine ceremony and orthodox formality had already effaced the stronger traits of individual character, and extinguished genius. Othoman oppression now made an effort to extirpate the innate feelings of humanity. Parents gave their sons to be janissaries, and their daughters to be odaliscs.

The history of the Othoman government during the period when its yoke bore heaviest on the Greeks, nevertheless deserves to be carefully studied, if it were only to institute a comparison between the conduct of the Mussulmans, and the manner in which the most powerful contemporary Christian states treated their subjects. Unless this comparison be made, and the condition of the ray ah in the sultan’s dominions be contrasted with that of the serf in the holy Roman empire of the Germans, and in the dominions of the kings of France and Spain, the absolute cruelty of the Othoman domination would be greatly overrated. The mass of the Christian population engaged in agricultural operations was allowed to enjoy a far larger portion of the fruits of their labour, under the sultan’s government, than under that of many Christian monarchs. This fact explains the facility with which the sultans of Constantinople held millions of Christian landed proprietors and small farmers in submissive bondage to a comparatively small number of Mohammedans in the European provinces of their empire. Indeed, the conquest of the Greeks was completed before the Othoman government had succeeded in subduing a considerable part of the Seljouk Turks in Asia Minor, and for several centuries the Mussulman population in Asia proved far more turbulent subjects to the sultans than the orthodox Christians in Europe. Mohammed II., and many of his successors, were not only abler men than the Greek emperors who preceded them on the throne of Byzantium, they were really better sovereigns than most of the contemporary princes in the West. The Transylvanians and Hungarians long preferred the government of the house of Othman to that of the house of Hapsburg; the Greeks clung to their servitude under the infidel Turks, rather than seek a deliverance which would entail submission to the Catholic Venetians. It was therefore in no small degree by the apathy, if not by the positive goodwill of the Christian population, that the supremacy of the Sublime Porte was firmly established from the plains of Podolia to the banks of the Don. So stable were the foundations of the Othoman power, even on its northern frontier, that for three centuries the Black Sea was literally a Turkish lake. The Russians first acquired a right to navigate freely over its waters in the year 1774.

After the conquest of Constantinople, the Othomans became the most dangerous conquerors who have acted a part in European history since the fall of the western Roman empire. Their dominion, at the period of its greatest extension, stretched from Buda on the Danube to Bussora on the Euphrates. On the north, their frontiers were guarded against the Poles by the fortress of Kamenietz, and against the Russians by the walls of Asof; while to the south the rock of Aden secured their authority over the southern coast of Arabia, invested them with power in the Indian Ocean, and gave them the complete command of the Red Sea. To the east, the sultan ruled the shores of the Caspian, from the Kour to the Tenek; and his dominions stretched westward along the southern coast of the Mediterranean, where the farthest limits of the regency of Algiers, beyond Oran, meet the frontiers of the empire of Morocco. It lies beyond the sphere of this work to trace, even in a cursory manner, the various measures and the rapid steps by which a small tribe of nameless Turkish nomades completed the conquest of the Seljouk emirs or sultans in Asia Minor, of the Mamlouk sultans in Syria and Egypt, of the fierce corsairs of northern Africa, expelled the Venetians from Cyprus, Crete, and the Archipelago, and drove the Knights of St John of Jerusalem from the Levant, to find a shelter at Malta. It was no vain boast of the Othoman sultan, that he was the master of many kingdoms, the ruler of three continents, and the lord of two seas.

For three centuries the position of the Greek race was one of hopeless degradation. Its connection with the old pagan Hellenes was repudiated by themselves, and forgotten by other nations. The modern Greeks were prouder of having organised the ecclesiastical establishment of the orthodox hierarchy than of an imaginary connection with an extinct though cognate society, which had once occupied the highest rank in the political and intellectual world, and created the literature of Europe. The modern identification of the Christian Greeks with the pagan Hellenes is the growth of the new series of ideas disseminated by the French Revolution. At the time when ecclesiastical orthodoxy exerted its most powerful influence on the Greeks as a people, they were content to perpetuate their national existence in the city of Constantinople, in a state of moral debasement not very dissimilar from the position in which Juvenal describes their ancestors at Rome. The primates and the clergy acted as agents of Turkish tyranny with as much zeal as the artists and rhetoricians of old had pandered for the passions of their Roman masters. On the other hand, the slavery of the Greeks to the Othomans was not the result of any inferiority in numerical force, material wealth, and scientific knowledge. The truth is, that the successes of the Othoman Turks, like those of the Romans, must be in great part attributed to their superiority in personal courage, individual morality, systematic organisation, and national dignity. The fact is dishonourable to Christian civilisation. After the conquest of Constantinople, the Greeks sank, with wonderful rapidity, and without an effort, into the most abject slavery. For three centuries their political history is merged in the history of the Othoman empire. During this long period, the national position, for evil and for good, was determined by the aggregate of vice and virtue in the individuals who composed the nation. Historians rarely allow due weight to the direct influence of individual conduct in the mass of mankind on political history. At this period, however, the national history of the Greeks is comprised in their individual biography.

The power and resources of the Othoman empire, at the time when the Sultans of Constantinople were most dreaded by the Western Christians, were principally derived from the profound policy with which the Turkish government rendered its Christian subjects the instruments of its designs. It gave to its subjects a modicum of protection for life and property, and an amount of religious toleration which induced the orthodox to perpetuate their numbers, to continue their labours for amassing wealth, and to prefer the domination of the sultan to that of any Christian potentate. In return, it exacted a tithe of the lives as well as of the fortunes of its subjects. Christian children were taken to fill up the chasms which polygamy and war were constantly producing in Mussulman society, and Christian industry filled the sultan’s treasury with the wealth which long secured success to the boldest projects of Othoman ambition. No accidental concourse of events could have given permanence to a dominion which maintained its authority with the same stern tyranny over the Seljouk Turk, the Turkman, the Curd, the Arab, and the Moorish Mussulman, as it did over the Greek, the Albanian, the Servian, the Bulgarian, the Vallachian, and the Armenian Christian. An empire whose greatness has endured for several centuries, must have been supported by some profound political combinations, if not by some wise and just institutions. Accidental accumulations of conquest, joined together by military force alone, like the empires of Attila, Genghis Khan, and Timor, have never attained such stability.

The peculiar institutions which characterise the Othoman empire were first introduced by Orkhan. About the year 1329, Christian orphans, whose parents had been slain, were collected together, and schools for educating young slaves in the serai were formed. This was the commencement of a systematic education of Christian children, and of the corps of janissaries. Murad I. gave both measures that degree of systematic regularity, by which the tribute of Christian children afforded a permanent supply of recruits to the sultan’s army, and to the official administration. Hence, Murad, rather than his father Orkhan, has been generally called the founder of the janissaries. The political institutions of the empire were extended and consolidated by Mohammed II. After the conquest of the empires of Constantinople and Trebizond, he published his Kanun-namé, or legislative organisation of the Othoman empire. In the reign of Suleiman I., called by the Mussulmans the Legislator, and by the Christians the Magnificent, the Othoman power attained its meridian splendour. The death of the Grand-Vizier, Achmet Kueprilij, in the year 1676, during the reign of Mohammed IV., marks the epoch of its decline. Yet the decay of its strength was not without glory. In the year 1715 it inflicted a mortal wound on Venice, its ancient rival, by reconquering the Morea; and at the peace of Belgrade, in 1739, it frustrated the combined attacks of its most powerful enemies, by obtaining terms which were dishonourable to Austria, and not advantageous to Russia.

A slight sketch of the Othoman government at the end of the reign of Mohammed II. will be sufficient to place the relation of the Greeks to the dominant race and to the central administration in a clear light. This relation underwent very little change as long as the original institutions of the empire remained unaltered. During this period the records of the Greeks are of very little historical value; indeed, they are so destitute of authenticity on public affairs, that they can only be trusted when they can be confronted with the annals of their masters. It is by the influence which the Othoman government exercised on European politics that Greece finds a niche in the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it is by the influence the Greek Church exercised on Moscovite civilisation that the national importance is known.

The power of systematic organisation, as distinct from the pedantry of uniform centralisation, was never more conspicuous than in the energy of the Othoman administration. The institutions of Orkhan infused into the Othoman tribe a degree of vigour which enabled it to conquer both the Seljouk and the Greek empires; and this was done by forming a central administration, and by organising a regular army in immediate dependence on the person of the sultan. The administration of the Othoman power became in this way a part of the sultan’s household, and the Sublime Porte, which formed the emblem of the political existence of the empire, was called into active operation, without any direct dependence on Turkish nationality. The conquering race in the Othoman empire was never allowed a share of political power in the sultan’s government, however great the privileges might be which they were allowed to assume in comparison with the conquered Christians.

The strength of the Othoman empire during the most flourishing period of the sultan’s power, reposed on the household troops he composed from the children of his Christian subjects. A tribute of male children was collected from Christians in the conquered provinces; and it was apparently paid by the Greeks with as much regularity, and with as little repining, as any of the fiscal burdens imposed on them. These tribute-children form the great distinctive feature of the Othoman administration, as compared with the preceding Turkish empire of the Seljouks of Roum or of Iconium. They were carefully educated as Mussulmans, and their connection with their master the sultan, as household slaves, was always regarded in the East as more close, and even more honourable to the individual, than the connection of a subject to his sovereign, where the tie was not strengthened by a relationship of family, or at least of tribe. We find the same social relation between the slave and the master existing among the Jews at the earliest period of their national history. No stranger could partake of the passover, but the servant that was bought for money could eat thereof. The foreigner and the hired servant were nevertheless excluded from the family festival. The tribute-children, consequently, supplied the Othoman emperors with an official administration and a regular army, composed of household slaves, as ready to attack the Seljouk and Arab sovereigns, though they were Mohammedans, as the Greeks and the Servians, who were Christians.

We must not, however, conclude that the power of the sultan, even when aided by this powerful instrument, was entirely without constitutional restraint. The ministers of the Mohammedan religion, as interpreters of the civil and ecclesiastical law, had a corporate existence of an older date than the foundation of the Othoman power. This corporation, called the Ulema, possessed political rights, recognised throughout every class of Mohammedan society, independent of the sultan’s will. The power of the sultan was long restrained by the laws and customs of which the Ulema was the representative and the champion. But in the long struggle between despotic and central authority and class privileges, supported only by local and prejudices, the victory at last remained with the sultan, and the Ulema no longer exerts any very important restraint on the political action of the Othoman government. Corruption, which is the inseparable attendant of despotic power, gradually rendered the principal interpreters of the dogmas of Islam the submissive instruments of the sultan’s will, and the power of the Ulema over public opinion was thus undermined.

The institutions of the Othoman empire range themselves in three classes: 1. Those which were derived from the text of the Koran, and which were common to all Mohammedan countries from the times of the Arabian caliphs; 2. Those civil and military arrangements connected with property and local jurisdiction which prevailed among the Seljouk Turks in Asia Minor; 3. The peculiar institutions of the Othoman empire which grew up out of the legislation of Orkhan and successive sultans.

The evils inflicted on society by the absolute power over the lives and property of all Mohammedans, except the members of the Ulema, with which the laws of Mahomet invest the sultan, form the staple of the history of Islam. And when the arbitrary nature of the administration of justice inherent in the constitution of the Ulema becomes a concomitant of the despotic power of the sovereign, it is not surprising that, in Mohammedan countries, there has always been as little security for the property of individuals as there has been protection for political liberty. The authority which the Ulema possesses of extracting rules of jurisprudence for the decision of particular cases from the religious precepts of the Koran, opens an unlimited field for judicial oppression and iniquitous corruption. The acknowledged imperfection of the administration of justice prevents the law from being regarded with due respect; and hence arises that ready submission to a despotic executive which characterises all Mohammedan countries, for the power of the sovereign is considered the only effective check on the corruption of the Ulema. The sentiments of justice in the hearts of the people are also weakened by the laws of marriage, and the social relations which arise from the prevalence of polygamy. The heads of families become invested with an arbitrary and despotic power at variance with the innate feelings of equity, and the moral responsibility which is the firmest basis of virtue in society is destroyed. The primary institutions which prevail wherever Mahomet has been acknowledged as the prophet of God, are, despotic power in the sovereign, an arbitrary administration of civil law, and an immoral organisation of society. This is so striking, that every student of Turkish history feels himself puzzled in his attempts to solve the problem of ascertaining what were the good impulses of the human heart, or the sagacious policy of a wise government, by which these demoralising influences were counteracted, and the Othoman empire raised to the high pitch of power and grandeur that it attained. In the following pages we shall endeavour to mark how the characteristics of Mohammedanism affected the relations of the Othoman administration with its Greek subjects.

The second class of institutions which exerted a prominent influence on the Othoman government, consisted of the civil and military usages and customs of the Seljouk population of Asia Minor. The feudal institutions of the Seljouk empire continued to exist long after the complete subjection of its provinces to the Othoman sultan; and the wars of the national or feudal militia of Asia Minor with the central administration and the regular army at Constantinople, form an important feature in the history of the Othoman empire. The large irregular military force which marched under the sultan’s banner, along with the regular army of janissaries and paid sipahis, even in the European wars, consisted principally of Seljouk feudatories enrolled in Asia Minor. The administration of the sultan’s dominions has always presented strange anomalies in its numerous provinces, among the Mohammedan as well as among the Christian population. As in the Roman and the British empires, various races of men, and the followers of different creeds, lived intermingled in great numbers, and were allowed to retain those peculiar laws and usages that were closely interwoven with the thread of their social existence. This freedom from the administrative pedantry of centralisation has saved the Othoman empire from the crime of becoming the exterminator of the races it has subdued. The sultans only interfered with the laws and customs of each conquered people in so far as was necessary to insure their submission to the Sublime Porte, and render their resources available to increase the wealth and power of the Othoman empire. It was the policy of the sultan to maintain constantly an isolated position, overlooking equally all the various nations in his empire, whether they were Mohammedan or Christian. This policy produced, in some respects, as direct an opposition between the Seljouk population of Asia Minor and the Othoman officials of the central administration, as it did between the dominant Mohammedans and the subject Christians in Europe. The sultan employed the slaves of the Porte as the agents of the executive government. The imperial officials, both civil and military, were consequently a distinct and separate race of men from the great body of the Mohammedan population of the empire, and this distinction was more galling to the proud Seljouk feudatory in Asia than to the recent Othoman landlord in Europe. The ties which connected the imperial officials with the Mussulman population of the sultan’s dominions were few and weak, while the bonds which united them to the sultan’s person and government, as children of his household and slaves of his Sublime Porte, were entwined with all their feelings and hopes. No sentiments of patriotism united the Seljouk Turk and the Syrian Arab to the Othoman government; while, on the other hand, no kindred sympathies, and no sense of national responsibility, restrained the rigour of the sultan’s despotism, as exercised by the slaves of the Porte. Mussulman bigotry, and the community of interest arising out of a long career of conquest, inspired all the Mohammedan subjects of the sultan with one object, whenever war was proclaimed against a Christian state. The Seljouk feudatory and the Bedouin sheik were then as eager for plunder and the capture of slaves as the regular army of janissaries. Even during the time of peace, the Seljouks on the Asiatic coast were compelled to stifle their aversion to the Othoman administration by the necessity of watching every movement of the Christian population. But the persevering opposition of the Seljouk population in the interior of Asia Minor to the government of the sultan, fills many pages of Turkish history for two centuries after the conquest of Constantinople; and this opposition must be constantly borne in mind by those who desire to understand the anomalies in the administration of the Othoman empire, and in the social position of its Turkish inhabitants. Many relics of the former anomalies in the Othoman empire were visible at the beginning of the present century, which have now disappeared. The late Sultan Mahmoud II. swept away the last traces of the Seljouk feudal system, by exterminating the Deré-beys, the ruins of whose castles still greet the traveller in many of the most sequestered and picturesque valleys in the Asiatic provinces. Much of the local vigour of the Mohammedan population was then extinguished; and how far the force of the empire has been increased by centralising its energies in the administrative establishments at Constantinople, is a problem which still waits for its solution.

The third class of Othoman institutions gave the empire its true historical character and distinctive political constitution. They had their origin in the legislation of Orkhan, and they grew under the fostering care of his successors, who persevered in following the direction he had marked out to them, until the work was completed by Mohammed II. the conqueror of the Greek race. Orkhan made the household of the sovereign the basis of the government of the Othoman dominions, as it had been of the imperial administration in the Roman empire. He assigned to the organisation of the army and the civil and financial administration an existence perfectly independent of the people. The great political merit of Orkhan’s institutions was, that they admitted of extension and development as the bounds of the empire were enlarged and the exigencies of the administration increased. Accordingly, we find Murad I. so far extending his father’s regulations for recruiting the regular army from the tribute of Christian children, as to have obtained from some Turkish historians the honour of being called the founder of the corps of janissaris.  At length, when Mohammed II. had completed the conquest of the Seljouk emirs, as well as of the Greek empires of Constantinople and Trebizond, the Sclavonian kingdoms of Servia and Bosnia, the Frank principalities of Athens, Euboea, and Mytilene, and the Albanian lordship of Skanderbeg, he turned his attention to the civil government of his vast empire. In all his plans for the administration of his new conquests, he made the institutions which Orkhan had bequeathed to the Othoman government the model of his legislation. His Kanun-namé, consequently, is a collection of administrative ordinances, not an attempt to frame a code of civil laws. True to the spirit of Orkhan’s theory of government, he constituted the sultan’s palace the centre of political power, and its sublime gate as the spot where his subjects must look for protection and justice. To the world at large the Sublime Porte was the seat of the sultan’s government, and only the sultan’s slaves could enter its precincts to learn the sovereign’s will in his own presence.

Mohammed II. was one of those great men whose personal conduct, from their superiority of talent and firmness of purpose, modifies the course of public events, when it is granted to them, as it was to him, to exercise their influence during a long and successful reign. Though he ascended the throne at the age of twenty-one, his character was already formed by the education he had received. An enemy who knew him personally, and had the most powerful reasons to hate him, acknowledges that, with all the fire and energy of youth, he possessed the sagacity and the prudence of old age. The palace of the sultan, where the young princes of the race of Othman received their education amidst the tribute-children who had been selected on account of their superior talents and amiable dispositions, was for several generations an excellent public school. No reigning family ever educated so many great princes as the house of Othman. When the intellect was strong, and the disposition naturally good, the character was developed at an early age by the varied intercourse of the tribute-children and their instructors. In this society the young sultan Mohammed, whom nature had endowed with rare mental and physical advantages, learned the art of commanding himself, as well as others, by his desire to secure the esteem and attachment of the youths who were the companions of his amusements, and who were destined to become the generals of his armies and the ministers of his cabinet. Mohammed II. made it the duty of the sultan to preside in person over the whole government. For many years he was the real prime-minister of the public administration, for he retained in his own hands the supreme direction of all public business after the execution of the grand-vizier Khalil, whom he had reason to suspect of treasonable dealings with the Greeks. The succeeding grand-viziers only acted as commanders-in-chief of the army and principal secretaries of state for the general administration, not as vicegerents of the sultan’s power. From the time of Murad I. to the taking of Constantinople, the usages and customs of the Othoman tribe still exercised some influence over the public administration, and the office of grand-vizier had been hereditary in the family of Djenderelli. Khalil was the fourth of this family who filled the office, and with him the political influence of the Othoman tribe expired. The project of Khalil had been to create an acknowledged power in the hands of the grand-vizier, as protector of the peaceable subjects of the empire, independent of the military power and the military classes. His avarice, as much as his ambition, induced him to use his hereditary authority to constitute himself the leader of these views, and to endeavour to control the operations of the army. His conduct awakened the suspicion of Mohammed II., who detected his intrigues with the Greeks; and forty days after the conquest of Constantinople, Kahlil was beheaded at Adrianople. Several of the grand-viziers of Mohammed II. were men of great ability. Like the sultan, they had been educated in the schools of the imperial palace. The ablest of all was Mahmoud Pasha, whose father was a Greek, and his mother an Albanian. He was a man worthy to rank with Mohammed II. and with Skanderbeg.

The successors of Mohammed II. pursued the line of policy he had traced out, and followed the maxims of state laid down in the Kanun-namé with energy and perseverance for several generations. The sultans continued to be men both able and willing to perform the onerous duties imposed on them. For two centuries and a-half—from Othman to Suleiman the Legislator—the only sultan who was not a man of pre-eminent military talent was Bayezid II.; yet he was nevertheless a prudent and accomplished prince. All these sovereigns directed the government of their empire. The council, composed of the great officers of state and of viziers of the bench, was held in their presence.

The administrative fabric of the government was divided by Mohammed II. into four branches: 1. The Executive, the chief instruments of which were the pashas; 2. The Judicial, embracing the ulema, under the control of the kadiaskers, but subsequently presided over by the grand mufti; 3. The Financial, under the superintendence of the defterdars; and, 4. The Civil department, under the direction of the nishandjees or imperial secretaries. The grand-vizier, who was the chief of the pashas, exercised a supreme control over the whole government; while the pashas, each in his own province, commanded the military forces, maintained the police, watched over the public security, and enforced the regular payment of all taxes and imposts. The kadiaskers, or grand judges of Asia and Europe, were, in the time of Mohammed II., the administrative chiefs of the judicial and religious establishments on the different sides of the Bosphorus. They named the cadis or inferior judges. But in the reign of Suleiman the Great, the grand mufti was vested with many of the functions previously exercised by the kadiaskers, who were rendered subordinate to this great interpreter of the law. A supreme defterdar acted as minister of finance, and directed that important branch of state business which, in all long-established and extensive empires, ultimately becomes the pivot of the whole administration. The sultan’s private secretary was the chief nishandjee, who performed the duty of principal secretary of state. His office was to affix the toghra (toura) or imperial cipher to all public acts, and to revise every document as it passed through the imperial cabinet.

Such was the general scheme of the administration as it was arranged by Mohammed II.; and though it was reformed and improved by Suleiman the Legislator, it remained in force until the commencement of the present century. But when the indolence and incapacity of the sultans left the irresponsible direction of public affairs in the hands of their grand-viziers, those ministers exercised the despotic power of their masters in the most arbitrary manner.

The administration of justice and that of finance are the two most important branches of government in civilised society, because they come hourly into contact with the feelings and actions of every subject. The organisation of both these departments has always been singularly defective in the Othoman empire. The manner in which justice was dispensed to the subjects of the sultan—whether Mussulman or Christian—whether in the tribunal of the cadi or the court of the bishop—was so radically vicious as to render all decisions liable to the suspicion and imputation of venality. The consequence was that corruption pervaded the whole frame of society; there was an universal feeling of insecurity, and a conviction that candour and publicity were both attended with individual danger. The want of morality and self-reliance, which is made the reproach of the subjects of the Othoman empire, and from which only a portion of the dominant race was exempt, can easily be traced to this defect in their social position. In all historical investigations we ought constantly to bear in mind the observation of Hume, that all the vast apparatus of government has for its ultimate object the distribution of justice. The executive power, and the assemblies which form a portion of the legislative, ought both, in a well-constituted state, to be subordinate to the law. The fashionable phrase of modern constitutions, that every citizen is equal before the law, is a mockery of truth and common sense in all states where there is one set of laws or regulations for the government and its officials, and another for the mass of people as subjected to that government. Until neither rank, nor official position, nor administrative privileges can be pleaded as a ground of exceptional treatment by the agents of the executive in matters of justice, there can be no true civil liberty. The law must be placed above sovereigns and parliaments as well as above ministers and generals.

No such principles of government ever entered into the minds of the Othoman Turks. The Mohammedan jurisprudence declares distinctly that there is a different civil law for the believer in Islam and for the infidel. It pronounces that the Koran confers privileges on the true believer from which all others are excluded. The Mohammedan law, therefore, was founded on principles of partial, not of universal application, and it has maintained a perpetual struggle with the natural abhorrence of injustice which God has implanted in the human heart. Even the Mussulman population of the Othoman empire was not insensible to the instability of their legal position as a dominant race, where the mass of the population was of a different religion. They always felt that their power in Europe was based on maxims of law and policy which rendered its duration uncertain. The Mohammedans in Europe always contemplated the probability of their being one day expelled from countries where they appeared as foreign colonists and temporary sojourners, and looked forward to a period when they should be compelled to retreat into those Asiatic lands where the majority of the inhabitants followed the faith of Mahomet. Hence resulted the nervous anxiety displayed by the Mussulmans to convert the Christian population of the sultan’s dominions. The true believers considered that this was the only manner by which it was possible to confer on the followers of a different religion an equality of civil rights, and they felt that this equality could alone give stability to their government. Several of the ablest statesmen in the Othoman empire declared, that until the Mohammedan religion was embraced by all the sultan’s subjects, the government could neither be secure nor equitable. They fully acknowledged the danger of treating the Christians under their dominion with systematic injustice, and they endeavoured to palliate the evil they could not eradicate. The necessity of protecting the Christians against oppression was recognised by Mohammed II., and the patriarch of Constantinople was appointed the agent for the Greek nation at the Sublime Forte for this purpose. But the first legislative enactments for the declared object of protecting the Christian subjects of the sultan against official and Mussulman oppression, by investing them with a guarantee in their own personal rights, were dated in the year 1691. These imperial ordinances were promulgated by the grand-vizier Mustapha Kueprilij, called the Virtuous, and were termed the Nizam-djedid, or New System. The governors of provinces, and all the pashas and other officials, were commanded to treat the Christians with equity. They were strictly prohibited from exacting any addition to the haratsh or capitation-tax, or to any of the imposts as fixed by the laws of the empire, under the pretext of local necessities. The intention of the Othoman government had always been to leave the collection and administration of the funds destined for local purposes in the hands of the inhabitants of the locality. This attempt of Mustapha the Virtuous to sanction the right of Christians to demand protection against Mussulman injustice, under Mohammedan laws, produced very little practical effect in ameliorating the lot of the Greeks. The Othoman administration was about this period invaded by a degree of corruption, which left all the sultan’s subjects, both Mussulman and Christian, exposed to the grossest injustice. It required many social changes in the East before any progress could be made in the task of levelling the barriers which separated the dominant religion from the faith of the subject people. The difference was too great to be effaced by legislative enactments alone.

The imperfection of the financial administration in the Othoman government assisted the vices of the judicial system in accelerating the decline of the empire. In all countries, the manner in which the permanent revenues of the state are levied, exerts an important effect on the national prosperity. A small amount of taxation may be so collected as to check the accumulation of national wealth, and hinder the people from adopting fixed habits of industry, while a large amount may be imposed in such a way as to form a very slight check on the national progress. The taxes in the Othoman empire were not so injurious from their amount, as from the way in which they were imposed and collected. The Mohammedans were exempt from many burdens which fell heavy on the Jews and Christians; and as often happens with financial privileges, these exceptions proved ultimately of no great advantage to the class they appeared to favour.

The great financial distinction between the true believers and the infidel subjects of the sultan, was the payment of the haratsh or capitation-tax. This tax was levied on the whole male unbelieving population, with the exception of children under ten years of age, old men, and priests of the different sects of Christians and Jews. The maimed, the blind, and the paralytic were also exempted by Moslem charity. This payment was imposed by the Koran on all who refused to embrace the Mohammedan faith, as the alternative by which they might purchase peace. The Othomans found it established in the Seljouk empire, and, as they were bound by their religious precepts, they extended it to every country they conquered. In the reign of Suleiman the Legislator, this tax yielded a revenue of seventeen millions of piastres, while the whole revenue of the empire only amounted to twenty-seven millions, or about £6,000,000 sterling.

The duty levied alike on imports and exports amounted to two and a halt per cent when the goods were the property of a Mohammedan, but to five per cent when they belonged to a Christian or Jewish subject of the Porte. This moderate duty enabled the commerce of the Othoman empire to flourish greatly during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Though the commercial duties levied on the infidels were double the amount of those paid by the Mohammedans, they were in reality so moderate, that the difference was easily compensated by closer commercial relations with foreign merchants in distant countries, and by greater activity and economy. The Christians, consequently, preserved the greater share of the trade of Turkey in their hands. And as both Christians and Jews were excluded from war and politics, they turned their whole attention to trade. The different members of the same family dispersed themselves in various cities of the empire, in order that they might collect cargoes for exportation with the greatest facility, and personally superintend their distribution at the ports of consumption in the most economical manner. In an age when guarantees for personal honesty were not easily obtained beyond the circle of family ties, and extensive credit required to be replaced by personal attendance, the Greeks made their family connections a substitute for the privileges of corporations and guilds in the commercial cities of western Europe. Another circumstance favoured the trade of the non-Mussulman population of the Othoman empire. Venality and rapacity have always been prominent characteristics of the Othoman financial system. The Christian population of the East had been disciplined to every species of financial extortion for many ages by the Greek emperors. In fiscal measures the Othomans were the pupils of the Byzantine system, and the officials of the Porte soon perceived that the privilege of paying smaller duties placed the interests of the Mussulman trader in opposition to the interests of the imperial fisc. The custom-house officers were taught to favour that trade which brought the largest returns to the imperial treasury, and to throw obstacles in the way of commercial dealings which bore the character of individual privileges injurious to the sultan’s revenue. The import and export duties formed one of the principal branches of the sultan’s revenue, and we have already observed that the nature of the Othoman government prevented the existence of much sympathy between the great bulk of the Mohammedan landlords or cultivators of the soil and the agents of the sultan’s administration. The policy of throwing obstacles in the way of the commercial operations of the Turks gradually gained strength, until the Mussulman landlord was content, in order to save time and avoid collision with the government officials, to sell his produce to rayah merchants, who in this way gained possession of the greater part of the trade of the empire. At a later period, the privileges conceded by commercial treaties to the subjects of foreign nations introduced a change in the commercial position of the Christian subjects of the Porte, which was extremely injurious both to the wealth and moral character of the Greek traders. From this period the history of Othoman commerce becomes a record of privileges granted to foreigners, and of fraudulent schemes adopted by the rayahs to share in these privileges, or to elude their effect. The government strove to indemnify itself for these frauds by unjust exactions, and the native traders employed corruption and bribery as the most effectual protection against the abuses of tyrannical authority. The letter of the law and the legitimate duties served only as the text for an iniquitous commentary of extortions and evasions.

The land-tax, however, was the impost which bore heaviest on the industry of the whole agricultural population of every religion and race. This tax consisted of a fixed proportion of the annual produce, generally varying from a tenth to a third of the whole crop. Almost all the countries which had fallen under the domination of the Mohammedans had been in a declining state of society at the time of their conquest. This was as much the case with Syria, Egypt, Persia, and Northern Africa in the seventh century, as it was with the Greek empires of Constantinople and Trebizond, and the principalities of Athens and the Morea, in the fifteenth. In such a state of society, communications are becoming daily more confined, and it is consequently more easy for the cultivator to pay a determinate proportion of his crop than to make a fixed payment in money. Thus, the worst possible system of taxation was introduced into the dominions of the Mohammedan conquerors as a boon to their subjects, and was received with satisfaction. All the land in the Othoman empire was subjected to this tax, whether it was held by Mohammedans or infidels. The effect of this system of taxation in repressing industry arises in great measure from the methods adopted to guard against fraud on the part of the cultivator of the soil. He is not allowed to commence the labours of the harvest until the tax-gatherer is on the spot to watch his proceedings; and he is compelled to leave the produce of his land exposed in the open air until the proportion which falls to the share of the government is measured out and separated from the heap. Where the soil is cultivated by a race of a different religion from the landlord, it becomes the interest of the landlord to combine with the tax-collector, or to become himself a farmer of the revenue, and then every act of tyranny is perpetrated with impunity. Throughout the whole Othoman empire all agricultural industry is paralysed for at least two months annually; the cultivators of the soil being compelled to waste the greater portion of their time in idleness, watching the grain on the threshing-floors, seeing it trodden out by cattle, or else winnowing it in the summer breezes; for immemorial usage has prescribed these rude operations as the surest guarantees for protecting the government against frauds on the part of the peasant. This barbarous routine of labour is supposed to be an inevitable necessity of state, and consequently all improvements in agriculture are rendered impracticable. The evils inherent in the system of exacting the land-tax in the shape of a determinate proportion of the annual crop, have produced a stationary condition of the agricultural population wherever it has prevailed. It was one of the great social evils of Europe during the middle ages, and at the present day it forms the great barrier to improvement in the Othoman empire and the Greek kingdom.

Another evil arising from this mode of levying the tax on the soil is, that it induces the government to weaken the rights of property, and thus, in the hope of increasing the annual revenue of the state, capital is excluded from seeking a permanent investment in land. Even under the Roman empire, a similar policy caused some degree of insecurity to the landed proprietor, whose arable land was not sufficiently protected by the law, if it remained uncultivated. For, by the Roman jurisprudence, the occupier who tilled the land belonging to another person, if he maintained his occupation for a year, acquired a right of occupancy, leaving the real proprietor only the power of regaining possession of his land by an action at law. It is evident that this transference of possession to the squatter who could obtain the undisturbed occupancy for a single year, was an element of insecurity in all landed property. The laws of Great Britain and of the United States of America are based on very different principles from those of Rome. The rights of property are always considered too sacred to be tampered with for fiscal purposes; mere possession confers no right to land. The Othoman legislation has adopted the policy of the Roman law, and it considers the loss which might accrue to the state from the land remaining uncultivated as a greater evil than the injury inflicted on society by unsettling the rights of property. The Othoman law allowed any person to cultivate arable land which was left uncultivated by its proprietor beyond the usual term of fallow, even though the proprietor might desire, for his own profit, to retain it for pasture. The possession of arable land could only be retained by keeping it in constant cultivation, according to customary routine. Capital, under such circumstances, could not be invested in land with security or profit. A barrier was raised against agricultural improvements, and the population engaged in cultivating the soil was condemned to remain in a stationary condition.