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Herr von Steuben,
The landscape, which initially excited me with its raw and naked beauty, is now nothing but a boring repetition of trees and mountains. I swear, it is only my young companion’s insatiable hunger for learning and the conversation that it provides that has kept me sane.
Otherwise I might have used my shaving razor to end my suffering already.
Sincerely,
Johannes Krieger
October 1, 1854
The landscape, which initially excited me with its raw and naked beauty, is now nothing but a boring repetition of trees and mountains. I swear, it is only my young companion’s insatiable hunger for learning and the conversation that it provides that has kept me sane.
Otherwise I might have used my shaving razor to end my suffering already.
Sincerely,
Johannes Krieger
October 1, 1854
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Part Twenty-nine
A Builder of Empires
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- Sultan Abdulrahman I
Part Twenty-nine
A Builder of Empires
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- Sultan Abdulrahman I
The rebellious peasants in the northern Crimea had been crushed in a swift campaign, but the effects of the widespread looting and banditry spreading from Poland would last for much longer. Sultan Bayezid II was thus forced to increase the garrisons in the region to cope with the threat to domestic peace. Unfortunately for the Sultan, this would be his last act as Padishah as he died suddenly in the early spring of 1514, leaving his eldest son Abdulrahman a Ottoman Empire recovering from a costly war and a series of explosive insurrections.
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'I was never my father’s favorite, for I took it upon myself to strengthen my mind as well
as my sword arm. Yet I loved him as a son should. And where he was a conqueror of lands,
I shall be a builder of empires the likes of which has never been seen.'
- Sultan Abdulrahman I, personal diaries
'I was never my father’s favorite, for I took it upon myself to strengthen my mind as well
as my sword arm. Yet I loved him as a son should. And where he was a conqueror of lands,
I shall be a builder of empires the likes of which has never been seen.'
- Sultan Abdulrahman I, personal diaries
Sultan Abdulrahman I was a product of a Turkish monarchy that was less a warlord of tribal horsemen and more akin to our western concepts of how the nobility raised their offspring. Young Abdul had been raised not only as a warrior by his personal guards but had gained a fine education in Constantinople, learning from trained scholars about Islamic law and the finer arts of diplomacy. His fascination with learning had been a sore point with his father, who was not inclined to learn the finer points of administering such a large empire. Preferring a sword in his hand to a book Bayezid had not refrained from ridiculing his son in private, even going so far as to consider passing the throne to Abdul’s younger brother.
Abdulrahman was one of the first of the Turkish sultan’s actively write and much of what we know about early life in the Ottoman Court comes from his diaries and letters. Possessing a sharp mind Abdul would often engage in debate with scholars in matters from engineering to medicine to theology, the latter of which would cause trouble with the priesthood later in his reign. Yet the new Sultan’s first test would not be a theoretical discussion with a learned man, but an invasion on the Empire’s eastern borders.
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Ak Koyunlu was a tribal nation to the east of Anatolia, created by the same breed of tough horsemen that had founded the Ottoman Empire centuries before. Their Sultan Muhammad III had forged close ties with the powerful Persian nation through marriage and saw an opportunity to the west as news of revolt spread. For him the rich lands of the Ottoman Turks were perfect room to expand into while Persia had its own designs on Iraq, which lay as a small buffer between the Ottomans and the Persians. The Ottoman state seemed to be at their weakest: still recovering from war, rebellion, and the sudden death of their old monarch. Scenting a perfect opportunity Muhammad III convinced his allies to go to war, seeing a chance to strike in nearby Iraq.
During the invasion of Mameluke territory Bayezid had declared Iraq a protected nation, marrying some of his relatives into the Iraqi royal family in the hope of pulling the Iraqi’s into an alliance to protect his flank from possible Persian aggression. As Persian soldiers crossed over the border in the spring of 1515 Abdul was presented with a true crisis only months after his father’s death, one that would need to be carefully managed if he were to survive as monarch. If he refused to aid Iraq he and his nation would seem like a frail and easy target, prompting further resistance to Ottoman growth. Even with a nation not fully recovered fully from war Abdulrahman could see that to stay neutral was to invite only more attention to Turkish weakness. With no other choice he ordered the levied troops to be raised for another campaign, hoping to finish the war before the Empire’s coffers ran empty and he was forced to return home.
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The most important and critical component of Abdulrahman’s plans were the Janissaries, who would not need the time to prepare for war like the bulk of his forces. These professional soldiers, while expensive to maintain during peace, proved to be well worth the costs when they scored a series of small victories in the Caucasus Mountains, taking a number of critical fortresses that guarded the few mountain passes open to larger armies. Holding these allowed him to slow his enemies progress until Turkish forces could be assembled.
The pace of the campaign was frantic in 16th century terms as Abdulrahman pushed his men hard, using long marches to bring his exhausted armies to the new front in record time. Needing to rebuild his forces quickly Abdulrahman relied less on volunteers and more on conscription to fill his ranks, often dragging men away from their farms at spear point. While this bred serious discontentment amongst the Arab populations, who were the primary source of recruits, it proved to be well worth a disgruntled farmer or two when Persian forces outside Mosul were eradicated by an Ottoman army much larger than what they had counted on, earning Abdul glory as a skilled and competent field commander.
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The War of 1515 was over almost as soon as it began. Ottoman armies were able to raise men faster than anyone in the Persian alliance had counted on, negating any numerical advantage the Persians had in the beginning stages of the war. And Sultan Abdulrahman I was able to demonstrate that the Ottoman Empire was still to be feared and respected, even when weakened from within. The Sultan had proved himself a worthy ruler and further solidified the Ottoman Empire's position as the most powerful state in the Muslim world.
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