Ottoman as Turk, or Islam itself as Turk?
Osman I, founder of Ottoman Empire.
Islam was portrayed as a race. Strange but trueāthis is what modern European historians have recorded from the archives of classical scholars. This perception was especially common in early Ottoman history, from the First Interregnum to the conquest of Constantinople, followed by the Second (and very long) Interregnum, filled by the 80-year Stratocracy era until the Ottomansā second rise under Bayezid II and eventually, their fall.
The term Turk itself was rarely used in general Ottoman discourse. Instead, the term originated in Europe. As early as the 12th century, Italian statesādominant players in eastern Mediterranean tradeāreferred to Anatolia (then under the Seljuks of Rum) as Turchia. This label spread and evolved, eventually becoming widely used across Europe, especially during the rise and expansion of the Ottomans into Eastern Europe.
Zehir Zaganos and Tughril Mahmud
The Ottomans themselves were never founded on purely ethnic Turkish elementsānot even during the Stratocracy. A simple example: Tughril Mahmud and Zehir Zaganos. Zaganos Pasha, in fact, came from the exiled nobility of the Balt Rhain Empireāfrom family of Eugene Camus. As for Mahmud Pasha, long thought to be of original Turkish descent from the Tughril tribe, he, too, was not ethnically Turkish. His great-great-grandfather was a noble of the Byzantine aristocracy in central Thessaly: Alexios Angelos Philanthropenos.
(This explains his fair features and blond hair, which contrasted sharply with the typical Anatolian Turks.)
Interestingly, most peopleāincluding his adoptive father, Sehir Halilānever knew this truth. The first person to realize it was Kyros, when Mahmud frequently addressed him as Amca (Turkish for "uncle" or "cousin"). Curious, Kyros once asked why he was treated as if they were kin, and Mahmud replied:
āYou still havenāt realized your father is the great-grandson of the last emperor of the Palaiologos dynasty?ā
Kyros admitted he had no idea of his own lineage until that conversation. Itās important to note: the Angelos and Palaiologos families were both noble Byzantine bloodlinesāwith the Palaiologoi ruling in Constantinople and the Angeloi in Thessalyālong before the Stratocracy even existed.
There were more than just one or two pashas with non-Turkish backgrounds. Like Mahmud, Karaman Mehmed Pasha, whose name points to his origin, wasnāt Turkish either. He hailed from Persia and was rumored to be a direct descendant of the Sufi mystic Jalaluddin Rumi.
Radu Bey of Wallachia, Hass Murad Pasha, and Mesih Pasha, both were also descended from Greek nobility in Phoenicia.
Even prior to the Stratocracy eraāespecially during the formative years of the Ottoman Empireāelements of the Akıncı cavalry were not exclusively Turkish. For instance, Evrenos and Mihali were from Byzantine Nicea, converted to Islam, and went on to become founding beylik families of the early Ottoman Empire, their influence lasting even into the final years of the Stratocracy.
The term "Stratocracy Turkiye", frequently mentioned in this blog, is in fact a modern labelāyet it was not recognized in the archives of the Ottoman Porte. The debate among scholars is not centered on the term Stratocracy itself (as first coined by Sir Robert Filmer), but rather on the word "Turkiye" within that label.
The archives in Istanbul refer to this era not as Turkiye, but rather as the Pashalik (or Pashaluk in English, PaÅalıÄı in Ottoman Turkish), meaning āthe realm of the Pashas,ā governed through a system of 13 ministers or viziers. However, this term mainly appeared in official documents. In colloquial speech, various other labels were used.
For example, in his debate with the divan pashas, Zaganos Pasha referred to the Stratocracy simply as the Asker or KuruluÅ Ć¼lkesi ("the military country" or "the founding realm"). Mahmud Pasha did not use any specific term for the eraāhe merely called it the Devlet ("state"). Sehir Halil referred to it as the Kolordu, a term implying a military state system divided into corps or brigades.
This diversity in naming conventions not only puzzled modern Turkish historians, but even contemporary classical chroniclers were often frustrated by the lack of identity. One of them, ÅĆ¼krullah Ćelebi, derided this Ottoman interregnum as "a state without identity."
The modern term āTurkiyeā used to refer to this era was first coined by Edward Gibbon, later echoed by Caroline Finkel, and subsequently adopted by GĆ”bor Ćgoston in his book The Last Conquest. However, in Ćgostonās caseāas someone who conducted in-depth archival research in Istanbul's military and state recordsāhe explicitly stated his discomfort with this terminology, because he could not find a single reference to the word āTurkā in his findings.
Ćgoston did not outright accuse Gibbon of being incorrect, but rather pointed out that Gibbon likely had his own rationale. Gibbon studied Ottoman history through a Eurocentric lens, which mirrored the European habit at the time of labeling the Ottomans and their regimesāincluding the Stratocracyāas Turks.
This perspective is also emphasized by Bernard Heykel in his book Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkani, where he explains how the popular European label Turchia stemmed from an emotional, often hostile association, used to identify their enemies. Sometimes, even religious conversion was perceived as a transformation: those who embraced the faith of Muhammad became "Turks."
Interestingly, this wasnāt unique to the Ottomans. Heykel notes that this baseless emotional projection was repeated often in how Europe viewed any Islamic dynasty.
Before the Ottomans, Spanish Muslims were called Mooriscos or Moors.
North African and Arab Muslims were labeled Saracensāan umbrella term rooted more in emotion than in accuracy.
Nevertheless, the term āTurkā did not always carry negative connotations for the Ottomans. In some contexts, it served to define the Ottomans themselves, rather than diminish them.
This perspective emerged among contemporary Arab Muslim historians and rulers who lived during the time of the Ottomans. Among them were: Ibn į¹¬Å«lÅ«n, Abdulaziz ibn Hisham of Jeddah, and Imam al-Qasimi, the Zaydi ruler of Yemen.
However, the sentiment of associating Islam as a race has persistedāeven to this day. In the Balkans, particularly in Greece and Serbia, where anti-Turkish sentiment remains strong, many locals continue to accuse Muslim converts in their communities of changing their nationality, echoing the same fanatical mindset of medieval Europe.
Dr. Stef Keris, a Greek convert to Islam, once lamented facing similar accusations: when he embraced Islam, people around him claimed he had ābecome a Turk.ā
Ironically, this kind of standard is never applied to Christianity. As noted by Virginia A. Aksan, in an interview with Slavic-speaking villagers in Ohri who were observing the ruins of a Byzantine site:
When asked whether they knew who had built the ruins, they replied: āThe free menāour ancestors.ā
The interviewer followed up: āWere they Serbs, Bulgarians, Latin, Greeks, or Turks?ā
The boys responded: āNo, they were not Turks; they were Christians.ā
Ā¹ GĆ”bor Ćgoston, Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, s.v. āTurk,ā p. 350.
Ā² Bernard Heykel, Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkani, p. 61.
Ā³ Virginia H. Aksan, Ottoman Empire Besieged, p. 23.
ā“ Porte Archives: Codex on Perceptions, Vol. II, fol. 23/a.
āµ RisĆ¢let-i Maįø„mĆ»d Pasha fĆ® įø¤ayĆ¢tĆ¼ād-Dewlet, fol. 118/b.
