Lala (Persian : لالا, Turkish : Lala, Azerbaijani : Lələ) was a Turkish and Persian title (of Persian origin) meaning tutor and statesman in the Ottoman and Safavid Empires. [1]
In Ottoman tradition, lalas were the experienced statesmen who were assigned as the tutors of young princes (Turkish : Şehzade). While still teenagers, the princes were sent to provinces (sanjak) as provincial governors (Turkish : sanjak bey ). They were accompanied by their lalas who trained them in statesmanship. The purpose of this practice was to prepare the princes for the future duties of regency. Later, when the prince was enthroned as the sultan, his lala was usually promoted to be a vizier. Up to the 13th sultan Mehmet III (the end of the 16th century), all sultans enjoyed a period of provincial governorship prior to their reign. However, 14th sultan Ahmed I (1603–1617), who was enthroned in his early teens without a period of provincial governorship, banned this practice. [2] This meant a decrease in the status of the lala. [3]
The practice of lala was even older than the Ottoman Empire. During the Seljuk Empire, the experienced statesmen accompanying the princes were called Atabeg or Atabey (a Turkic composite title meaning ancestor-lord). However, the Seljuk Empire was highly feudalistic, and atabeys frequently used their power for separatist policies whenever they felt a weakness in the central authority. (like Eldiguzids in Azerbaijan and Zengids) [4] The Ottoman Empire, on the other hand, was more centralist, and almost no lala tried to follow a separatist policy.
Name | Term (as grand vizier) | Tutee |
---|---|---|
Bayezid Pasha | 1413–1421 | Mehmed I |
Ibrahim Pasha | 1498–1499 | Bayezid II |
Lala Mustafa Pasha | 1580 | Selim II |
Lala Mehmed Pasha | 1595 | Mehmed III |
Sokolluzade Lala Mehmed Pasha (in the capital) | 1604–1606 | Ahmed I |
Abbas Mirza was the Qajar crown prince of Iran during the reign of his father Fath-Ali Shah Qajar. As governor of the vulnerable Azerbaijan province, he played a crucial part in the two wars against the Russian Empire, as well as the war of 1821–1823 against the Ottoman Empire. He is also recognized for leading Iran's first reform and modernization attempts with the help of his ministers Mirza Bozorg Qa'em-Maqam and Abol-Qasem Qa'em-Maqam.
Sultan is a position with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", derived from the verbal noun سلطة sulṭah, meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who claimed almost full sovereignty without claiming the overall caliphate, or to refer to a powerful governor of a province within the caliphate. The adjectival form of the word is "sultanic", and the state and territories ruled by a sultan, as well as his office, are referred to as a sultanate.
Shah is a royal title that was historically used by the leading figures of Iranian monarchies. It was also used by a variety of Persianate societies, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Kazakh Khanate, the Khanate of Bukhara, the Emirate of Bukhara, the Mughal Empire, the Bengal Sultanate, historical Afghan dynasties, and among Gurkhas. Rather than regarding himself as simply a king of the concurrent dynasty, each Iranian ruler regarded himself as the Shahanshah or Padishah in the sense of a continuation of the original Persian Empire.
Atabeg, Atabek, or Atabey is a hereditary title of nobility of Turkic origin, indicating a governor of a nation or province who was subordinate to a monarch and charged with raising the crown prince. The first instance of the title's use was with early Seljuk Turks who bestowed it on the Persian vizier Nizam al-Mulk. It was later used in the Kingdom of Georgia, first within the Armeno-Georgian family of Mkhargrdzeli as a military title and then within the house of Jaqeli as princes of Samtskhe.
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A sanjak was an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans also sometimes called the sanjak a liva from the name's calque in Arabic and Persian.
The administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire were administrative divisions of the state organisation of the Ottoman Empire. Outside this system were various types of vassal and tributary states.
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Topal Osman Pasha (1663–1733) was an Ottoman military officer and administrator. A capable man, he rose to the rank of beylerbey by the age of 24 and served as general against the Venetians and the Habsburg monarchy and as governor in several provinces. His career eventually brought his appointment to the position of Grand Vizier in 1731–32. After his dismissal, he was sent to a provincial governorship, but was soon recalled to lead the Ottoman troops in the Ottoman–Persian War of 1730–35. He succeeded in defeating Nader Shah and saving Baghdad in 1732, but clashed with Nader for a second time the next year and was decisively beaten in the Battle of Kirkuk (1733), in which he lost his life.
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Beylerbey was a high rank in the western Islamic world in the late Middle Ages and early modern period, from the Anatolian Seljuks and the Ilkhanids to Safavid Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Initially designating a commander-in-chief, it eventually came to be held by senior provincial governors. In Ottoman usage, where the rank survived the longest, it designated the governors-general of some of the largest and most important provinces, although in later centuries it became devalued into a mere honorific title. The title is originally Turkic and its equivalents in Arabic were amir al-umara, and in Persian, mir-i miran.
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The Seljuk Empire, or the GreatSeljuk Empire, was a high medieval, culturally Turco-Persian, Sunni Muslim empire, established and ruled by the Qïnïq branch of Oghuz Turks. The empire spanned a total area of 3.9 million square kilometres from Anatolia and the Levant in the west to the Hindu Kush in the east, and from Central Asia in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south, and it spanned the time period 1037–1308, though Seljuk rule beyond the Anatolian peninsula ended in 1194.
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The Kingdom of Kartli was a late medieval and early modern monarchy in eastern Georgia, centred on the province of Kartli, with its capital at Tbilisi. It emerged in the process of a tripartite division of the Kingdom of Georgia in 1478 and existed, with several brief intervals, until 1762 when Kartli and the neighbouring Georgian kingdom of Kakheti were merged through dynastic succession under the Kakhetian branch of the Bagrationi dynasty. Through much of this period, the kingdom was a vassal of the successive dynasties of Iran, and to a much shorter period Ottoman Empire, but enjoyed intermittent periods of greater independence, especially after 1747.
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