The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It - Course Information

114 ~ THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE WORLD AROUND IT ~
information is often limited to occasional references in the Ottoman Registers of
Important Affairs. 82 In addition, tax registers of the type well known from the
Ottoman central provinces were put together in certain places, often apparently
for the first time, towards the end of the sixteenth century. 83 Their reliability,
however, is difficult to determine in the absence of continuous series within
which individual registers can be securely ‘placed’ and evaluated. Much of what
is known about eastern Anatolia beyond those cities directly controlled by the
central government, such as Mardin or Van, thus dates only from the nineteenth
century. 84
~ Legitimacy through victory, de-legitimization through wars on the
sultan’s territories
It is perhaps unnecessary to review once again the many references to the Ottoman
sultans of the sixteenth and later centuries as warriors for Sunni Islam
(gazis) against both Christian ‘unbelievers’ and Shi’ite ‘heretics’, and to the
legitimacy these rulers derived from successful wars. However, it is of interest to
note how, in the frontier territories, the legitimacy of Ottoman rule could be
enhanced by border warfare. In Bosnia for instance, the rugged terrain severely
limited the possibilities of making a living from the land, and many young men
were forced to migrate; as we have noted, quite a few of the Ottoman troops
deployed in Hungary were of Bosnian extraction.
As long as war with the Habsburgs continued, these mountaineers could thus
be integrated into the framework of the Ottoman state as doughty warriors, even
though a representative of Istanbul’s high culture such as Mustafa Âlî might note
with chagrin that it was not possible to enforce the ground rules of the Ottoman
state (kanun-ı osmani) in such remote border territory. 85 Moreover, even if the
nationalist historiography of the nineteenth, twentieth and – regrettably – twentyfirst
centuries has tended to exaggerate the ‘special status’ of Bosnia, it still
remains true that border warfare and the concession of an often far-reaching de
facto autonomy provided a ‘place’ for Bosnians within the imperial system. In
the second half of the sixteenth century, the Bosnian recruits drafted into the
Ottoman administration, sometimes allied with and sometimes in opposition to
their Albanian counterparts, managed to form one of the dominant factions
among the sultan’s servitors who vied for high office in Istanbul. 86 Beyond such
opportunities for advancement at the Ottoman centre, march warfare against the
Habsburgs offered the province of Bosnia a political status that it would not
otherwise have possessed. Thus, when Mustafa Âlî decided that he would
weather out a semi-disgrace as the holder of a tax assignment in this province, he
could console himself with the reflection that now he had come close to the wellspring
of Ottoman martial virtue. For, stationed in Banyaluka and elsewhere, he
was at ‘the source of the trusty warriors for the faith of [all] the climes’. 87 Thus