State organisation of the Ottoman Empire |
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Classic period |
Constitutional period |
The Ottoman Empire had a number of tributary and vassal states throughout its history. Its tributary states would regularly send tribute to the Ottoman Empire, which was understood by both states as also being a token of submission. In exchange for certain privileges, its vassal states were obligated to render support to the Ottoman Empire when called upon to do so. Some of its vassal states were also tributary states. These client states, many of which could be described by modern terms such as satellite states or puppet states, were usually on the periphery of the Ottoman Empire under suzerainty of the Sublime Porte, over which direct control was not established, for various reasons.
Ottomans first demanded only a small yearly tribute from vassal princes, as a token of their submission. They later demanded that a vassal prince's son should be held as hostage, that the prince should come to the Palace once a year and swear allegiance, and that he should send auxiliary troops on the sultan's campaigns. Vassal princes were required to treat the sultan's friends and enemies as their own. If the vassal failed in these duties, his lands would be declared as darülharb (lit. territory of war) open to the raids of the Ghazis. [1]
There were also secondary vassals such as the Nogai Horde and the Circassians who were (at least nominally) vassals of the khans of Crimea, or some Berbers and Arabs who paid tribute to the North African beylerbeyis, who were in turn Ottoman vassals themselves.
Eyalets, also known as beylerbeyliks or pashaliks, were the primary administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire.
The Crimean Khanate, self-defined as the Throne of Crimea and Desht-i Kipchak, and in old European historiography and geography known as Little Tartary, was a Crimean Tatar state existing from 1441–1783, the longest-lived of the Turkic khanates that succeeded the empire of the Golden Horde. Established by Hacı I Giray in 1441, it was regarded as the direct heir to the Golden Horde and to Desht-i-Kipchak.
Basarab IV cel Tânăr, also known as Țepeluș, son of Basarab II, and grandson of Dan II (1422-1431) was 4 times the voivode of the principality of Wallachia between 1474 and 1482: from Oct to Dec 1474, from Jan 1478 to June 1480, from Nov 1480 to before July 1481, and again from Aug 1481 to July 1482.
Suzerainty includes the rights and obligations of a person, state, or other polity which controls the foreign policy and relations of a tributary state but allows the tributary state internal autonomy. Where the subordinate party is called a vassal, vassal state, or tributary state, the dominant party is called a suzerain. The rights and obligations of a vassal are called vassalage, and the rights and obligations of a suzerain are called suzerainty.
The Battle of Valea Albă, also known as the Battle of Războieni or the Battle of Akdere, was an important event in the medieval history of Moldavia. It took place at Războieni, also known as Valea Albă, on 26 July 1476, between the Moldavian army of Stephen the Great and an invading Ottoman army which was commanded personally by Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror.
The Principality of Bulgaria was a vassal state under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. It was established by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.
The Principality of Bitlis, also known as the Bitlis Khanate, and the Bitlis Emirate (1182–1847), was a Persianate Kurdish principality centered at Bitlis. It originated from the Rojaki tribal confederation.
A khanate or khaganate is a type of historic polity ruled by a khan, khagan, khatun, or khanum. Khanates were typically nomadic Turkic, Tatar and Mongol societies located on the Eurasian Steppe, politically equivalent in status to kinship-based chiefdoms and feudal monarchies. Khanates and khaganates were organised tribally, where leaders gained power on the support and loyalty of their warrior subjects, gaining tribute from subordinates as realm funding. In comparison to a khanate, a khaganate, the realm of a khagan, was a large nomadic state maintaining subjugation over numerous smaller khanates. The title of khagan, translating as "Khan of the Khans", roughly corresponds in status to that of an emperor.
The foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire were characterized by competition with the Persian Empire to the east, Russia to the north, and Austria to the west. The control over European minorities began to collapse after 1800, with Greece being the first to break free, followed by Serbia. Egypt was lost in 1798–1805. In the early 20th century Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Bulgarian Declaration of Independence soon followed. The Ottomans lost nearly all their European territory in the First Balkan War (1912–1913). The Ottoman Empire allied itself with the Central Powers in the World War I, and was defeated. During the war, the British successfully mobilized Arab nationalism, and the Ottoman Empire thereby lost its Arab possessions, and itself soon collapsed in the early 1920s.
Serdar was a military rank in the Ottoman Empire and a noble rank in Montenegro and Serbia. Serdars often served on the borders of the Ottoman Empire. The term is often translated as 'commander' in English texts and comes from persian language.
The Peace of Busza also known as the Treaty of Jaruga was negotiated by Stanisław Żółkiewski of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Iskender Pasha of the Ottoman Empire in Busza near the Yaruha and Dniester rivers on 23 September 1617. Polish and Ottoman armies met, but decided to negotiate, instead of to fight. In this peace treaty Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth agreed to cede the Khotyn to the Ottomans and to stop its interference in Moldavia.
The territorial evolution of the Ottoman Empire spans seven centuries.
This article discusses the political divisions and vassals of the Mongol Empire. Through invasions and conquests the Mongols established a vast empire that included many political divisions, vassals and tributary states. It was the largest contiguous land empire in history. However, after the death of Möngke Khan, the Toluid Civil War and subsequent wars had led to the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire. By 1294, the empire had fractured into four autonomous khanates, including the Golden Horde in the northwest, the Chagatai Khanate in the middle, the Ilkhanate in the southwest, and the Yuan dynasty in the east based in modern-day Beijing, although the Yuan emperors held the nominal title of Khagan of the empire.
The Kurdish emirates, Kurdish chiefdoms or Kurdish principalities were several semi-independent entities which existed during the 16th to 19th centuries during the state of continuous warfare between the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran. The Kurdish principalities were almost always divided and entered into rivalries against each other. The demarcation of borders between the Safavid Shah Safi and the Ottoman caliph Sultan Murad IV in 1639 effectively divided Kurdistan between the two empires.
The Sultanate of Dahlak was a small medieval kingdom covering the Dahlak Archipelago and parts of the Eritrean coast. First attested in 1093, it quickly profited from its strategic trading location, gaining heavily from being near to Yemen as well as Egypt and India. After the mid 13th century Dahlak lost its trade monopoly and subsequently started to decline. Both the Ethiopian empire and Yemen tried to enforce their authority over the sultanate. It was eventually annexed by the Ottomans in 1557, who made it part of the Habesh Eyalet.
The Transformation of the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Era of Transformation, constitutes a period in the history of the Ottoman Empire from c. 1550 to c. 1700, spanning roughly from the end of the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent to the Treaty of Karlowitz at the conclusion of the War of the Holy League. This period was characterized by numerous dramatic political, social, and economic changes, which resulted in the empire shifting from an expansionist, patrimonial state into a bureaucratic empire based on an ideology of upholding justice and acting as the protector of Sunni Islam. These changes were in large part prompted by a series of political and economic crises in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, resulting from inflation, warfare, and political factionalism. Yet despite these crises the empire remained strong both politically and economically, and continued to adapt to the challenges of a changing world. The 17th century was once characterized as a period of decline for the Ottomans, but since the 1980s historians of the Ottoman Empire have increasingly rejected that characterization, identifying it instead as a period of crisis, adaptation, and transformation.
The Timurid conquests and invasions started in the seventh decade of the 14th century with Timur's control over Chagatai Khanate and ended at the start of the 15th century with the death of Timur. Due to the sheer scale of Timur's wars, and the fact that he was generally undefeated in battle, he has been regarded as one of the most successful military commanders of all time. These wars resulted in the supremacy of Timur over Central Asia, Persia, the Caucasus, the Levant, and parts of South Asia and Eastern Europe, and also the formation of the short-lived Timurid Empire.
Devlet III Giray was the Khan of the Crimean Khanate from 1716 to 1717. He died in 1717 somewhere in modern day Bulgaria after falling from his horse, having been removed from power by the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III earlier that year.