Ottoman Hungary

Ottoman Hungary(Hungarian:Török hódoltság, literally "the Turkish subjugation") encompassed the parts of theKingdom of Hungarywhich were under the rule of theOttoman Empirefrom theoccupation of Budain 1541 until theTreaty of Karlowitzin 1699. The territory was incorporated into the empire, under the nameMacaristan.For most of its duration, Ottoman Hungary coveredSouthern Transdanubiaand almost the entire region of theGreat Hungarian Plain.
During the period of Ottoman rule, Hungary was divided for administrative purposes intoEyalets(provinces), which were further divided intoSanjaks. Ownership of much of the land was distributed to Ottoman soldiers and officials with the remaining territory being retained by the Ottoman state. As a border territory, much of Ottoman Hungary was heavily fortified with troop garrisons. Remaining economically under-developed, it became a drain on Ottoman resources. During the centuries long three-way Hungarian–Habsburg–Ottoman wars the Hungarian population highly decimated.Although there was some immigration from other parts of the Empire and some conversions toIslam, the territory remained largelyChristian. The Ottomans were relatively religiously tolerant and this tolerance allowedProtestantismto gain traction, unlike in Royal Hungary where the Habsburgs repressed it. By the end of the 16th century, most of the population was Protestant, mainlyCalvinist.
In 1686,Budawas recaptured from the Ottomans, and in 1687, after theSecond Battle of Mohács, the Hungarian parliament recognized that the inheritance of theHungarian crownhad passed to the Habsburgs. The imperial armies pushed the Turks out of Hungary relatively quickly and occupied Transylvania as well. Following the defeat of the Ottomans in theGreat Turkish War, the Ottomans recognized the loss of the Ottoman Hungary by theTreaty of Karlowitzin 1699. The remaining Ottoman occupied territories (that encompassed the southern border regions of the Kingdom of Hungary),Temeşvar Eyalet,SyrmiaandBelgrade, were reconquered by the Habsburgs during theAustro-Turkish Warbetween 1716 and 1718, the cession of these regions was acknowledged by signing of theTreaty of Passarowitzin 1718.
Since 1360s Hungary confronted with the Ottoman Empire. The Kingdom of Hungary ledseveral crusades, campaignsand carried out several defence battles and sieges against the Ottomans. Hungary bore the brunt of theOttoman wars in Europeduring the 15th century and successfully halted the Ottoman advance. From 1490, after the death of KingMatthias of Hungary, the royal power declined in Hungary, theBlack Army of Hungarywas disbanded. In contrast, by the 16th century, the power of theOttoman Empirehad gradually increased, along with the territory they controlled in the Balkans. WhileKingdom of Hungarywas weakened by the peasants revolt led byGyörgy Dózsain 1514. Under the reign ofLouis II of Hungary(1516–1526), internal dissension divided the nobility.
In 1521, Hungary was invaded by SultanSuleiman the Magnificent, the border fortressBelgradeconsidered as the key and southern gate of the Kingdom of Hungary, after two previous sieges, the Ottomans captured this stronghold by theThird Siege of Belgrade. The Sultan launched an attack against the weakened kingdom, whose smaller army was defeated in 1526 at theBattle of Mohácsand KingLouis II of Hungarydied.
After the death of the Hungarian king, both the AustrianHabsburg familyand the Hungarian nobleZápolya familyclaimed the whole kingdom. KingJohn I of Hungaryruled theEastern Hungarian Kingdom, and the Habsburgs ruled the western part of Hungary. The Habsburgs tried several times to unite all Hungary under their rule, but the Ottoman Empire prevented that by supporting the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom. King John I died in 1540, the Habsburg forces besiegedBudathe Hungarian capital in 1541, Sultan Suleiman led a relief force and defeated the Habsburgs, the Ottomans captured the city by a trick during theSiege of Budaand the south central and central areas of the kingdom came under the authority of the Ottoman Empire, therefore Hungary was divided into three parts. The north-western rim of the Hungarian kingdom remained unconquered and recognised members of the House of Habsburg asKings of Hungary, giving it the name "Royal Hungary". The Eastern Hungarian Kingdom is the predecessor of thePrincipality of Transylvania, which was established by theTreaty of Speyerin 1570 and the Eastern Hungarian King became the firstPrince of Transylvania. The Principality of Transylvania was a semi-independent state, and a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, it continued to be part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the sense of public law,John Sigismund'spossessions belonged to theHoly Crown of Hungary, and was a symbol of the survival of Hungarian statehood. The boundary between the three territories thereupon became the frontline in theOttoman–Habsburg warsover the next 150 years.
Whereas a great many of the 17,000 and 19,000 Ottoman soldiers in service in the Ottoman fortresses in the territory of present-day Hungary wereOrthodoxandMuslimBalkan Slavs,Southern Slavs were also acting asakıncısand other light troops intended for pillaging in the territory of present-day Hungary.
In these times, the territory of present-day Hungary began to undergo changes due to the Ottoman occupation. Vast lands remained unpopulated and covered with woods. Flood plains became marshes. The life of the inhabitants on the Ottoman side was unsafe. Peasants fled to the woods and marshes, forming guerrilla bands, known as theHajdútroops. Eventually, the territory of present-day Hungary became a drain on the Ottoman Empire, swallowing much of its revenue into the maintenance of a long chain of border forts. However, some parts of the economy flourished. In the huge unpopulated areas, townships bred cattle that were herded to southGermanyand northern Italy - in some years they exported 500,000 head of cattle. Wine was traded to theCzech lands,AustriaandPoland.
The defeat of Ottoman forces led byGrand VizierKara Mustafa Pashaat theSecond Siege of Viennain 1683, at the hands of the combined armies ofPolandand theHoly Roman EmpireunderJohn III Sobieskiswung the balance of power in the region.Still, in 1686, Buda was recaptured by the Ottomans. In 1699, under the terms of theTreaty of Karlowitz, which ended theGreat Turkish War, the Ottomans ceded to Habsburgs much of the territory they had previously taken from the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. Following this treaty, the members of the Habsburg dynasty administered a much enlarged Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary (previously they controlled only area known as "Royal Hungary"; seeKingdom of Hungary (1526–1867)).
In the 1540s, the total of the four principal fortresses ofBuda(2,965),Pest(1,481),Székesfehérvár(2,978) andEsztergom(2,775) were 10,200 troops.
The number of Ottoman garrison troops stationed in Ottoman Hungary vary, but during the peak period in the mid-16th century it rose to between 20,000 and 22,000 men. As a force of occupation for a country the size of Hungary, even confined to central portions it was a rather low-profile military presence in much of the country and a relatively large proportion of it was concentrated in a few key fortresses.
In 1640 when the front remained relatively quiet, 8,000 Janissary supported by an undocumented number of local recruits was sufficient to garrison the whole of theEyalet of Budin.
The Hungarian Ottoman province covered about 91,250 km(35,230 sq mi).The territory was divided intoEyalets(provinces), which were further divided intoSanjaks, with the highest ranking Ottoman official being thePashaof Budin. At first, Ottoman-controlled territories in present-day Hungary were part of theBudin Eyalet. Later, new eyalets were formed:Temeşvar Eyalet, Zigetvar Eyalet,Kanije Eyalet,Eğri Eyalet, andVarat Eyalet. Administrative centers of Budin, Zigetvar, Kanije and Eğri eyalets were located in the territory of present-day Hungary, while Temeşvar and Varat eyalets that had their administrative centers in the territory of present-dayRomaniaalso included some parts of present-day Hungary. Pashas andSanjak-Beyswere responsible for administration, jurisdiction and defense. The Ottomans' only interest was to secure their hold on the territory.
TheSublime Porte(Ottoman rulers) became the sole landowner and managed about 20 percent of the land for its own benefit, apportioning the rest among soldiers and civil servants. The Ottoman landlords were interested mainly in squeezing as much wealth from the land as quickly as possible. Of major importance to the Sublime Porte was the collection of taxes. Taxation left little for the former landlords to collect; Most of the nobility and large numbers of burghers emigrated into the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary ("Royal Hungary") province.
After the final Ottoman conquest of Hungary in 1541, there were frequent border raids by Ottoman and Crimean-Tartar troops toward Christian border lands, during which civilian were killed or captured, marched away and sold in toslavery in the Ottoman Empireat the slave markets of Istanbul and Sarajevo.Between 1522 and 1717, Tatars, soldiers from the Crimean Khanate, often participated in the Ottoman campaigns in the Hungarian border zones, and during these campaigns the tatars often captured slaves in Hungary and Austria; the long way back to the Crimea did provide opportunity for prisoners to escape, but many were abducted to Crimea, where they were either ransomed (if they were rich), or (if they were poor) sold on theCrimean slave trade.
Wars, slave raids, and the emigration of nobles who lost their land caused a depopulation of the countryside. However, the Ottomans practiced relative religious tolerance and allowed the various ethnicities living within the empire significant autonomy in internal affairs. Towns maintained some self-government, and a prosperous middle class developed through artisanry and trade.
For more than 150 years, the territory of Hungary was a battleground between the forces of the great powers. The military conflict was constant during the entire period of the Ottoman rule. Hungary endured a great number of Ottoman military campaigns and sieges from 1521 to 1568, at the same time when Hungary had an ongoing struggle between its two kings (AustrianHabsburg familyand the Hungarian nobleZápolya family). From 1591, and between 1593 and 1606, during theLong Turkish War, there were armed conflicts involving large military forces. From 1660 and between 1663 and 1664, during theAustro-Turkish War, also between 1683 and 1699 duringHungary's War of Liberationfrom the Ottoman occupation, the opposing sides fielded armies of about 50,000 soldiers in every year.During the Ottoman rule, the relative calm periods were also not peaceful, the wars were ongoing at the borders. The raids were daily, primarily intended for tax collection and plundering, which caused significant damage in the Hungarian settlement areas: material destruction, population displacement, kidnapping and killing people. In the 17th century, the campaigns waged byPrincipality of Transylvaniacaused also similarly significant losses.
The decay of the southernmost counties of theKingdom of Hungaryhad started long before the Ottoman rule, the Ottomans had already invaded Hungary's southern parts between 1390 and 1400.
As a consequence of the 150 years of constant warfare between the Christian states and Ottomans, population growth was stunted, and the network of ethnic Hungarian medieval settlements, with their urbanized bourgeois inhabitants, perished. The ethnic composition of the territory that had been part of the medievalKingdom of Hungarywas fundamentally changed through deportations and massacres, so that the number of ethnic Hungarians in existence at the end of the Ottoman period was substantially diminished.
The Hungarian journey of Evliya Çelebi, a Turkish traveller in 1660–1664:
The economic decline ofBuda, the Hungarian capital at the time of the Ottoman conquest, was emblematic of its stagnated growth rate. The city's population was no larger in 1686 than it had been two centuries prior.The Ottomans allowed the Hungarian royal palace to fall into ruins.The Ottomans later transformed the palace into a gunpowder store and magazine,which caused its detonation during the siege in 1686. The Christian Hungarian population significantly shrank in the next decades, due to them fleeing to the Habsburg-ruledRoyal Hungary, especially by 1547 the number of the original Christian population of Buda was down to about a thousand, and by 1647 it had fallen to only about seventy.The number of Jewish and Gypsy immigrants became dominant during the Ottoman rule in Buda.
The Hungarian inhabitants of cities moved to other places when they felt threatened by the Ottoman military presence. Without exception, in the cities that became Ottoman administrative centers the Christian population decreased. The Hungarian population remained only in some cities, where the Ottoman garrisons were not installed.From the early 17th century, Serbian refugees were the ethnic majority in large parts of Ottoman-controlled Hungary. That area included territories between the great rivers Sava, Drava, and theDanube–Tisza Interfluve(the territory between the Danube and Tisza rivers).
According tomodern estimates, the proportion of Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin was around 75-80% at the end of the 15th century, and non-Hungarians were little more than 20 to 25% of the total population.The Hungarian population began to decrease at the time of theOttomanconquest.The decline of the Hungarians was due to the constant wars, Ottoman raids, famines, and plagues during the 150 years of Ottoman rule.The main zones of war were the territories inhabited by the Hungarians, so the death toll depleted them much faster than other nationalities.
The three parts of Hungary; theHabsburg Hungary, Ottoman Hungary andTransylvania, experienced only minor differences in population increase in the 17th century.
The South Slavic peoples (Serbs, Bosniaks) expanded northward in the wake of the Ottoman conquest, while the Hungarian population that survived the Ottoman conquest fled the area over the course of the 17th century. Throughout the 17th century, the newly settled Orthodox South Slavic population ensured the military garrisons, logistical support, and food supply of the Ottoman army in this region. Consequently, the Hungarians derisively referred to the region of Ottoman conquest as "Rascia" (Serbia) from that period onward.
According to data presented in the most authoritative studies, the collective population of all three regions grew from about 3.5 million inhabitants at the close of the 16th century to about 4 million by the close of the 17th century.This increase was before the immigration to Hungary from other parts of the Habsburg Empire.TheOttoman–Habsburg warsof the 17th century were fought intermittently and affected populations occupying a much narrower band of territory.Thus wartime dislocations in Hungary do not seem to have seriously affected mortality rates among the general civilian population.The breakdown of social order and other economic links between contiguous regions that is associated with prolonged warfare of the medieval pattern was largely absent in Ottoman warfare of the 17th century.The most severe destructions were experienced during the Hungarian time of troubles, when between 1604 and 1606 the worst effects of the controlled confrontation between Ottoman-Habsburg forces were magnified many times over by Hungary's descent into civil war during theBocskayrebellion.
Hungary's population in the late 16th century was in Ottoman Hungary 900,000, in Habsburg Hungary 1,800,000 and 'free' (Transylvania) Hungary 800,000, making a total of 3,500,000 inhabitants for the whole of Hungary.
The population growth in Ottoman Hungary during the 17th century was slight: from 900,000 to approximately 1,000,000 inhabitants, a rate similar to that experienced in Royal Hungary and Transylvania.
Despite the continuous warfare with the Habsburgs, several Muslim cultural centres sprang up in this far northern corner of the Empire. Examples ofOttoman architectureof the classical period, seen in the famous centres ofConstantinopleandEdirne, were also seen in the territory of present-day southern Hungary, where mosques, bridges, fountains, baths and schools were built. After the Habsburg reclamation, most of these works were destroyed and few survive to this day. The introduction ofTurkish baths, with the building of theRudas Baths, was the beginning of a long tradition in the territory of present-day Hungary. No less than 75hammams(steam baths) were built during the Ottoman age.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, there were at least fiveBektashiconvents or dervish lodges established across Hungary: two in Buda, one inEğri, another inSzékesfehérvár, and a fifth one in Lippa.In the 17th century, 165 elementary (mekteb) and 77 secondary and academic theological schools (medrese) were operating in 39 of the major towns of the region.The elementary schools taught writing, basic arithmetics, and the reading of theKoranand of the most important prayers.  Themedresescarried out secondary and academic training within the fields of Muslim religious sciences, church law andnatural sciences.Mostmedresesoperated in Budin (Buda), where there were twelve. In Peçuy (Pécs) there were five medreses,Eğrihad four.The most famousmedresein Ottoman-controlled territory of present-day Hungary was that of Budin (Buda), commissioned by theSokollu Mustafa Pashaduring his twelve years of governing (1566–1578).
In themosques, people not only prayed, but were taught to read and write, to read the Koran, and prayers. The sermons were the most effective form of political education.There were numerous elementary and secondary schools besides the mosques, and the monasteries of the Dervish orders also served as centers of culture and education.
The spread of culture was supported by the libraries. The mosque complex andtürbeofSokollu Mustafa Pashain Budin (Buda) was built by Ottoman chief architectMimar Sinanand contained a school and library offering Muslim religious sciences, literature, works on oratory, poetry, astronomy, music, architecture, and medical sciences.
The Ottomans practiced relative religious tolerance, and Christianity was not prohibited. Islam was not spread by force in the areas under the control of theOttoman Sultan,however, Arnold concludes by quoting a 17th-century author who stated:
The relative religious tolerance of the Ottomans enabledProtestantism in Hungary(such as theReformed Church in Hungary) to survive against the oppression of the Catholic Habsburg-ruled Hungarian domains.
There were approximately 80,000 Muslim settlers in the Ottoman-controlled territory ofpresent-day Hungary; being mainly administrators, soldiers, artisans, and merchants ofCrimean Tatarorigin. The religious life of the Muslims was supervised by themosquesthat were either newly built or transformed from older Christian churches. Payment for the servants of the mosques, as well as the maintenance of the churches, was the responsibility of the Ottoman state or charities.
Besides Sunni Islam, a number ofdervishcommunities also flourished including thebektashis, thehalvetis, and themevlevis. The famousGül Babamonastery of Budin (Buda), sheltering 60 dervishes, belonged to thebektasiorder. Situated close to thejanissariescamp, it was built byJahjapasazáde Mehmed Pasha, the thirdbegler bey(governor) of Budin.Gul Baba's tomb(türbe) is to this day the northernmost site of Islamic conquest.
Another famous monastery of its time was that of thehalvetidervishes. Built around 1576 next to the türbe of Sultan Süleyman I the Magnificent (1520–1566) in Sigetvar (Szigetvár), it soon became the religious and cultural centre of the area. A famouspriorof the zavije (monastery) was theBosnianŠejh Ali Dede. The monastery ofJakovali Hasan Pašain Peçuy (Pécs) was another famous location. Its most outstanding prior was Mevlevian dervishPeçevi Arifi Ahmed Dede, a Turk and native of Peçuy.
By the end of the sixteenth century, around 90% of the inhabitants of Ottoman Hungary were Protestant, most of them beingCalvinist.
Muslims settled in Baranya and the City Pécs in Ottoman Hungary. After theSiege of Pécswhen Habsburg take it back, some Muslims converted to the Catholic faith in the years 1686 -1713.