Turkey

Turkey, or the OTTOMAN EMPIRE, comprises the wide but heterogeneous territories really or nominally subject to the Osmânî sultan, in Europe, Asia, and Africa. These territories, which once extended from the Danube to the Catacts of the Nile, and from the Euphrates to the borders of Morocco, have been considerably reduced in the 19th century by the aggression of France in Algiers and Tunis, by the influence of England in making Egypt practically independent of its titular sovereign the sultan, and by the treaty arrangements which followed the Russo-Turkish war of 1877. Algiers has belonged to

Copyright 1892 in U.S.
by J. B. Lippincott
Company.

France since 1830; Tunis has been practically a French province since 1881; Egypt, though still tributary to 'the Porte' or Turkish government, has since 1882 been in no danger of ever reverting to its former condition of a Turkish province; whilst by the decisions of the Berlin Congress of 1878 the tributary states of Roumania and Servia became independent kingdoms, and obtained an increase of territory in the Dobrudja and about the Morava respectively; the independence of Montenegro was recognised, and its borders enlarged to include Dulcigno and Antivari; Austria-Hungary took Bosnia and Herzegovina under its protection; Greece was to push her frontier northward and absorb Thessaly (q.v.); and in the very heart of European Turkey Bulgaria was cut off and created a tributary principality, to which Eastern Roumelia was added in 1885, under the guaranty of the Great Powers. The result of these limitations is that Turkey in Europe consists merely of a strip of territory south of the Balkans, stretching across from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, and including ancient Thrace, Macedon, Epirus, and Illyria; Turkey in Africa is practically reduced to the regency of Tripoli; while Turkey in Asia still spreads from the Euxine to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, intact, save for the cession of Kars and Batoum to Russia after the war in 1877, and the transference of the administration of Cyprus to England. The area and population of the Turkish empire may be approximately tabulated as follows; it being premised that statistics in Turkey are not precise:

These figures do not include the population of the Soudan and the Upper Nile basin restored to Egypt in 1898. Crete ceased to be Turkish in 1898. By vilâyet or provinces, the population of European Turkey is estimated as follows: Constantinople, 873,565; Adrianople, 778,603; Salonica, 966,308; Monastir, 497,930; Janina, 513,216; Scutari (Albania), 102,819; Kossovo, 561,282; total, 4,293,723, of which 2,329,000 were males. The most populous vilâyet of Asiatic Turkey are those of Smyrna (Aidin) and Trebizond, each with over a million inhabitants. Of cities in European Turkey Adrianople has 100,000 inhabitants, and Salonica 60,000; whilst in Asia Damascus has 200,000, Baghdad 180,000, and Aleppo 120,000.

Turkey in Europe, generally undulating, is traversed by a mountain-system which has its origin in the Alps, enters Turkey at the north-west corner, and runs nearly parallel to the coast, under the names of the Dinaric Alps and Mount Pindus, as far as the Greek frontier. This range sends numerous offshoots east and west; the great eastern offshoot being the Balkan (q.v.) range, with its numerous branches to north and south. The Balkans are no longer included in Turkey proper, and the highest peaks of modern European Turkey are now in the Despoto Dagh or Rhodope range (7474 feet) and the Skar Dagh (10,000 feet) on the Albanian frontier. The rivers of Turkey are chiefly, to the north of the Balkans, the Morava and numerous other tributaries of the Danube; and to the south, the Maritza, Karasu, Struma, and Vardar, which flow into the Aegean, and drain Roumelia (Macedon and Thrace); the Narenta, Drin, and Voyntza fall into the Adriatic. On the high lands the cold is excessive in winter, owing to the north-east winds which blow from the bleak and icy steppes of southern Russia; and the heat of summer is almost insupportable in the western valleys. Violent climatic change is, on the whole, the rule in European Turkey; but those districts which are sheltered from the cold winds, as the Albanian valleys and parts of Roumelia, enjoy a comparatively equable temperature. The soil is for the most part very fertile; but owing to oppressive taxation little progress has been made in the art of agriculture, and the most primitive implements are in common use. The cultivated products include most of those usual in central and southern Europe—maize, rice, rye, barley, millet, besides tobacco, madder, and cotton. The mineral products are iron in abundance, argentiferous lead ore, copper, sulphur, salt, alum, and a little gold; some deposits of coal have been found, but none are worked. Sheep-breeding is largely carried on. The wild animals are the wild boar, bear, wolf, wild dog, civet, chamois, wild ox, and those others which are generally distributed in Europe. The lion formerly roamed the Thessalian mountains.

Turkey in Asia is still more mountainous. The two almost parallel ranges, Taurus and Anti-Taurus, which are the basis of its mountain-system, cover almost the whole of the peninsula of Asia Minor (q.v.) or Anatolia with their ramifications and offshoots, forming the surface into elevated plateaus, deep valleys, and enclosed plains. From the Taurus chain the Lebanon range proceeds southwards parallel to the coast of Syria, and, diminishing in elevation in Palestine, terminates on the Red Sea coast at Sinai. The Euphrates, Tigris, Orontes, and Kizil-Ermak are the chief rivers. On the whole, Turkey in Asia is ill supplied with water; and though the mountain-slopes afford abundance of excellent pasture, the plains, and many of the valleys, especially those of the Euphrates, Tigris, and Jordan, are reduced by the parching droughts of summer to the condition of sandy deserts. In ancient times these now desert districts were preserved in a state of fertility by artificial irrigation; but during the six centuries of almost constant war which convulsed this once fair region the canals were neglected, and have, ever since the rise of the Osmânli power, remained in an unserviceable condition. Nevertheless the fertile portions produce abundance of wheat, barley, rice, maize, tobacco, hemp, flax, and cotton; the cedar, cypress, and evergreen oak flourish on the mountain-slopes, the sycamore and mulberry on the lower hills, and the olive, fig, citron, orange, pomegranate, and vine on the low lands. The mineral products are iron, copper, lead, alum, silver, rock-salt, coal (in Syria), and limestone. The fauna includes the lion (east of the Euphrates), the hyæna, lynx, panther, leopard, buffalo, wild boar, wild ass, bear, wolf, jackal, jerboa, &c.; and the camel and dromedary must be added to the ordinary list of domestic animals.

Turkey in Africa is described at TRIPOLI, TUNIS, and EGYPT, of which the first alone can properly be termed a direct Turkish possession.

Industry, Manufactures, and Trade.—Notwithstanding the primitive state of agriculture in Turkey, the extreme fertility of the soil makes ample amends for this defect. The exports include cereals, tobacco, raisins, dried figs, olive-oil, silk, wool, mohair, red cloth, dressed goat-skins, excellent morocco, saddlery, swords of superior quality, shawls, carpets, dyestuffs, embroidery, essential oils, attar of roses, opium, plum-brandy, meerschaum clay, honey, sponges, drugs, madder, gall- nuts, various gums and resins, and excellent wines. The imports are manufactured goods of all kinds, glass, pottery, arms, paper, cutlery, steel, amber, and especially cotton goods. In 1890-95 the annual value of exports was about £14,000,000, and of imports £22,000,000; Great Britain imports to a value of £5,000,000, and exports to Turkey about as much. The countries trading with Turkey are, in order of importance, Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, Italy, Greece, Persia, &c.; and the principal ports are Constantinople and Smyrna. In 1895 Turkey had 786 sailing-vessels of 151,800 tons (mostly coasters), and 78 steamers of 37,843 tons. In 1894-95 there entered and cleared at Turkish ports 192,269 vessels of 37,618,549 tons. There are 930 miles of railway open in European Turkey, and in Asiatic Turkey 970.

Races.—The population consists of a singular mixture of races. Turks, Greeks, Slavs, and Albanians are largely represented, besides Armenians, Jews, Circassians, and Frank residents. In European Turkey the Turks are about 2,000,000, the Greeks and Bulgarians 1,300,000, the Albanians 1,500,000. In Asia the Turks are about 7,000,000, the Kurds 1,000,000, the Greeks 1,000,000, the Armenians over 2,000,000; while the rest is made up of Syrians, Arabs, Jews, Druses, Franks, Gypsies, Tartars, Circassians, &c. Of these the Greeks and Armenians are principally traders; the Turks, Slavs, and Albanians are the chief agriculturists in Europe, and the Turks, Armenians, and Syrians in Asia. Of the 15,000,000 Mohammedans, 12,000,000 are in Asiatic Turkey.

Administration, Religion, and Education.—The government of Turkey has always been a pure despotism; for the constitution promulgated in 1876 and revoked in 1878 was merely nominal. The sultan (also called Pādishāh, Grand Signior, Khān, Hunkīār) is represented in all matters spiritual by the Grand Mufti or Sheyhk-el-Islām, who enjoys considerable influence as head of the Ulema (q.v.), and in temporal affairs by the Grand Vezir (or Sadr-A'zam), under whom are the members of the cabinet or divan, including the president of the council, the ministers of foreign affairs, of war, of the navy, of artillery, of the interior, of justice, of finance, and the other heads of departments of the administration. Governmental crises are frequent, especially of late; and palace intrigues have always been a powerful factor in Turkish politics. The governors of the vilāyets, or provinces, who are appointed by the sultan, are styled vālīs; each vilāyet is divided into sanjaks, or livas, ruled by inferior officers; and each liva is subdivided into districts and communes. The provincial governors have no longer the power of life and death; and their freedom to practise extortion on those under their rule has been greatly restricted; but so long as they are ill-paid and hold a precarious tenure of an expensive office their administration is sure to remain venal and corrupt. The established religion is Islām or Mohammedanism, but most other creeds are recognised and tolerated; and since 1844, thanks to the strenuous efforts of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe (q.v.), a Mohammedan has been free to change his religion without becoming liable, as before, to capital punishment. The Protestant religion was for the first time officially recognised in Turkey in 1845. Education was long neglected, but in 1847 a new system was introduced, and since then schools for elementary instruction have been established throughout Turkey, and middle schools for higher education, and colleges for the teaching of medicine, agriculture, naval and military science, &c.; whilst among the Christians education has notably improved. Many wealthy Turks send their sons to France or Britain to be educated, with somewhat doubtful results.

Revenue and Debt.—Long before the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 the Turkish exchequer was evidently on the brink of insolvency, as was manifested by the violent expedients proposed for escaping from part of its liabilities. In 1875 a decree reduced the interest payable on the debt to one-half; and by another decree in October 1876 the empire was declared bankrupt; but an unsatisfactory arrangement was come to with its creditors. The enormous expenditure of the war, and the loss of valuable provinces, added to the utter disorganisation of Turkish finances. In 1875-76 the revenue was estimated at £19,106,352, and the expenditure at £23,143,276. In 1878-79 the revenue was guessed at £14,000,000; expenditure (with part of the war expenses), £50,000,000. At the end of 1880 the Times reckoned the available annual revenue at £9,450,000, and the budget expenditure was nearly £12,000,000. In 1897-98 the revenue was estimated to cover an expenditure of a little over £18,000,000. Between 1854 and 1896 some twenty loans had been contracted. In 1896 the debt on account of various loans was £131,228,464, without counting £27,000,000 outstanding of the £32,000,000 claimed by Russia as war indemnity. In 1897-98 the budget showed a small surplus with a revenue of £16,700,000, but did not provide for the large and regularly recurring extraordinary expenditure; the actual deficit being of late years over £1,000,000 annually.

Navy and Army.—The navy consists of about twenty armour-clad vessels, fifty smaller steamers, and forty torpedo boats. In the course of the war with Russia Turkey contrived to put on a war footing no less than 752,000 men, including reserve and irregular troops. At the end of the war the disorganised remnant amounted to about 120,000 men. Extraordinary efforts have been made to keep up the army: in 1880, when it had seemed necessary to call out the reserves, the empire actually had an army of 300,000 men, well armed and fairly equipped. According to the reorganisation in progress at that time the military forces of the Ottoman empire consist of the active army (nizam), twelve army corps of landwehr (redif), and a landsturm (mustafiz). The first numbered in 1897 about 200,000, forming 278 battalions of infantry, 192 squadrons of cavalry, 159 field batteries, 30 mounted batteries, besides engineers and gunners at the forts. In case of war the total force of all arms could be raised to 750,000.

See works by Rev. H. F. Tozer (2 vols. 1869), Col. James Baker (1877), 'A Consul's Daughter' (1878), E. L. Clark (New York, 1883), Sutherland Menzies (3d ed. 1883), Rudler and Chisholm (1885), E. de Laveye (Eng. trans. 1887), Lucy Garnett (1891-92), and D. Georgiades (La Turquie actuelle, 1892); also, for Asiatic Turkey, by Geary (1878), Davis (1879), W. M. Ramsay (1890), and Cuinet (Paris, 1891), and other works cited at SYRIA, BULGARIA, &c.

History.—The Osmānīs or Ottoman Turks trace their descent from a small clan of the Oghluz, who were pressed forward from their old camping-ground in Khorāsān by the advance of the Mongols, and, coming to Armenia early in the 13th century, were fortunate enough to assist the Seljūk sultan of Iconium at a critical moment in his resistance to the Mongol avalanche, for which service they were rewarded with lands in Asia Minor. Ertughrul, the leader of the 400 horsemen who had thus come to the rescue of the Seljuks at the battle of Angora, was allowed to pasture his flocks and pitch his tents in the province anciently known as Phrygia Epictetus (now to be called Sultanōnī), on the borders of the Byzantine province of Bithynia, and made the city of Sugut (Thebasion) his headquarters. Sugut was the birthplace of the Ottoman empire: thirty-five sultans have followed Ertughrul in the male line without a break, and, after six centuries, his descendant still stands lord over wide provinces and peoples of various races and languages. At Sugut in 1258 was born Osmân (or Othmân), from whom his followers took the name Osmânîs, which Europeans have corrupted into Ottoman. At the beginning of the 14th century the Seljûk kingdom split up into ten states, one of which, the Ottoman province of Sultanânî, gradually absorbed the rest. Osmân, who reigned from 1301 to 1326, waged a guerilla war upon his Greek neighbours, and captured many fortresses, pushed his conquests to the verge of the Hellespont, and took Brûsa the capital of Bithynia. His son, Orkhân (1326-59), reduced Nicea (1330) and absorbed one of the ten Seljûkian states, the ancient Mysia (1336). Thus in two generations the little clan of nomads had possessed themselves of the whole north-west corner of Asia Minor, and obtained the command of the eastern shores of the Bosphorus and Propontis. Then for twenty years peace reigned between the Greeks and Ottomans, and Orkhân and his brother, 'Alâ-ed-dîn, devoted themselves to the task of organising the state, forming a standing army (the first in modern times) out of the material supplied by the mixed population of their dominions, and inaugurating the famous corps of Janizaries (Yeni çeri, 'new soldiery') which for centuries constituted the flower of the Ottoman army. This celebrated force was recruited entirely from Christian children, who were educated as Moslems, and carefully trained and disciplined. Deprived of all ties of kinship, but encouraged by every inducement to zeal and devotedness, this military brotherhood became the most devoted as well as the most fanatical instrument of imperial ambition which has ever been devised, until they abused their power so wantonly that they had to be summarily exterminated in 1826 by Mahmûd II. (see JANIZARIES). Besides this military organisation, the civil administration was skilfully ordered, and the government of the Turks contrasted favourably with the corrupt and nerveless rule of their Byzantine neighbours, who, for their part, humbled themselves by abject concessions, delivered up their imperial princesses to the harems of the Osmânîs, and allowed them to levy blackmail in their raids for Christian slaves.

The Turks could not look across the Bosphorus upon the domes of Constantinople without longing for its possession. In 1358 they occupied Gallipoli on the European side of the Dardanelles, and a few years later Adrianople and Philippopolis fell before the onslaught of the new sultan, Murâd I.—the first 'Amurath' of European writers (1359-89)—who in 1364 decisively routed the united Servians, Hungarians, and Vlachs, on the banks of the Maritza. In 1375 he took Nissa, the birthplace of Constantinople, and received the homage of the despot of Serbia and the kral of Bulgaria. The Balkan Peninsula was now a Turkish possession, with the exception of the territory immediately surrounding Constantinople. Twice again the Christians endeavoured to turn back the wave of Moslem conquest. Lazarus the Servian in 1389 led a great army against the Turks, but was severely defeated in the battle of Kosovo, which was, however, followed by the assassination of Murâd I. by the Servian Milosh Kobilovich. His successor, Bayezîd I. (Bajazet, 1389-1402), surnamed Yildirim, or 'Thunderbolt,' by reason of his impetuous valour, annexed the remainder of the Seljûkian states of Asia Minor, and meeting a vast army of the Christians of all Europe, who had vowed a crusade against the Turks in 1394, cut them to pieces at Nicopolis. Ten thousand prisoners were butchered in heaps before the eyes of the pitiless sultan from daybreak till four in the afternoon. The invasion of Timûr (Tamerlane) interrupted the victorious course of the Ottoman arms, then, apparently, on the eve of the capture of Constantinople. The Tartar hordes overrun Asia Minor, and totally defeated near Angora, in 1402, the army which Bayezîd had vaingloriously brought into the field. The sultan was taken prisoner, and died in captivity eight months later. Timûr reinstated the Seljûk princes; the Christians of Europe were free; and the history of the Ottoman empire seemed to have suddenly come to an end. Its extraordinary revival was due partly to the physical and moral superiority of the Osmânîs over their neighbours in Europe and Asia, partly to the enduring strength of their civil and military organisation, which contrasted strikingly with the demoralised condition of the Greek empire, and largely to the wisdom and prudence of Mohammed I., 'the Restorer,' also called Chelebi, or 'the Gentleman' (1402-13). By sound statesmanship, firm yet conciliatory, this able sovereign recovered all that had been lost in the Tartar convulsion. His foresight was displayed in an ominous step: he transferred the capital of his dominions from Asia to Europe, from Brûsa to Adrianople. The interval of prudent consolidation of the empire was followed by another period of aggression. His son and successor, Murâd II. (1421-51), was as wise as his father, but his lines were fallen in fighting times. A terrible foe had arisen in the person of Hunyady, the 'White Knight' of Wallachia (an illegitimate son of Sigismund, king of Hungary), who for twenty years was a cruel scourge of the Balkan provinces, and who inflicted grievous losses upon the Ottomans at Hermannstadt (1442), Vasag, and Nissa (1443). A ten years' peace was concluded by the treaty of Szegedin, by which Servia regained her independence and Wallachia was annexed to Hungary. Murâd was now weary of war and kingship, and abdicated in favour of his son Mohammed; whereupon the Christians, in violation of their oath and treaty, invaded the Ottoman dominions, led by Hunyady, and sanctioned by the presence of Frankish crusaders under the command of Cardinal Julian. This flagrant breach of faith drew Murâd from his voluntary retirement. He collected 40,000 veterans, induced the Genoese to ferry them across the Bosphorus, and, displaying the violated treaty on a lance as his standard, fell upon the Christians at Varna (10th November 1444), and won a decisive victory. The king of Poland and the cardinal were among the slain. Henceforth, for more than two centuries, the Turks had nothing to fear from European invasions until the rise of the Russian power created a new danger.

Murâd's long reign of thirty years was soiled by no breath of dishonour; his character was as noble as it was commanding. His successor, Mohammed II., 'the Conqueror' (1451-81), reigned also thirty years, but his rule was marked by violence and treachery, and the new sultan was as cruel and unscrupulous as he was conspicuously able. The great event of his reign was the siege and capture of Constantinople (29th May 1453), whereby the miserable remnant of the Byzantine empire was extinguished for ever, and the Turks obtained that commanding position on the Bosphorus which has contributed more than anything else, directly and indirectly, to the maintenance of their empire. In the north the progress of Ottoman conquest was arrested by the heroic defence of Belgrade in 1456 by Hunyady and John Capistran, and by the subsequent resistance of Hunyady's successor, Matthias Corvinus. In the west Scanderbeg for a while kept the Turks back in Albania. But towards the end of the reign they were making substantial progress. They had conquered the Crimea (1475), their arms were menacing Venice (1477), they had annexed Greece and most of the Ægean islands, made their first attempt upon the stronghold of the Knights of St John at Rhodes, and even planted their foot on Italian soil by the capture of Otranto in 1480. In the following year, whilst fitting out a vast expedition, Mohammed the Conqueror died, amid the thanksgivings of Europe. The long reign of his son, Bayezid II. (1481-1512), was marked by no great conquests, and the chief interest centres in the adventures and fate of his unlucky brother, Prince Jem. With Bayezid's son, Selim I., 'the Grim' (1512-20), however, a new epoch of transcendent glory began to dawn. In his brief eight years of sovereignty he drove back Isma'il, the powerful shah of Persia, after a furious battle at Chaldiran, and incorporated Kurdistan and Diarbekr in the Turkish empire, annexed Syria, and wrenched Egypt from the hands of the valiant Mamlûks (1517), who had possessed it almost since the days of Saladin. With Egypt came the Hijaz and its Holy Cities, while from the last 'Abbâsy Caliph of Cairo Selim received relics of the Prophet Mohammed and the inheritance of the title of Caliph, by which his successors to the present day signify their claim to the homage of all orthodox Mohammedans. Selim, however, did but usher in the great epoch (1520-66) of his son, Suleymân the Magnificent, though without the father's warlike genius it may well be doubted whether the son would have been able to attain to the glory with which his name is associated. His epoch is famous for many triumphs both by land and sea. He conquered Belgrade, and, after a heroic siege, reduced (1522) the rocky stronghold of the Knights of St John at Rhodes, who were allowed to evacuate the island upon honourable terms. In 1526 the sultan marched north, at the head of an army of 100,000 men and 300 guns, and utterly crushed the Hungarians on the field of Mohács, and slew their king, Louis II., and 20,000 of his followers. Buda and Pesth fell, and Hungary became an Ottoman province for a century and a half. Quarrels over the new nominal kingship of Hungary drew Suleymân northward again in 1529 to support his nominee, Zápolya, and after enforcing his authority, and laying the country waste, the sultan proceeded to push forward to Vienna. Austria was incapable of meeting him in the field, but Vienna heroically withstood a furious siege for eighteen days. The Turks abandoned their design for the moment, and the sultan retreated in disgust to Constantinople, and eventually made a truce with Charles V. in 1533. Eight years later, however, Suleymân led his ninth campaign in the north, and compelled the emperor to sue for peace, the Archduke Ferdinand agreeing to pay a heavy tribute to his lord the sultan, who retained the whole of Hungary and Transylvania. War and sieges, however, continued to the death of Suleymân in 1566. The sultan's claim to be called 'the Great' rests not merely upon his undoubted wisdom and ability, and the splendid series of his successes, but upon the fact that he maintained and improved his grand position in an age of surpassing greatness—the age of Charles V., Francis I., Elizabeth, and Leo X.; of Columbus, Cortes, and Raleigh. In the great days of Charles he dared to annex Hungary and lay siege to Vienna; and in the epoch of great navies and admirals, of Doria and Drake, he swept the seas to the coasts of Spain, and his admirals Barbarossa, Piale, and Dragut created panic fear along all the shores of the Mediterranean, drove the Spaniard out of the Barbary States, and defeated pope, emperor, and doge together at the great sea-fight off Prevesa in 1538. But just as Vienna had resisted him in 1529, so the Knights of Malta withstood a powerful Ottoman armament in 1565, and 25,000 Turks fell in the fruitless siege.

Selim II. (1566-74), a degraded sot, owed whatever renown belongs to his reign to the ability of his father's old statesmen and generals. Sinân Pasha subdued Arabia in 1570, and Cyprus was conquered in 1571; but these successes were outweighed by the utter defeat of the Turkish fleet by Don John of Austria, 7th October 1571, off Lepanto, which first broke the spell of Turkish prestige at sea. During this reign occurred the first collision of the Turks with the Russians. The connection of the Don and Volga by a canal was a project which, by allowing the passage of ships from the Black Sea into the Caspian, would obviously serve both military and commercial purposes; and accordingly 5000 workmen were despatched to cut the canal, and an army of 80,000 men to aid and protect them. The possession of Astrakhan formed part of the programme; but the attack upon this town brought upon the Turks the vengeance of the Russians, a people till then unknown in southern Europe; three fourths of the Turkish army was lost in the expedition, and the project was abandoned. On the other hand, Tunis was taken from the Spaniards in 1574. The reign of Selim's son, Murâd III. (1574-95), is chiefly notable for the reception of the first English embassy to Turkey in 1589, which was sent with the object of concluding an alliance against Philip II. of Spain. War with Persia ended in the extension of the Turkish frontier, so as to include Georgia, and a fresh contest with Austria was marked at first by success, but afterwards by severe reverses, until in the reign of the next sultan, Mohammed III. (1595-1603), the tide of failure was turned by a signal victory over the Austrians and Transylvanians on the plain of the Keresztes (1596). The victory, however, was not followed up; and the prestige of the Ottoman arms continued to wane. The Turks were no longer the terror of Europe. Of the next four sultans, Ahmed I. (1603-17), Mustafa I. (1617-18, 1622-23), Osmân II. (1618-22), and Murâd IV. (1623-40), the last alone resembled his great forefathers, and by his campaign against Persia and conquest of Baghdâd (1638) vindicated his title to be the last of the fighting sultans of Turkey. The death of Murâd IV. was the signal for fresh troubles. Mustafa, the grand vezir (vizier), a man of great ability and integrity, indeed, continued to direct the helm of government under Ibrahim (1640-48), took from the Poles their conquests, and in a war with the Venetians (1645) obtained Candia and almost all the Venetian strongholds in the Ægean Sea, though with the loss of some towns in Dalmatia. But the empire was distracted by military factions and seraglio intrigues, and the new sultan, Mohammed IV. (1648-87), began his reign under the most unfavourable auspices. He was only seven years of age, and the whole power was vested in the Janizaries and their partisans, who used it to accomplish their own ends. Fortunately for Turkey, in 1656 Mohammed Kôprili, an old Albanian of seventy, but possessed of an iron will, was appointed vezir with practically absolute powers; and the extraordinary talents of this man proved to be the salvation of Turkey at this critical juncture. He had 36,000 persons executed in his five years of office, and then died with a good conscience. He was succeeded (1661) in office by his son, Kôprili-zâda Ahmed, a man of even greater ability, and under his guidance the central administration recovered its control over even the most distant provinces; a formidable war with Austria, though unsuccessful and marked by a severe defeat at St Gothard on the Raab (1664), was concluded by a peace advantageous to the Turks; Crete was finally subdued, and Podolia defended from the Poles; though these advantages were somewhat overshadowed by the crushing defeats administered at Choczim and Lemberg in 1673 and 1675 by John Sobieski (q.v.). The next vezir, Kara Mustafa, who was not a Köprili, relied too much upon the success of his predecessors. He invaded Austria at the head of 400,000 men in 1682, and, undeterred by the great Suleymân's discomfiture, had the audacity to lay siege to Vienna. But the second siege ended even more disastrously than the first. The grand vezir's army was totally routed by Duke Charles of Lorraine and John Sobieski, king of Poland. The Austrians followed up this victory by repossessing themselves of Hungary (1686), inflicting upon the Turks a bloody defeat at Mohácz, whilst Louis of Baden entered Bosnia, and the Venetians seized the opportunity to conquer the Peloponnesus and bombard the Acropolis of Athens. The fortunate appointment of a third Köprili, Mustafa, as grand vezir by Suleymân II. (1687-91), was the means of restoring to some extent the faded honour of the Turkish arms; but with his death (1691) fortune deserted the Turks. Meanwhile Sultans Ahmed II. (1691-95) and Mustafa II. (1695-1703) enjoyed their state in their palace on the Golden Horn. The latter indeed tried to emulate his warlike ancestors; but the Austrians under Prince Eugene effectually cooled his zeal at the disastrous battle of Zenta (1697). The treaties of Carlovitz (1699) and that of Passarowitz (1718) mark the end of Turkish rule in Hungary, Transylvania, and Podolia, and brought the frontier to very nearly the same line as it occupied before the treaty of Berlin in 1878.

Ahmed III. (1703-30) was noble enough to refuse to deliver up the refugee king Charles XII. of Sweden to the Russians after the battle of Pultowa, and the result was an invasion of Moldavia in 1711 by the Czar Peter, who, however, soon found himself in great straits, from which he was rescued by the genius and bribes of his queen, afterwards Catharine I. But for her, Peter and his army would have become Turkish prisoners. The recovery of the Morea by the vezir Damad 'Aly (1715) from the Venetians, and the loss of Belgrade and parts of Servia and Wallachia, recovered during the reign of Mahmûd I. (1730-54), and the commencement of a long war with Persia (see NADIR SHAH) were other events of Ahmed's reign. In 1736 the career of Russian aggression recommenced with the seizing of Azov and Oezakov; but a scheme for the partition of Turkey between Austria and Russia was foiled by the continued series of disgraceful defeats inflicted upon the Austrian armies by the Turks. The Russians, on the other hand, were uniformly successful; but the czarina, desirous of peace, resigned her conquests in Moldavia, and concluded a treaty at Belgrade (1739). Osmân III. (1754-57) soon gave place to Mustafa III. (1757-73), under whom the empire enjoyed profound tranquillity; but after his death the Russians, in violation of the treaty of Belgrade, invaded Moldavia. The war with Russia continued during the succeeding reign of Abdul-Hamîd I. (1773-89); the fortresses on the Danube fell; and the main army of the Turks was totally defeated at Shumla. The campaign was ended July 1774, by the celebrated treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji. In defiance of its provisions the czarina in 1783 took possession of the Crimea and the whole country eastward to the Caspian. The sultan was compelled, by his indignant subjects, to take up arms in 1787. In 1788 Austria made another foolish attempt to arrange with Russia a partition of Turkey; but, as before, the Austrian forces were completely routed. The Russians, however, with their usual success, had overrun the northern pro- vinces, taken all the principal fortresses, and captured or destroyed the Turkish fleet. The accession of Selîm III. (1789-1807) was inaugurated by renewed vigour in the prosecution of the war; but the Austrians had again joined the Russians. Belgrade surrendered to the Austrians, while the Russians took Bucharest, Bender, Akerman, and Ismail (see SÜVÖROFF); but the critical aspect of affairs in western Europe made it advisable for Russia to terminate the war, and a treaty of peace was accordingly signed at Yassy, 9th January 1792. By this treaty the provisions of that of Kainarji were confirmed; the Dniester was made the boundary line, the cession of the Crimea and the Kuban was confirmed, and Belgrade was restored to the sultan. Numberless reforms were now projected for the better administration of the empire. The people were, however, hardly prepared for so many changes, and the sultan's projects cost him his throne and life. The occupation of Egypt by the French brought on a war between them and the Turks, in which the latter, by the aid of the British, were successful in regaining their lost territories. After the ephemeral reign of Mustafa IV. (1807-8), the able and energetic Mahmûd II. (1808-39) ascended the throne; and though his dominions were curtailed by the loss of Greece, which established its independence in 1828, and of the country between the Dniester and the Pruth, which by the treaty of Bucharest in 1812 was surrendered to Russia, and in spite too of a disastrous war with Russia in 1827-28, the reformation he effected in all departments of the administration checked the decline of the empire. Egypt, during his reign, attempted unsuccessfully to throw off the authority of the sultan (see EGYPT, Vol. IV. p. 242). His son, Abdul-Mejîd (1839-61), continued the reforms commenced in the previous reign (see STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE); but the czar, thinking that the dissolution of the Ottoman empire was at hand, constantly tried to wring from the sultan some acknowledgment of a right of interference in the internal affairs of the country. It was an attempt of this sort to obtain the exclusive protectorate of the members of the Greek Church in Turkey, that brought on the Crimean War (q.v.) of 1853-55, in which the Turks were effectively supported by England, France, and Sardinia. The treaty of Paris (1856) restored to Turkey the command of both sides of the lower Danube, excluded the czar from his assumed protectorate over the Danubian principalities, and closed the Black Sea against all ships of war. The Porte, apparently adopted into the family of European nations, made proclamation in the Hatti-Humâyûn of 1856 of equal civil rights to all the races and creeds of the Turkish dominions. But a massacre of Christians in Lebanon and at Damascus provoked western intervention in 1860. Abdul-Mejîd, whose last years were disgraced by irrational profuseness of expenditure, was succeeded by his brother Abdul-Azîz (1861-75). Meanwhile the nominally subject peoples of Moldavia and Wallachia ventured to unite themselves into the one state of Roumania; and in 1866 the empire, becoming more and more enfeebled through its corrupt administration, had to look on while the Roumanians expelled their ruler, and, in the hope of securing western support, chose Prince Charles of Hohenzollern to be hereditary prince of the united principalities. The rebellion of Crete in 1866 threatened a severe blow to the integrity of the empire, but was ultimately suppressed in 1868, in spite of active help from Greece. Servia, already autonomous within her own frontiers, demanded the removal of the Turkish garrisons still maintained in certain Servian fortresses; and in 1867 Turkey saw herself compelled to make this concession. In the same year the sultan distinguished the pasha of Egypt by granting to him the unique title of Khedive (q.v.). The vassal king drew down the wrath of his suzerain in 1870 by negotiating directly with foreign courts, and was compelled to give formal tokens of vassalage. But later concessions have made the Khedive virtually independent of Turkey. The Russian government took the opportunity of war between Germany and France to declare, in 1871, that it felt itself no longer bound by that provision of the Paris treaty which forbade Russia to have a fleet in the Black Sea; and a London conference sanctioned this stroke of Russian diplomacy. Between 1854 and 1871 the Turkish debt had increased by more than £116,000,000; and in 1875 the Porte was driven to partial repudiation of its debts. An insurrection in Herzegovina in the later part of 1874 marked the beginning of a very eventful and critical period in the history of Turkey. The insurrection smouldered on through 1875 and part of 1876, and excited all the neighbouring Slavonic peoples. A threatened revolt in Bulgaria in May 1875 was repressed with much bloodshed; and the merciless cruelty displayed by the Bashibazouks or Turkish irregulars alienated foreign sympathy from the government. In May Abdul-Aziz was deposed; and his nephew, Murad V., son of Abdul-Mejid, who succeeded him, was destined in turn to make way for his brother, Abdul-Hamid II., in August of the same year. In June Servia declared war, and Montenegro followed her example. Before the end of the year the Servians were utterly defeated, in spite of the help of many Russian volunteers; but the state of affairs in the Turkish provinces seemed to call for a conference of the great powers at Constantinople. The proposals then made for the better government of the Christian subjects of Turkey were rejected by the Turkish authorities, who had, during the conference, taken the extraordinary step of bestowing a purely nominal parliamentary constitution on the Ottoman empire. Russia took upon herself to enforce on Turkey the suggestions of the conference, and on 24th April 1877 declared war. Both in Armenia and Bulgaria the opening of the campaign was favourable to Russian arms, but later the Turks rallied and seriously checked the triumphant progress of the invaders. Even after the Russian forces had been greatly augmented the Turks resisted energetically. Kars, besieged for several months, resisted till the middle of November; Erzerum did not surrender until after the armistice had been concluded. Osman Pasha, who established himself in Plevna early in July, repelled with brilliant success repeated and determined assaults from a besieging army of Russians and Roumanians until the 10th December, when he surrendered. Desperate fighting in the Shipka Pass had till then failed to expel the Russians from their position in the Balkans. The victorious Muscovites occupied Adrianople in January 1878; in March the 'preliminary treaty' of San Stefano was signed; in June the Congress at Berlin mediating between Russian and English interests sanctioned the changes noted at the beginning of this article. Troubles at Sasun in 1894 led to slaughter and atrocities on an appalling scale in various parts of Armenia throughout 1895 and part of 1896—by June 1896, 80,000 Armenians had perished. The intervention of the Powers had barely secured a tardy concession of some reforms by the sultan, when a rising in Crete (1895) began a new series of Turkish atrocities, and compelled the intervention of the Great Powers. When practical autonomy for Crete had been promised, the case was complicated by a Greek invasion of Crete, followed by a Greek irruption into Macedonia. But the

Greeks were disastrously defeated by the Turks, who occupied Thessaly, and could with difficulty be induced by the Powers to withdraw even on the promise of a large indemnity and a slight rectification of frontier in Thessaly. The European Powers, acting formally in concert, found it exceedingly difficult to secure harmony amongst themselves and overcome the obstructive tactics of the Porte alike in the Armenian, Cretan, and Greek negotiations. Russia declined to allow any one Power to interfere in Armenia, and Germany was hostile to Greek aspirations; but the 'Concert,' though hampered in action, nowhere left Turkey a free hand.

See Hammer-Purgstall's Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (1835); Creasy's History of the Ottoman Turks (1854); the present writer's Turkey (1888); also works on special periods by Finlay, Chesney, Moltke, Kinglake, Freeman, and the diplomatic papers of Gentz, Metternich, and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.

Literature.—Turkish poetry is closely modelled upon the Persian style with which the Ottomans became familiar during their association with the Seljuks (q.v.), who had become deeply imbued with Iranian ideas in their long residence among the Persians. Like the Seljuks, the Osmanlis assimilated the literature of the people they subdued. Firdausi and Nizami had already written their masterpieces before the name of Ottoman was heard, and at the time of their settlement in Asia Minor Sa'di and Jelal-ed-din Rumi were attracting the admiration of the eastern world. The latter was a resident at Iconium (Konya), the Seljuk capital, and his mystical verses or mesnevis impressed their character upon the whole literature of the new power then rising in Anatolia. Ottoman poetry is full of the subtle esoteric ideas which are characteristic of its Persian exemplars. Its long metrical romances, while apparently treating of the loves of Leyli and Mejnun, of Khusrav and Shirin, or of Joseph and Zuleykha, are really occupied with the deeper thoughts of the longing of the soul for God, the yearning of the heart for heavenly wisdom, the struggle between human passion and the endeavour towards divine serenity. The short odes or ghazels, the most characteristic of Ottoman poetic forms, 'though outwardly mere voluptuous songs, are in reality the outpourings of hearts drunken with the love of God.' Nor is the mystic spirit the sole gift of Persia to the Turkish poet. He has also borrowed the history and mythology of his predecessors, and, instead of the deeds of the old Turkish chiefs and the cult of the gods of the Caspian nomads, he celebrates the prowess of Persian heroes, of Rustem and Jemshid, Kay-Khusrev and Feridun, and the loves and tragedies of Leyli and Shirin and other Persian heroines. And the Ottoman poet followed the forms as well as the ideas of his Iranian masters, such as the kasida or Arabian lyric, adopted by the Persians, in which the second hemistichs rhyme throughout the whole length of the composition; the Persian mesnevi, or rhymed couplet; and the ghazel or sonnet of the East. In all these the Persian love of playing upon words, far-fetched conceits, and extreme elaboration of metaphor is not merely emulated but exaggerated to intolerable excess: the grace of expression and finish of the form alone redeem the artificiality of the style and thought. Turkish poetry, it must be admitted, is lamentably unreal: it lacks warmth, and earnestness, and sincerity. It is throughout essentially a court poetry, mannered and insincere. There is nothing robust or healthy about it. There is nothing strong or masculine in its love or its patriotism. Throughout we trace the effects of an artificial town life, where genius is cramped in convention, and poetic art is no longer an inspiration, but a cast from the face of the dead.

Ottoman poetry begins soon after the establishment of the Ottoman empire. Already in the beginning of the 15th century Ahmed Dâî's 'gay and flowing songs of love and wine' delighted the court of Prince Suleymân at Adrianople, and poems had been indited by Ghâzî Fâzîl, who had crossed the Hellespont on a raft with that prince on the night when the Osmânîs gained their first foothold in Europe. To write poetry soon became part of the accomplishments of kings and courtiers. Of the thirty-four sultans of Turkey twenty-one were poets of a sort, and Amurath the Great (Murâd II.), Mohammed the Conqueror, and Selim I. (the Grim) were accounted bards of repute. The unhappy Prince Jem was especially noted for his poetic talent; and from Murâd II. to Murâd IV. (1421-1623) twelve successive sultans left poems which have come down to us. Generals and ministers followed the imperial example. The grand vezîr Mahmûd Pasha (d. 1474), the conqueror of Negroponte, delighted in the composition of ghazels, and Kemâl Pasha Zâda (d. 1534), as he rode to the conquest of Egypt with the Sultan Selim the Grim, beguiled the way with recitations of the leading events of Egyptian history in choice Turkish verse. He was the author of the Nigârîstân, a poem modelled on the Gûlistân or 'Rose-Garden' of Sa'dî.

The greater poets of Turkey, however, were not high dignitaries, but sons of mechanics, cutlers, saddlers, shoemakers; few were of rank or wealth. Their numbers and their merits rise and fall as the tide of Turkish conquest flows and ebbs. It is ever in a period of strong national feeling that the poetry of a people is called forth; and it was in the golden prime of Sultan Suleymân, when the confines of the kingdom were at their broadest, when the name and fame of the Ottoman empire stood higher than ever before or since, that the opportunity of Turkish poetry arrived, and with it came the masters of the art. To the age of Suleymân and his predecessor Selim belong Mesîhî (d. 1512), Lâmiî (d. 1531), Ghazâlî (d. 1534), Fuzûlî (d. 1562), Fazlî (d. 1563), and Bâkî (d. 1600). The best Turkish poetry is chiefly included in this epoch, which partly corresponds in time with our Elizabethan era. Lâmiî's works, to which Von Hammer devoted 174 pages of his great History, include poems on old Persian romances, besides a multitude of ghazels and other short pieces. Fuzûlî, on the whole the greatest of Turkish poets, in spite of his provincial idiom, is best known by his Leylî and Mejnûn and his charming odes. Bâkî, the most famous of Turkish lyricists, was the friend of four successive sultans, filled some high offices of state, and received the unhesitating homage of all the poets of his day and the admiration of all succeeding generations. His famous elegy on Suleymân the Great is unsurpassed in Ottoman literature. The appreciation of nature which is shown in such poems as Mesîhî's 'Ode to Spring' and Bâkî's and Lâmiî's odes to 'Autumn,' and which is characteristic of their period, forms one of the best features of Turkish poetry. Their love-songs, on the other hand, are disappointingly stilted and artificial; and it is singular that, in spite of their military renown, the Turks have no martial poetry of the old time: there is hardly a respectable war-song in the whole range of mediaeval Ottoman literature.

The classical period of Ottoman poetry, which began with the 16th century, did not end with the glorious reign of Suleymân the Great (d. 1566). Nefî of Erzerûm (d. 1635), the most renowned of Turkish satirists, wrote in the time of Murâd IV.; Nabî (d. 1712) wrote thousands of couplets of a didactic tendency; and Nedîm (d. c. 1727), perhaps the most finished and certainly the most blithe of

Turkish singers, belongs to the time of Ahmed III. He was the last of the old classical school of Ottoman poets, though Sheyhkh Ghâlîb (d. 1795), the author of 'Beauty and Love' (Husn-u-Ashk), was little inferior to any of the older writers. During the past half century a notable change has come over Turkish poetry. It is as voluminous as ever, but it turns for inspiration to Paris instead of Shîrâz. Ghazels and kasîdas have given way to western forms; the very vocabulary has been modified; and a modern Ottoman poem would hardly be comprehensible to the older writers of the classical epoch. Wâsîf, who tried to write in colloquial Stambûlî Turkish, 'Izzet Molla,' Akîf Pasha, and the poetesses Fitnet and Leylâ were among the lights of the transition period; Shinâsî, Ekrem, and Hamîd Bey the dramatist have been the leaders of the European style, of which it is too early yet to express a general criticism. One of the modern school has to some extent wiped out the stigma, already mentioned, of the want of martial poetry among the Turks: Rif'at Bey has at last written an Ottoman war-song.

Turkish prose writers have been and are very numerous, though here again originality is lacking, and their activity has been chiefly displayed in translations from the Persian and Arabic. One of their earliest works is the well-known History of the Forty Vezîrs, a collection of old folk-stories, written in the first half of the 15th century, and now translated by E. J. W. Gibb. Sinân Pasha, however, the vezîr of Mohammed the Conqueror, was the first prose stylist of merit. Sa'd-ed-dîn, the historian, in spite of his elaborate style and alliteration, was a writer of conspicuous ability, and Na'îma, his successor, is as vigorous and direct as Sa'd-ed-dîn is circumlocutory and ornate. The Tâj-et-Tevârikh of the former goes down to 1520, and Na'îma's history covers the ground from 1591 to 1659. Evliya the traveller, and Hâjjî Khalîfa, an encyclopædic writer on history and bibliography, are among the best-known Turkish authors. Jevdet Pasha is the leading Turkish historian of the 19th century, and Kemâl Bey one of the most notable modern men of letters. Printing was begun in Turkey in 1728, and the products of the Turkish press in the present day are numerous and often valuable. Turkish prose as well as poetry has been revolutionised by the introduction of western ideas through the reforms of Mahmûd II.

The standard but not very satisfactory work on Turkish poetry is Von Hammer-Purgstall's Geschichte der Osmanischen Dichtkunst (Pesth, 1836). The best English works are Sir James W. Redhouse's History, System, and Varieties of Turkish Poetry (1878) and E. J. W. Gibb's Ottoman Poetry (1882). See also the latter's chapter on Ottoman literature in the present writer's Turkey ('Story of the Nations' series), and the article on Ottoman Poetry by the present writer in Macmillan's Magazine, January 1883. Redhouse and Wells have compiled the best Turkish dictionaries and grammars.