Mahmud II
Mahmud II was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1808 until his death in 1839. Often described as the "Peter the Great of Turkey", Mahmud instituted extensive administrative, military, and fiscal reforms. His disbandment of the conservative Janissary Corps removed a major obstacle to his and his successors' reforms in the Empire, creating the foundations of the subsequent Tanzimat era. Mahmud's reign was also marked by further Ottoman military defeats and loss of territory as a result of nationalist uprisings and European intervention.
Mahmud ascended the throne following an 1808 coup that deposed his half-brother Mustafa IV. Early in his reign, the Ottoman Empire ceded Bessarabia to Russia at the end of the 1806–1812 Russo-Turkish War. Greece waged a successful war of independence that started in 1821 with British, French and Russian support, and Mahmud was forced to recognize the independent Greek state in 1832. The Ottomans lost more territory to Russia after the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829, and Ottoman Algeria was conquered by France beginning in 1830.
The Empire's continued decline convinced Mahmud to resume the reforms that were halted before he came to power. In 1826, he orchestrated the Auspicious Incident, in which the Kapıkulu were forcibly abolished and many of its members executed, paving the way for the establishment of a modern Ottoman army and further military reforms. With this modern army, Sultan Mahmud initiated a campaign of recentralization in the empire that saw the submission of derebeys and ayans to central authority. He also made sweeping changes to the bureaucracy to reestablish royal authority and increase administrative efficiency. He oversaw a reorganisation of the Ottoman foreign office. In 1838, Mahmud established the Supreme Council of Judicial Ordinances, and the following year, he introduced a Council of Ministers. He died of tuberculosis later that year and was succeeded by his son Abdülmecid I, who would continue to implement his modernization efforts.
Early life
Mahmud II was born on 20 July 1785, in the month of Ramazan. He was the son of Abdul Hamid I and his Seventh consort Nakşidil Kadin. He was the youngest son of his father, and the second child of his mother, he had an elder brother, Şehzade Seyfullah Murad, two years older than him, and a younger sister, Saliha Sultan, one year younger than him, both dead in infancy. According to tradition, he was confined in the Kafes after the death of his father.He was a member of the Mevlevi Order.
Accession
In 1808, Mahmud II's predecessor and half-brother, Mustafa IV, ordered his execution along with his cousin, the deposed Sultan Selim III, to defuse any rebellion. Selim III was killed, but Mahmud was safely kept hidden by his mother and was placed on the throne after the rebels deposed Mustafa IV. The leader of this rebellion, Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, later became Mahmud II's vizier.There are many stories surrounding the circumstances of his attempted murder. A version by the 19th-century Ottoman historian Ahmed Cevdet Pasha gives the following account: one of his slaves, a Georgian girl named Cevri, gathered ashes when she heard the commotion in the palace surrounding the murder of Selim III. When the assassins approached the chambers of the Kafes where Mahmud was staying, she was able to keep them away for a while by throwing ashes into their faces, temporarily blinding them. This allowed Mahmud to escape through a window and climb onto the roof of the harem. He ran to the roof of the Third Court, where other pages saw him and helped him come down with pieces of clothes that were quickly tied together as a ladder. By this time, one of the leaders of the rebellion, Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, arrived with his armed men, and upon seeing the dead body of Selim III, proclaimed Mahmud the padishah. The slave girl Cevri Kalfa was awarded for her bravery and loyalty and appointed as haznedar usta, chief treasurer of the Imperial Harem, which was the second most important position in the hierarchy. A plain stone staircase at the Altınyol or "Golden Way" of the Ottoman Imperial Harem is called the Staircase of Cevri Kalfa, since the events happened around there and are associated with her.
Some of the Janissaries who brought Mahmud to power considered other candidates to put on the throne. Other candidates included Esma Sultan, the head of the Mevlevi Order in Konya, or a prince from the Giray dynasty of the former Crimean Khanate.
Reign overview
The vizier took the initiative in resuming reforms that had been terminated by the conservative coup d'état of 1807 that had brought Mustafa IV to power. However, he was killed during a rebellion in 1808, and Mahmud II temporarily abandoned the reforms. Mahmud II's later reformation efforts would be much more successful.Russo-Turkish War of 1806–12
After Mahmud II became sultan, Turkish border wars with the Russians continued. In 1810, the Russians surrounded the Silistre fortress for the second time. When Emperor Napoleon I of France declared war on Russia in 1811, Russian pressure on the Ottoman border diminished, a relief to Mahmud. By this time, Napoleon was about to embark on his invasion of Russia. He also invited the Ottomans to join his march on Russia. However, Napoleon, who had invaded all of Europe except the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire, could not be trusted and accepted as an ally; Mahmud rejected the offer. The Bucharest Agreement was reached with the Russians on 28 May 1812. According to the Treaty of Bucharest, the Ottoman Empire ceded the eastern half of Moldavia to Russia. However, it had committed to protecting that region. Russia became a new power in the lower Danube, and had an economically, diplomatically, and militarily profitable frontier. In Transcaucasia, the Ottoman Empire regained nearly all it had lost in the east: Poti, Anapa and Akhalkalaki. Russia retained Sukhum-Kale on the Abkhazian coast. In return, the Sultan accepted the Russian annexation of the Kingdom of Imereti in 1810. The treaty was approved by Emperor Alexander I of Russia on 11 June, some 13 days before Napoleon's invasion began. The Russian commanders were able to retrieve many of their soldiers from the Balkans and return them to the western areas of the empire before Napoleon's expected attack.The Wahhabi War
During the early years of Mahmud II's reign, his governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, successfully waged the Wahhabi war at his command. He reconquered Western Arabia and its holy cities of Medina and Mecca from the Emirate of Diriyah, which later became known as the First Saudi state.Diriyah's Emir Abdullah bin Saud Al Saud had barred Muslims from the Ottoman Empire from entering the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina; his followers also desecrated the tombs of Ali, Hassan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali. Emir Abdullah and two Wahhabi Imams were publicly beheaded for their crimes against holy cities and mosques in 1819 after they lost the war.
Greek War of Independence
His reign also marked the first breakaway from the Ottoman Empire, with Greece declaring independence following a rebellion that started in 1821. In the wake of continued unrest, he had ecumenical patriarch Gregory V executed on Easter 1821 for his inability to stem the uprising. During the Battle of Erzurum, part of the Ottoman–Persian War, Mahmud II's superior force was routed by Abbas Mirza, resulting in a Qajar Persian victory which got confirmed in the Treaties of Erzurum. Several years later, in 1827, the combined British, French and Russian navies defeated the Ottoman Navy at the Battle of Navarino; in the aftermath, the Ottoman Empire was forced to recognize Greece with the Treaty of Constantinople in July 1832. This event, together with the French conquest of Algeria, an Ottoman province in 1830, marked the beginning of the gradual break-up of the Ottoman Empire. Non-Turkish ethnic groups residing in the empire's territories, particularly in Europe, initiated their own independence movements.The Auspicious Incident
One of Mahmud II's most notable acts during his reign was the destruction of the Janissary corps in June 1826. He accomplished this with careful calculation using his recently reformed wing of the military intended to replace the Janissaries. When the Janissaries mounted a demonstration against Mahmud II's proposed military reforms, he had their barracks fired upon, effectively crushing the formerly elite Ottoman troops. He burned Belgrad Forest outside Istanbul to incinerate any remnants. This permitted the establishment of a European-style conscript army, recruited mainly from Turkish speakers from both Rumelia and Anatolia. Mahmud was also responsible for the subjugation of the Iraqi Mamluks by Ali Ridha Pasha in 1831. He ordered the execution of the renowned Albanian Ali Pasha of Yanina. Following the suppression of the Bosnian uprising, he sent his Grand Vizier to execute the Bosniak military commander Husein Gradaščević and dissolve the Bosnia Eyalet.Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29
Another Russo-Turkish War broke out during Mahmud II's reign and was fought without janissaries. Marshal von Diebitsch was armed "with the reputation of invincible success". He was to earn the name Sabalskanski. Bypassing the Shumla fortress, he forcibly marched his troops over the Balkans, appearing before Adrianople. Sultan Mahmud II maintained control of his forces, unfurled the Black Standard of Muhammad, and declared his intention of taking command of the army personally. Preparing to do so, he appeared, ill-advisedly, not on horseback but in a carriage. In the Divan, British and French ambassadors urged him to sue for peace.Government reforms
In 1839, just before his death, he began preparations for reform, which included introducing a Council of Ministers , and the Supreme Council of Judicial Ordinances . The Tanzimat marked the beginning of modernization in the Ottoman Empire and had immediate effects on social and legal aspects of life in the Empire, such as European style clothing, architecture, legislation, institutional organization, and land reform.He was also concerned for aspects of tradition. He made great efforts to revive the sport of archery. He ordered archery master Mustafa Kani to write a book about the history, construction, and use of Turkish bows, from which comes most of what is now known as Turkish archery.
Mahmud II died of tuberculosis in 1839. His funeral was attended by crowds of people who came to bid the Sultan farewell. His son Abdülmecid I succeeded him and announced an intention of general reorganization or Tanzimat with the Edict of Gülhane.