Chaper+19+Guided+Reading+Southwest+Asia+and+the+Indian+Ocean

Guided Reading: Chapter 19 “Southwest Asia and the Indian Ocean, 1500 – 1750”

Terms:
 * 1. slave soldiery** – had a long history in Islamic lands. The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria was built on this practice. Enslaving Christian prisoners was an Ottoman innovation.
 * 2. Janissaries** – The slave soldiers converted to Islam were “new troops,” called yeni cheri in Turkish and “Janissary” in English. It gave the Ottomans great military flexibility. They lived in barracks and trained all year round.
 * 3. devshirme** – (literally “selection”) A system for the selection for Janissary training. It imposed a regular levy of male children on Christian villages in the Balkans and occasionally elsewhere. Devshirme children were placed with Turkish families to learn their language before commencing military training. The best received education at the sultan’s palace in Istanbul, where they studied Islam and liberal arts in addition to military matters.
 * 4. askeri** – People who served in the military or the bureaucracy and conversed in Osmanli (language of the Ottomans) belonged to the askeri, or “military,” class, which made them exempt from taxes and dependent on the sultan for their well-being.
 * 5. raya** – The mass of the population, whether Muslims, Christians, or Jews, constituted the raya, literally “flock of sheep.”
 * 6. grand viziers** – the chief administrators to the sultan
 * 7. “Tulip Period”** – Period from 1718 and 1730 and named “Tulip Period” because of the craze for high-priced tulip bulbs that swept Ottoman ruling circles.
 * 8. harem** – “forbidden area” in Istanbul at the women’s quarters in their homes.
 * 9. “Hidden Imam”** – The twelfth descendant of Ali, who was the prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law. Shi’ites believe that leadership of Muslim community rests solely with divinely appointed Imams from Ali’s family.
 * 10. mansabs** – Grants of land given in return for service by rulers of the Mughal Empire. (ranks that entitled their holders to revenue assignments)
 * 11. Rajputs** – Members of a mainly Hindu warrior caste from northwest India. The Mughal emperors drew most of their Hindu officials from this caste, and Akbar I married a Rajput princess.
 * 12. “Divine Faith”** – Centered upon Akbar, it was a new faith incorporating Muslim, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Sikh, and Christian beliefs.
 * 13. Sikhism** – Indian religion founded by the guru Nanak (1469-1539) in the Punjab region of northwest India. After the Mughal emperor ordered the beheading of the ninth guru in 1675, Sikh warriors mounted armed resistance to Mughal rule.
 * 14. Guru** – spiritual teacher
 * 15. “peacock throne”** – The priceless, jewel-encrusted throne symbolizing Mughal grandeur that Nadir Shah carried off to Iran

Individuals / Peoples: Kingdoms / Empires:
 * 16. Sultan Mehmed II** – known as “the conqueror.” In 1453, he laid siege to Constantinople, using enormous cannon to bash in the city’s walls, dragging warships over a high hill from the Bosporus strait to the city’s inner harbor to avoid its sea defenses.
 * 17. Suleiman the Magnificent** – The son of Selim I and lived from 1520 to 1566. He was known to his subjects as Suleiman Kanuni, “the Lawgiver,” and he commanded the greatest Ottoman assault on Christian Europe. He seemed unstoppable as he conquered Belgrade in 1521, expelled the Knights of the Hospital of St. John front the island of Rhodes the following year, and laid siege to Vienna in 1529. Suleiman’s reign was seen as a golden age when the imperial system worked to perfection.
 * 18. Akbar** – Babur’s grandson who was a brilliant but mercurial man whose illiteracy betrayed his upbringing in the wilds of Afghanistan. He established the central administration of the expanding state. He granted land revenues to military officers and government officials in return for their service.
 * 19. Ottoman Empire** – most long-lived of the post-Mongol Muslim empires, encompassed most of southeastern Europe by late 15th century, and resembled the new centralized monarchies of France and Spain. **Empire grew because of three factors**: (1) the shrewdness of its founder Osman and his descendants, (2) control of a strategic link between Europe and Asia at Gallipoli on the Dardanelles strait, and (3) the creation of an army that took advantage of the traditional skills of the Turkish cavalryman and new military possibilities presented by gunpowder and Christian prisoners of war. The sultans sought to control the Mediterranean. They were willing to let other nations carry trade to and from their ports as long as the other nations acknowledged Ottoman authority. The army originally consisted of lightly armored mounted warriors skilled at shooting short bows made of compressed layers of bone, wood, and leather. Cosmopolitan in character. Inflation caused by a flood of cheap silver from the New World affected many landholders. The sultan later became like a hermit and this manner of living resulted from a gradually developed policy of keeping the sultan’s male relatives confined to the palace to prevent them from plotting coups or meddling in politics. 1650-1750, land grants in return for military service disappeared and tax farming arose in their place. Ottoman court records show that women established religious endowments for pious purposes. Wives could retain their property after marriage and it gave them a stake in the general economy and a degree of independence from their spouses. Women appeared in other types of court cases too.


 * 20. Safavid Empire** – (1502-1722) The empire of Iran resembled the Ottoman Empire: it initially used land grants to support its all-important cavalry; its population spoke several languages; it focused on land rather than sea power; and urban notables, nomadic chieftains, and religious scholars served as intermediaries between the people and the government. A boy of Kurdish, Iranian, and Greek ancestry named Ismail was the hereditary leader of a militant Sufi brotherhood called the “Safaviya.” In 1502, at age 16, Ismail proclaimed himself shah of Iran and also declared that his realm would practice Shi’ite Islam. Most members of the Safaviya spoke Turkish and belonged to nomadic groups known as qizilbash, or “redheads,” because of their distinctive turbans. The Iranian subject population and neighboring lands gave asylum to Sunni refugees that kept Ismail and his son Tahmasp engaged in many wars. Ismail wanted to create a distinct separation between Iran and its Sunni neighbors by wanting everyone to practice Shi’ite Islam. The divergence between the Arab zone and Persian zone intensified after 1258 when the Mongols destroyed Baghdad. Painted and molded tile mosaics, often in turquoise blue, became the standard exterior decoration of mosques in Iran. The mosques surrounding the royal plaza of Isfahan, Iran’s capital, featured brightly tiled domes rising to gentle peaks and unobtrusive minarets. High walls surrounded the sultan’s palace. Shah Abbas was called “the Great” because he focused Isfahan on the giant royal plaza used as an airy palace overlooking the plaza to receive dignitaries and review his troops. Women seldom appeared in public and were veiled. The norm for both sexes was complete coverage of arms, legs, and hair. The silk fabrics of northern Iran provided the mainstay of the Safavid Empire’s foreign trade and their deep-pile carpet made by knotting colored yarns around stretched warp threads were most successful. The shahs granted large sections of the country to the qizilbash nomads in return for mounted warriors for the army. In the late 16th century the inflation caused by cheap silver spread into Iran and the silk monopoly mismanagement led to decline of the empire. By 1722 the Afghans captured Isfahan and effectively ended Safavid rule. The Safavids never possessed a navy.


 * 21. Mughal Empire** – A land of Hindus ruled by a Muslim minority. Mughals had to contend to the Hindus’ long-standing resentment of the destruction of their culture. Mughals faced the challenge not just of conquering and organizing a large territorial state but also of finding a formula for Hindu-Muslim coexistence. Babur (1483- 1530) was the founder of the empire and he descended from Timur. Mughal means “Mongol” in Persian but the Timurids were of Turkic rather than Mongol origin. Babur defeated the last Muslim sultan of Delhi at the Battle of Panipat in 1526, marking the birth of a powerful state in India. With a population of 100 million, their thriving trade economy was based on cotton cloth and there was great prosperity in the 16th century. Akbar and his successors faced few external threats and experienced generally peaceful conditions. Mughals had no navy or merchant ships. The Europeans were seen less as enemies than as shipmasters who could help in trade. Akbar differed from Suleiman the Magnificent and Shah Abbas the Great because he strived for social harmony and jot just for more territory and revenue. Akbar married a Hindu Rajput princess and his wife gave birth to an heir so that the future rulers would have both Muslim and Hindu ancestry.

Places:
 * 22. Bosporus** – a part of Constantinople that Sultan Mehmed II conquered in 1953.
 * 23. Anatolia** – where the Ottoman Empire began as a tiny state built (northwestern). Much of southeastern Europe and Anatolia was under the control of the sultans by 1402. Anatolia experienced the worst of the rebellions and suffered greatly from emigration and loss of agricultural production.
 * 24. The Balkans** – Along with Greece, the Balkans were the Ottomans’ first main attack on Christian enemies. From their conquest, they had access to Christian prisoners of war induced to serve as military slaves. Had large numbers of converts but Islam became the major religion.
 * 25. Izmir** – Izmir transformed itself between 1580 and 1650 from a small Muslim Turkish town into a multiethnic, multireligious, multilinguistic entrepot because of the Ottoman government’s inability to control trade and the slowly growing dominance of European traders in the Indian Ocean. European traders at Izmir purchased local agricultural products – dried fruits, sesame seeds, nuts, and olive oil. Consequently, local farmers grew more cash crops including tobacco. Port of Izmir was known to Europeans by the ancient name “Smyrna.”
 * 26. Isfahan** – Became Iran’s capital in 1598 by decree of Shah Abbas I.
 * 27. Oman** – Arab state based in Musqat, the main port in the southwest region of the Arabian peninsula. Oman succeeded Portugal as a power in the western Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century.
 * 28. Batavia** – The new capital that was besieged by a fleet of fifty ships belonging to the sultan of Mataram, a Javanese kingdom. Fort established ca. 1619 as headquarters of Dutch East India Company operations in Indonesia

Wars / Battles:
 * 29. Battle of Kosovo** – A strong Serbian kingdom was conquered here by the Ottoman armies in 1389.
 * 30. Siege / Fall of Constantinople** – Brought on by Sultan Mehmed II and was commonly known as Istanbul. It brought over eleven hundred years of Byzantine rule to an end and made the Ottomans seem invincible.
 * 31. Siege of Vienna** – Brought on by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1529.
 * 32. Patrona Halil Rebellions -** Patrona Halil was an Albanian former seaman and stoker of the public baths. He led the conservative Janissary revolt.

Architecture:
 * 33. Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia)** – Inspired the design of Istanbul. The Byzantine cathedral converted to a mosque and renamed Aya Sofya after 1453.

Questions to Outline: 1. Name the areas that were included in the Ottoman Empire by 1566 (use map on page 488). 2. What were the three principle factors for the growth of the Ottoman Empire? 3. How did the Ottoman Empire pay the Janissaries, which led to a crisis from the period of 1585 to 1650? 4. Characterize the literature and the artistic innovations of the Safivid Empire. 5. Make a list of examples that characterize life in Istanbul. 6. Outline at least 6 examples of the way women were treated in the Ottoman and Safivid Empires. 7. How did Akbar try to reconcile the divisions of Muslims and Hindus in the Mughal Empire? 8. Develop a chart which shows the characteristics of Muslim interaction in: a. The East Indies b. East Africa - Bayazid I, “the Thunderbolt,” confronted Timur’s challenge from Central Asia and Timur captured Bayazid at the Battle of Ankara (1402). - In 1514, at the Battle of Chaldiran, Selim I, “the Inexorable,” ended a potential threat on his eastern frontier from the new and expansive realm of the Safavid shah in Iran. - Red Sea became the Ottomans’ southern frontier. - The law of Islam (the Shari’a) was interpreted by local ulama (religious scholars). - Madrasas = religious colleges - Persian, written in the Arabic script from 10th century on, emerged as the second language of Islam. Iranians preferred highly cursive forms of the Arabic script. - Persian poets Hafez and Sa’di raised morally instructive and mystical-allegorical verse to a peak of perfection. - The Turks preferred Persian and the Mamluks preferred Arabic. - Iranians, Arabs, Turks, and Muslims all had mosques. - Imam Husayn, Ali’s son and the third Imam. Shi’ite pilgrimage cities of Karbala and Najaf in Ottoman Iraq. - The harbor of Istanbul was the primary Ottoman seaport but Isfahan was far from the sea. - No wheeled vehicles in Isfahan. Both Istanbul and Isfahan favored walking from their size and layout and they both lacked open spaces. Both had narrow, irregular streets. - Eunuchs – castrated male servants - Isfahan had a prosperous Armenian quarter but was not truly cosmopolitan and Shah Abbas’ domain was on threatened frontier. In contrast, Istanbul was a great seaport and crossroads where people of all sorts lived or spent time. - Nadir Shah, a general who emerged from the confusion of the Safavid fall to reunify Iran briefly between 1736 and 1747, purchased some naval vessels from the English and used them in the Persian Gulf. - Mansabdars = officials holding land grants - Some Muslims deplored the representation of human beings in art. - Urdu = popular language in the Delhi region - The most heavily Muslim regions developed in the valley of the Indus River and in Bengal. - Aurangezeb was Akbar’s great-grandson and he reinstituted many restrictions on Hindus - “Moros” = Spanish term for “old enemies”
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