Military Service and Material Gain on the Ottoman–Hapsburg Frontier

Just over a century ago, Frederick Jackson Turner presented his famous Frontier Thesis, which continues to be one of the most debated and controversial theories in historical scholarship and has affected all discussions of frontier history worldwide. This chapter explores one aspect of Turner's work that may be applicable to other frontiers — that of the frontier as a zone of economic opportunity. It discusses how military service on the seventeenth-century Ottoman-Hapsburg frontier presented a number of chances for economic advancement to men who were willing to take the risks of living and working along the border. Moving to the frontier offered economic opportunities not found in the interior. In North America, a large part of the opportunity was the potential to acquire land. It is possible that in some cases there was similar opportunity along the seventeenth-century Ottoman-Hapsburg frontier.

War without Frontiers: The Archaeology of the Arab Revolt, 1916–18

The Arab Revolt of 1916–18 played a significant part in the military collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. This chapter argues that archaeological evidence indicates that the revolt's importance was probably substantially greater than has sometimes been acknowledged. The evidence demonstrates the need for a critical re-evaluation of the issue in southern Jordan. The archaeological investigation of sites associated with the Arab Revolt in southern Jordan offers dramatic insights into the material consequences for the Ottoman army of combating the guerrilla tactics of British-backed Arab guerrillas. The aim of the discussion is twofold: to give more precision to the military assessment of the Arab Revolt in the area between Ma'an and Wadi Rutm, and to demonstrate the potential of the new and multidisciplinary sub-discipline of twentieth-century ‘conflict archaeology’.

Between Hinterland and Frontier: Ottoman Vidin, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

This chapter examines how the frontier and the changing fate of the region influenced the military system as well as the provincial administration and agrarian regime. It focuses on Vidin in the period of the wars which made it a frontier outpost again, being either directly occupied (by the Holy League) or under immediate threat (in 1715–18). As in many other frontier areas, military activity affected relations between Muslims and Christians in the province and the town of Vidin. This chapter contributes to a better understanding of the complex impact of the wars during the expansion and contraction of the Ottoman state. The discussion is based mainly on documents from the series of kadi sicils, the records of the sharia court in the town, preserved from the last years of the seventeenth century onwards and kept in the Sofia National Library.

The Frontier as a Measure of Modern Power: Local Limits to Empire in Yemen, 1872–1914

The negotiations with the Ottomans over how exactly to define the boundary separating each party's domain were largely confused by a completely different set of criteria. The Ottomans constantly argued that the areas they claimed (large areas of which the British contended existed within Dali territory) had historically and thus always formed part of the Ottoman territory. They installed troops in the areas in dispute and actually started to collect taxes, in part thanks to Muqbil's aggressive alliance-building. The longer this physical presence was maintained, the more difficult it was for the British to argue that these areas were actually Dali. It was largely the growing insurgency in Ottoman Yemen, in some respects a product of British machinations, that ultimately led to the 1903 capitulation by the Ottoman authorities to British demands for formal control of the Dali plateau.

Ottoman Attempts to Control the Adriatic Frontier in the Napoleonic Wars

This chapter attempts to analyse the shift in the Adriatic policy of the Ottoman Empire in the Napoleonic period. The focus is on the formation of the Republic of the Seven United Islands — the Ionian islands of Corfu, Paxos, Leucada, Cephalonia, Ithaca, Zante and Cythera — through active Ottoman and Russian intervention. Ottoman-Russian quarrels over the status of the Republic as well as the conflict between imperial realities versus local interests are integral to the understanding of the delicacies of running the Adriatic frontier in the Napoleonic period. When the Russo-Ottoman alliance shattered and the Ionian Islands were abandoned to the French together with the four coastal towns, the Ottomans once again resorted to the good old policy of cautious diplomacy; that is to say, the provisioning of the occupying force in Corfu.

Understanding Archaeology and Architecture through Archival Records: The Restoration Project of the Ottoman Fortress of Seddülbahir on the Gallipoli Peninsula of Turkey

The Ottoman fortress of Seddülbahir on the European shores of the Dardanelles and Kumkale, its sister fortress on the opposite side of the Straits, were both built in 1658 by Hadice Turhan Sultan, the queen mother or valide sultan of Sultan Mehmed IV. The Seddülbahir restoration project illustrates that the type of information that can be extracted from the Ottoman building and repair records is invaluable for guiding decisions concerning potential excavation sites. Along with the non-invasive techniques that are increasingly a part of pre-excavation archaeological planning, a thorough investigation of the extant physical remains, and the visual records provided in engravings and other representational sources, an examination of the building and repair records in the Ottoman archives should be standard methodological practice for any Ottoman era archaeological or restoration project.

Introduction: The Ottoman Empire and its Frontiers

Stretching across Europe, Asia and Africa for half a millennium bridging the end of the Middle Ages and the early twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire was one of the major forces that forged the modern world. The chapters in this book focus on four key themes: frontier fortifications, the administration of the frontier, frontier society and relations between rulers and ruled, and the economy of the frontier. Through snapshots of aspects of Ottoman frontier policies in such diverse times and places as fifteenth-century Anatolia, seventeenth-century Hungary, nineteenth-century Iraq or twentieth-century Jordan, the book provides a richer picture than hitherto available of how this complex empire coped with the challenge of administering and defending disparate territories in an age of comparatively primitive communications. By way of introduction, this chapter seeks to provide an overview of these four themes in the history of Ottoman frontiers.

Afterword

This chapter comments on the Ottoman frontier, historical archaeology, Ottoman archaeology, and suggests future developments in these studies. The history of the frontiers of the Ottoman world played out in significantly different ways at each point along their great distance. Geographical and climatic circumstance and human conditions conspired to produce uniqueness. Meanwhile, the fortuitous degree of overlap between archaeological and historical data at Anavarin encourages people to search for a better understanding of the matters dealt with here. Each of the projects documented is this volume is tied to a specific geographic location. This simple fact opens up opportunities for virtual representation of historical and archaeological findings using GIS (Geographical Information Systems) software. GIS provides a means of digitally storing and analysing large amounts of data relating to defined locations.

The Krajina Project: Exploring the Ottoman–Hapsburg Borderland

This chapter summarises the results of the Krajina Project, which was established in 1998 to investigate the archaeological remains, material culture and continuing ethnographic legacy of this distinctive late medieval/early modern frontier society. The project has focused on an area in the north-west corner of Bosnia-Herzegovina, between Kladuŝa and Bihać, known as the Bihaćka Krajina. This was one of the last districts in the region to be conquered by the Ottoman state, not falling to the sultan's forces until the late sixteenth century — a territorial high water mark. The ethnographic evidence provides significant insights into the continuing legacy of the Ottoman-Hapsburg frontier in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Razing Gevele and Fortifying Konya: The Beginning of the Ottoman Conquest of the Karamanid Principality in South-Central Anatolia, 1468

This chapter examines the initial Ottoman campaign of conquest of the Karamanid principality with the assault on Gevele, a mountain fortress lying 11 kilometres to the west of Konya, and the seizure of Konya in 1468. It also looks at the establishment of administrative and military control of the fertile agricultural plains as well as over the rich steppe grasslands of the region's northern highlands by the Ottomans on the eve of their conquest of the Karamanid principality in order to reveal an important factor in the conquest of Karaman: Ottoman political involvement in Karamanid internal affairs before the conquest. By interfering in Karaman succession politics, the Ottomans laid the political groundwork by which they were able to establish an administrative and military presence in the hinterland of the more vulnerable stretches of Karamanid territory prior to the Ottoman military conquest.