THE HISTORY OF JIHAD IN THE BALKANS…SEE NOTE PLEASE
http://www.historyofjihad.org/serbia.html?syf=contact
The Saga of Serbs’ Struggle against the Ottoman Jihad
THIS IS LONG AND DETAILED BUT CLINTON, ALBRIGHT, HOLBROOKE AND MARGARET THATCHER WERE DEAD WRONG IN THE BALKANS. MILOSEVIC WAS A THUG WHOSE CONSTITUENTS DEMANDED HIS REMOVAL…BUT THE UNPRECEDENTED BOMBING OF SERBIA AND THE DAYTON ACCORD WERE A RED CARPET FOR INDEPENDENT KOSOVO AND THE RETURN OF A CALIPHATE IN THE BALKANS…..RSK
Today Serbia, Bosnia and Albania are different nations. Kosovo and later perhaps Montenegro would also become different nations. But there was a time when all these people were one nation. There were differences of language among them, but they were bound by one faith – that of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
A cataclysmic event in the fourteenth century was seared into their memory during which all of them paid the price of preserving their national and cultural identity with blood and death. While some survived to retain their original Eastern Orthodox Christian character, some nations were not so fortunate. Centuries of oppression by the Ottoman Turkish Jihadis made them sterile to their ancient history and has changed their character today. While today the Kosovars, Albanians and Bosnian Muslims remain European in their appearance and in some aspects of their culture, they have become Islamized to practice and propagate the faith of their erstwhile tormentors.
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A Serbian maiden gives water to thirsting knights on the battlefield of Kosovo Polje.
In Serbian “Kosovo Polje” means a “Blackbirds’ Field’. But this Blackbirds’ Field is also a field of death. And a shrine for Serbian patriots who sacrificed their lives in defense of their country, their culture and their freedom.
June 28, 1389, a mighty battle was fought at Kosovo Polje. It pitted the Serbian defenders against the invading Ottoman Empire (Turkey) adherents of the Muslim crescent moon.
Medieval Europe was fretting and hoping that the Serbs’ would prevail over the Islamic crescent moon. At one point, the bells of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris rang out in premature and erroneous salute to the Serbs’ victory.
But it was not to be. The Serbs were defeated. One of them, however, Milos Obilic, managed to cut the gut of the invading Turkish Ottoman Emperor, Murat, with his sword, killing him, before being cut to pieces himself by the Sultan’s guards.
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Islam has cleaved a split in the cultural character of the Balkan nations
The four centuries of Ottoman tyranny has left a split in the cultural character of the Balkan nations, a split along which there are bloody lines of civil and military strife among the people, all of whom bore the brunt of Muslim tyranny. But some of whom have forgotten that tyranny, by shifting their loyalty to their tormentors, and today carry forward the banner of those tormentors, while fighting against those of their compatriots, who have preserved an unbroken link with their original culture, religion and nationality.
The same situation prevails in the Indian subcontinent where there is perpetual conflict between Hindus and Muslims within India and the conflict between India and Pakistan whose population is made up of Muslims who were formerly Hindus and embraced Islam as a result of the tyranny of Muslim rulers who had occupied the country for eight hundred years.
In India as in the Balkans, the period of Muslim occupation and tyranny was marked by long drawn wars, and national struggles and the people finally threw off the Muslim yoke, but in this process spread over many centuries, many of the countrymen were forced by cruel circumstances of Muslim oppression as Dhimmis (Zimmis) to give up their ancestral faith, culture and nationality and go over to the invaders by embracing Islam and saving their life, limb and the honor of their womenfolk from the evil intentions of those schizophrenic savages – the Muslims.
The irony is that these converts in Albania, Kosovo Bosnia or Kashmir and Pakistan have totally forgotten who they originally were and under what circumstances their ancestors were forced to embrace that vile creed of Islam through a war imposed on them by the Jihadis.
Origins of the Ottoman threat to Europe
In the early 1360s the Ottoman armies for the first time invaded Europe by through Thrace and after a battle at a place named Gallipoli they captured Adrianople (Edirne) and Philippopolis (Plovdiv), forcing the Byzantines to pay tribute.
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For 600 years the battle of Kosovo Polje, the Blackbirds’ Field, has been seared into the hearts and minds of all Serbs who are conscious of their history. Kosovo Polje to a Serb is like Jerusalem, Alamo, Bastogne, and Siege of Leningrad (St. Petersbrurg) – combined.
On June 28, 1989, the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, over a million Serbs, 10% of the nation, made a pilgrimage to this sacred ground to pay their respects to the Kosovo heroes.
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In 1366 the count Amadeus VI of Savoy (cousin to John V Cantacuzenus, the Byzantine emperor) initiated a minor crusade to aid the Byzantines. The count drove away the Turks from all of Europe except Gallipoli. The very next year the Ottoman chieftain Murad attacked anew and regained most of Thrace, including Adrianople.
In 1383 Murad declared himself sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Shortly thereafter he again began a new campaign in Europe. Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, fell in 1385 and the city of Nicopolis the year after. The Ottoman Conquest was halted briefly in 1387 when the Serbs won the battle of Plocnik by delivering a crushing defeat on the Ottomans. But two years later Murad marched anew into the west.
The Battle of Kosovo Polje – Turkish deception takes the victory away
During the early 1370s Murad launched his forces deeper into Europe. At the river Maritsa they encountered a 70,000 man strong Serbian-Bulgarian army under the Serbian king Vukasin and Prince Lazar at the battlefield of Kosovo Polje. The ottoman army was smaller, but due to tactics of subterfuge like attacking before dawn, and poisoning the horses of the Serb-Bulgars they defeated the Serb-Bulgar army and king Vukasin was killed.
Now that the Serbian coalition was weakened by such a blow Murad was quick to advance further into Bulgaria and capture the cities of Druma, Kavula and Seres (Serrai). This is how the Ottomans snatched a victory from the Serbs in the Battle of Kosovo Polje but the Sultan Murad himself was killed by the valiant Serb warrior Milo’ Obilic.
To understand this battle in the context of Serbia, one must look back to the 14th century when Kosovo was the center of the Serbian empire and site of its most sacred churches and monasteries. In 1389, the Serbs lost the land of Kosovo and later Serbia to the Ottoman Turks in a decisive battle fought in Kosovo Polje, the Field of Blackbirds. The Battle of Kosovo is an event entrenched in the Serbian, Montenegrin, Croatian (and all southern Slav) consciousness, uniting all Serbs who treasure Kosovo as their Jerusalem, their holy land.
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Great Serb Migration to flee from the Ottomans in 1690. This painting by P. Jovanovic 1895 “The Moving of the Serbs,” portrays the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Arsenije III Carnojevic, surrounded by soldiers, flocks of sheep and women with babies, leading some 36,000 families from his seat in Pec, Kosovo and Southern Serbia to what is now Vojvodina and further into Hungary in 1690, after Serbian revolts failed.
Under Milosevic, the Serbs tried to undo these historical injustices by reclaiming the territory of Kosovo that they had lost to the Ottomans who resettled Kosovo with Ottomans and Kosovar Muslim converts from Albania
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After this battle, what is Kosovo and Albania today was occupied by the Ottomans who unleashed a merciless tyranny on the people of these lands. Over the next 500 years, the Ottomans forcibly converted many Albanians to Islam and once the entire population was converted, they forced these novice Muslim Albanians to leave their homeland to settle in Kosovo to alter the demographic balance in favor of Muslims and make the ethnic Christian Serbs a minority.
The Turks found the Illyrian Albanians easier to convert to Islam, than the steadfast Serbs, and used these neo-converts to undermine the Serbs.
By the time the Serbs reclaimed Kosovo in the Balkans Wars of 1912 to 1913, ethnic Muslim Albanian converts made up a significant portion of the population. And by 1950 the Muslims became a majority as their birth rate boomed due to the Islamic marital rules of having four wives and endless children. This was compounded by the continued Serb migrations north towards the Christian majority lands. Today, 1.8 million Muslim Albanians outnumber Christian Serbs nine to one in Kosovo – a fact that combined with events of recent history give an opportunity for Albanians to proclaim Kosovo as their land.
Beyazid the Lightning Bolt’s revenge against the Serbs for his father’s death in the Battle of Kosovo
Beyazid I succeeded to the sultanship upon the death of his father Murad in the battle of Kosovo. In a rage over the attack, he ordered all Serbian captives killed; Beyazid became known as Yildirim, the lightning bolt, for his temperament. He conquered most of Bulgaria and northern Greece in 1389-1395 and laid siege to Constantinople in 1391-1398. On September 25, 1396 at the Battle of Nicopolis, his forces met the Venetian-Hungarian army along with the Frankish knights led by king Sigismund of Hungary.
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A Serbian Orthodox Church, cheek-by-jowl alongside a Moslem Mosque in Urosevac, Kosovo. The Ottomans with their Moslem Albanian allies who were Illyrian converts to Islam, demolished churches and built mosques on their sites. In recognition for their loyalty to their new Ottoman masters the Illyrian Muslim converts from both from Albania proper and Kosovo, were given the position of pashas and viziers by the Ottoman Turks.
The Turks found the Illyrian Albanians easier to convert to Islam, than the steadfast Serbs, and used these neo-converts to undermine the Serbs.
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The Ottomans used their tactics of subterfuge by feigning to negotiate with the Bulgarians and the Frankish knights and tricked them into a trap to win Battle of Nicopolis. After which Beyazid signed a peace treaty with Hungary. He then turned his attention to the east, conquering the Turkish emirate of Karaman in 1397. This emirate was a remnant of the Seljuks whom the Ottoman had displaced. This emirate was an ally of the Byzantine empire and an enemy of the Ottoman power.
Lessons from the Battle of Nicopolis
At Nicopolis, the Turks used techniques of hoodwinking the Bulgarians and the French Knights into feigned negotiations and luring them into a tap and then slaughtering them mercilessly. These are techniques that are still used by the Jihadis in waving white flags and then gunning down the American marines in Iraq, or of using women and children as human shields to act as cover for the suicide bombers in Israel.
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Celekula – The Tower of Skulls in Nis A tower in which Turkish pasha used skulls of Christian Serbs as a building material. The History of Ottoman Moslem rule in Serbia written by Turkish historians gives a quite deceptive and dishonest picture of Turkish tyranny it as an age of tolerance and peaceful coexistence between Christians and Muslims in the Balkans.
This tradition of dishonesty and perfidy is today carried forward by the Communists, liberals and other bedmates of the islamofascists who march in droves yelling slogans against Bush and the war on Terrorism. Such elements need to rounded up and sent into internment camps as was done with the far more milder and less dangerous Japanese Americans after the Pearl harbor. attack
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The Jihadis still use foul means which they used against the French Knights at Nicopolis. The knights, drawn from all over Europe, had gone into battle assuming that they faced a fierce, but honorable enemy. But with the massacre of the prisoners of war the Europeans were reminded in 1396 at Nicopolis that they could henceforth expect no mercy if captured by the invading Muslims, and thousands were to meet their end in this brutal way. At Nicopolis thousands of Christian soldiers who had laid down their weapons were slaughtered in a bloodthirsty orgy lasting several hours after the battle had ended. The opening of negotiations was normally used to end hostilities or to stop hostilities from taking place. But the subterfuge used at Nicopolis, with devastating effect, reminded the Europeans yet again, that the Muslims were never to be trusted. That the Muslims by instinct are a dishonorable people.
The Mongol Timurid Attack on Ottomans
Around 1400 the Mongol leader Timur Lenk entered the Middle East. Timur Lenk pillaged a few villages in eastern Anatolia. This conflict with the Ottoman Empire exposed the soft underbelly of the Ottomans. In August, 1400 Timur and his horde burned the town of Sivas to the ground and advanced into the interior. The war culminated at the Battle of Ankara in July, 1402. Timur won, captured Beyazid, and was free to raid and pillage Anatolia. Beyazid died in captivity in 1403.
Although nominally Muslims, the Mongols sacked many Ottoman cities and burned down Mosques to the ground in addition to their mass slaughter of the Turkish civilian population. The neo-Muslim Mongols under Timur carried forward the tradition of Hulagu Khan’s sack of Baghdad two centuries earlier in 1258.
After the defeat at Ankara followed a time of total chaos in the Ottoman Empire. Mongols roamed free in Anatolia and the political power of the sultan was broken. After Beyazid was captured his remaining sons, Suleiman elebi, İsa elebi, Mehmed elebi, and Musa fought each other in what became known as the Ottoman Interregnum.
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St. Sava was the first Archbishop of Serbia who lived in the 12th century (1172 – 1235). His relics (mortal remains were preserved in the Basilica at Belgrade. To humiliate the Serbs Sinan Pasha, the Ottoman Governor burnt the relics of St. Sava at Vracar near Belgrade in 1594. Such humiliation and tyranny sparked the Serb revolt against Turkish Tyranny. Many such revolts were put down with mindless bloodshed. It was only when the Russians defeated the Turks in the 17th century, that the condition of the Serbs could be ameliorated from the merciless Turkish tyranny. tyranny.
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Of these sons of Beyazid, Mehmed elebi stood as victor in 1413 he crowned himself in Edirne (Adrianople) as Mehmed I. He set about restoring the Ottoman Empire to its former glory. The Empire had suffered hard from the Interregnum; the Mongols were still at large in the east, even though Timur Lenk had died in 1405; and many of the Christian kingdoms of the Balkans had broken free of Ottoman control. The land, especially Anatolia, had suffered hard from the war.
During his reign, Mehmed moved his capital from Bursa to Adrianople (Edirne), reinforced control over Bulgaria and Serbia, drove the Mongols from Anatolia. Next, Mehmet invaded Albania, Cilicia, the Seljuk Turkish emirate of Candar and Byzantine controlled areas in southern Greece.
Ottomans Jihad against Venice
When Mehmed died in 1421, one of his sons, Murad, became sultan. Murad spent his early years on the throne disposing off rivals and rebellions, most notably the revolts of the Serbs. In 1423 he paid a short visit to Constantinople, laid siege on it for a couple of months and forced the Byzantines to pay additional tribute.
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The monument to the fallen at the battle of Kosovo Polje. Kosovo is to the Serbs what Jerusalem is to the Jewish people.
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In 1423 the first regular Jihad against Venice (Italy) began. During Murad’s siege of Constantinople, the Byzantine Emperor’s control over the Greek city-states was weakened. As Murad II had been on peaceful terms with Venice the inhabitants of Constantinople requested, Venetian troops to take control of the city of Salonika (Thessaloniki). But the Ottoman army that laid siege to the city seized this opportunity of troop movement and killed several Venetian soldiers in cold blood. The Venetians deemed the act in contravention with their peace treaty with the Ottomans and declared full war.
Turks try to defeat Venetians using subterfuge to conquer Salonika
Murad acted swiftly, raised the siege of Constantinople and sent his armies to Salonika. The Venetians had gained reinforcements by sea and prepared for battle, but the Ottomans sent a delegation to the Venetians to negotiate a peace. Using this subterfuge, the Ottoman delegation reached the gate, asking for it to be opened and for them to be let inside. On the Venetians refusal to open the gates and asking for the leader of the Ottoman delegation to be lifted into the fort over the walls, the Ottomans asked for time to think over the proposal.
Feigning to have a discussion, the Ottoman delegation assembled below the gate and asked the Venetian guards stationed outside the gate to step away so as to have a confidential discussion of the terms the Venetians inside the fort had offered for parleys. With the guards away, and the Ottomans having craftily got an opportunity to get together without the watchful eye of the Venetians guards, they slyly swooped on the guards and slew them in a swift swordfight, before the guards inside knew what was happening outside the gate and could react to it.
The Ottoman delegation, which was actually made up of Janissary (Turkish Kamikaze troops, from Jan = Life and Nisar = Given Away) fighters, seized the opportunity and set a raging fire to the heavy wooden gate using naphtha balls. As the gate was burning from outside, the Venetians inside were powerless to douse the flames from inside and the water they threw from the top of the ramparts could not reach the fire, due to gate being inside the turret on top of it. Meanwhile the fire at the gate was a prearranged signal for the Ottoman forces assembled a kilometer away to storm the gate. Once the gate was burnt down, the outcome was given and the Venetians fled to their ships.
But when the Turks entered and began plundering the city, the Venetian fleet suddenly started bombarding the city from the sea-side. The Ottomans fled and the fleet was able to hold off the Ottomans until new Venetian reinforcements could arrive to recapture the city.
The outcome of the Battle of Salonika was a setback for Murad and when Serbia and Hungary allied themselves with Venice, the young sultan was involved in one of the Ottoman Empire’s worst conflicts ever, with all odds against it.
Pope Martin V encouraged other Christian states to join the war against the Ottomans, in answer to the Pope’s call Austria sent troops to the Balkans. This defeat was a setback for the Ottoman Jihad in the Balkans.
Renewed War in the Balkans
The war in the Balkans resumed when the Ottoman army moved to recapture Wallachia, which the Ottomans had lost to Mircea cel Batran during the Interregnum and that now was an Hungarian vassal state. As the Ottoman army entered Wallachia, the Serbs started attacking the Ottomans stationed in Bulgaria and, at the same time, urged by the Pope, the Anatolian emirate of Karaman attacked the Empire from the rear. So Murad was compelled to split his army.
The main force went to defend Sofia and the reserves had to be called to Anatolia. While the remaining Ottoman troops in Wallachia were crushed by the Hungarian army that was now moving south into Bulgaria where the Serbian and Ottoman armies battled each other. The Serbs were defeated and the Ottomans turned to face the Hungarians who fled back into Wallachia when they realized they were unable to attack the Ottomans from the rear, as the Serbs were no longer holding the Turks from the other side.
Murad consequently, fortified his borders against Serbia and Hungary but did not try to retake Wallachia, instead he sent his armies to Anatolia where they defeated the Emirate of Karaman in 1428.
In 1430 a large Ottoman fleet attacked Salonika by surprise. Unable to withstand the sustained Ottoman attacks, the desperate Venetians signed a peace treaty in 1432. The treaty gave the Ottomans the city of Salonika and the surrounding land. The war between Serbia-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire continued in 1441 when the Holy Roman Empire, Poland, Albania, and the emirates Candar and Karaman intervened against the Ottomans.
Nikopol and Sofia fell to the Christians in 1443 and the year after the Ottomans suffered a major defeat in the Battle of Jalowaz. July 12, 1444 Murad signed a treaty that officially gave Wallachia and the Bulgarian province of Varna to Hungary, western Bulgaria (including Sofia) to Serbia. This defeat forced Murad to abdicate in favor of his twelve-year-old son Mehmed.
Later the same year the Christians seeing opportunity to throw off the Ottoman tyranny attacked anew. But in November 11, 1444, Murad defeated the Polish-Hungarian army of Janos Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna.
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Ruins of a Serb Orthodox Church of the Holy Virgin Odigitria, Musutiste built in 1315 which among the many that were destroyed by the Ottomans during their four hundred years of tyranny.
In the 14th century Kosovo was the center of the Serbian empire and site of its most sacred churches and monasteries. After 1389, when the Serbs lost the land to the Ottoman Turks in a decisive battle fought in Kosovo Polje, the Field of Blackbirds, the Turks systematically destroyed Christian churches in Serbia and Croatia. The Battle of Kosovo is an event entrenched in the Serbian, Montenegrin, Croatian (and all southern Slav) consciousness, uniting all Serbs who treasure Kosovo as their Jerusalem, their holy land.
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Murad was reinstated with the help of the Janissaries in 1446. Another peace treaty was signed in 1448 giving the Empire Wallachia and Bulgaria and a part of Albania to the Ottomans. After the Balkan front was secured, Murad turned east and defeated Timur Lenk’s son, Shah Rokh, and the emirates of Candar and Karamn in Anatolia. He died in the winter 1450-1451 in Edirne. Some have it that he was wounded in a battle against Skanderbeg’s Albanian guerilla.
Mehmed II, the Vandalizer of Constantinople
Many doubted the young Mehmed II when he became sultan (again) following his father’s death. But by conquering and annexing the emirate of Karaman (May-June, 1451) and by renewing the peace treaties with Venice (September 10) and Hungary (November 20) he proved his skills both on the military and the political front and was soon accepted by the noble class of the Ottoman court. Although, when he in 1452 proposed to attack Constantinople most of the divan, and especially the Grand Vizier, Kandarli Halil, was against it and criticized the sultan for being too rash and overconfident in his abilities.
On April 15, 1452, Mehmed ordered the construction of a castle on the shore of the Bosphorus. It was completed on August 31 and was named the Rumeli Hiskari (the European Castle). In September, Mehmed began mobilizing his troops, setting up a large camp surrounding the city of Constantinople. On March 3, 1453, he presented the Byzantine emperor Constantine XI with an ultimatum, but the emperor declined to surrender the city. The Siege of Constantinople began on April 6 and lasted for almost three months. On May 29 the city was finally captured by breaching one of its walls. Mehmed had the city’s Christian (Greek) population put to the sword, nearly four fifths of the city was burned down its magnificent Cathedrals turned into rubble and some others into mosques, the Basilica of Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque in 1462 and the city was renamed as Istambul (Islam-bul) and later became know by its modified name Istanbul as it is known till today.
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The fall of Constantinople, opened the Balkan nations to more depredations from the Turks. The Serbs revolted against Turkish tyranny repeatedly during the four hundred years from 1400. The Turks could maintain their stranglehold over Serbia with their brute force leading to many bloodied waves of forced migrations, incineration of villages, destruction of churches and mass slaughter of the Serbian population.
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When Constantinople was captured and the Byzantine Empire extinguished after resisting Islam for eight hundred years starting from the Battle of Mu’ta in 629, Mehmed turned south to Morea (Pelleponessos) where a last Greek kingdom still remained in Christian hands, and west to the Balkans.
The fall of Constantinople, opened the Balkan nations to more depredations from the Turks. In 1456 Mehmed laid siege to Belgrade. On August 13 the Janissaries advanced into the city but were ambushed and fled. Mehmed himself never succeeded in taking Belgrade. But he entered Athens in 1460, until then ruled by emperor Constantine’s two brothers, Thomas and Demetrios. The following year Mehmed launched a campaign into Anatolia defeating Sinope and Armenia under Uzun Hasan before capturing the Empire of Trebizond August 15, 1461.
But from here on the tide was to turn against the Jihad, till the European armies not only pushed the Ottoman Turks out of Europe, but British and French armies reached Egypt, Mesopotemia (which was later divided in to Syria, Iraq and Transjordan) and what is today called Saudi Arabia. The British held Transjordan as a mandate under the League of Nations and the French held Syria and Lebanon as another mandate.
It was in the British mandated Transjordan, where on the terms of the Balfour Declaration the Jewish homeland of Israel was formed in the Western half (or rather quarter) of Transjordan beyond the West Bank of the Jordan river. The East Bank being the homeland for the Arabs (Palestinians and Bedouins).
The European Counterattack on the Ottoman Jihad and the turning of the tide of the Jihad back into Asia
For all their brutality and savagery, the Ottoman Turks failed to keep up technologically with their European rivals, especially Russia. The Turks suffered a huge naval loss at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. After its defeat at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Ottoman Empire began a journey decline, culminating in the defeat of the empire by the Allies in World War I. After the great defeat of the Ottomans at Vienna, Austria, Prince Eugene of Savoy lead Austrian forces to further victories. By 1699, the whole of Hungary had been conquered from the Ottomans by the Austrians.
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The fortress of Novo Brdo was the largest Serbian town in Kosovo. The Turks vandalized it and reduced it to ruins as they did with innumerable towns, villages and monasteries in Serbia and other parts of the Balkans. The photo on the top is how the fortress looks today and an artist’s impression of the fortress during its heyday before the Turkish aggression of Serbia.
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The Serbian Struggle for independence aided by the Russians
From 1815 onwards, after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars at Waterloo, the Russians could concentrate fully on the threat from the South viz, the Turks. The resulting Russo-Turkish wars led to a string of Turkish defeats and the Turks began to lose fringe territories of their vast empire to the emerging Russian prowess under Peter the Great. The Russian attacks on the Turks came from two sides, one pincer came down from the Crimea through the Caucasus (Kavkaz), Armenia and Georgia, and the other from the Balkans. As a result the Ottomans began to lose lost fringe territories to Russia in the north.
The absence of an Industrial Revolution, Renaissance, and Reformation in the Islamic world led to the rot within for the Ottoman Turks
But more importantly the Ottoman Empire had now finally begun to fall behind in military technology as compared to the West. There was no industrial revolution in the Islamic world, neither was there any Renaissance, nor and Reformation, nor any Age of Reason.
The stranglehold of Islam was finally beginning to start the rot from inside, and this reflected from outside in the series of military defeats the Muslims suffered at the hands of the Europeans from 1683 up to the present (2006). 9/11 was a belated and futile attempt of the Muslims to reverse this tide. If 9/11 signifies anything it is that, this seminal event has awakened the West to the dangers of Islam, before it had been too late and the Muslims had matched the military prowess of the West in terms of their military capability, especially with Iran nearing the nuclear threshold and Pakistan already having its “Islamic Atom Bomb”.
Coming back to the rot within the Ottoman empire, the outside world was still mostly unaware of the extent of the Empire’s decline until the 1820s, when it became clear that the Ottoman armies had no way to put down the Russian backed revolt in southern Greece. The great powers of Europe decided to intervene to give Greece its independence. Thus in 1820, Greece became the first independent country created out of a section of the Ottoman Empire.
The break-up of European unity against the Ottomans and the beginning of European national rivalries
Russian aspirations for a section of the empire and military bases on Russia’s southern flank provoked British fears over Russian naval domination of the Mediterranean and control of the land route to India.
When in 1853 Russia destroyed the entire Ottoman fleet at Sinope, Britain and France deplorably concluded that armed intervention on the side of the Ottomans was the only way to halt a massive Russian expansion, on the grounds that that the Ottoman armies could do nothing to stop a Russian march on Constantinople itself!
The Crimean War is the watermark when the internal rivalries of the European nations had begun to come into play giving Islam a lease of life
The internal rivalries of the European nations had begun to come into play. The Crimean War marks this watermark. The unity among Christian nations that had marked the struggle with the Saracens during the Crusades and for hundreds of years thereafter was to now take a backseat while individual interests of various Western nations came to the fore.
We need to mark here that it was this folly on part of European nations that gave Islam a lease of life of two hundred years more from 1815.
Islam which will finally be destroyed by 2015-2020, would have met its end in 1850-1860 had the British, French and the rising Prussian (German) power had combined with the Russians and Austro-Hungarians to defeat and destroy the Ottoman Empire and then swept into the far reaches of the rickety nations of the Islamic crescent from Turkey to Arabia to Morocco, Nigeria, India up to Indonesia and either killed or converted the heathen and beastlike Muslims to a civilized outlook..
Russia gives the last fatal blow to the Ottoman Jihad in Europe during the Crimean War
The Crimean War illustrated how modern technology and superior weaponry were the most important part of a modern army – a part that the Ottoman Empire was sorely lacking. While fighting alongside the British, French, and even the Piedmontese, the Ottomans could see how far they had fallen behind.
While the industrial revolution had swept through Western Europe, the Ottoman Empire was still relying mainly on medieval military technologies and tactics based on deception and subterfuge meant to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat and swordplay. Techniques that had been perfected by the Muslims when they burst upon the world with the blood-curdling cries of Jihad from the sandy wastes of Arabia in 632 C.E.
The vast Caliphate, the Islamic empire of the Ottomans had no railroads, and few telegraph lines. It took days before the major naval defeat at Sinope was learned of in the capital. The poor communications made it very difficult for Constantinople to control its provinces. Thus the provinces in the Balkans, Africa, and Asia became almost autonomous. Serbia was now an independent nation in all but name, paying only token tribute to the Sultan.
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The Serbs suffered under Turkish tyranny. Their conditions were ameliorated only after the Russians started weakening Turkish power from 1853.
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Most of the other provinces also paid only fractions of the tribute required by law. Even the areas under the Sultan’s direct control had an outdated and corrupt tax system based on the Jaziya (Jiziya or Jeziya) tax to be levied on non-Muslims, that built up resistance from the Serbs and drastically depleting revenues. The disorganization and corruption permeating the nation also discouraged trade, hurting both itself and its relations with other nations. Compared to any other European power, the Ottoman empire also had virtually no industry, and its raw materials were not being harvested. It is not surprising then that at the mid point of the 19th century the Ottoman Empire was at the mercy of the Russians until other European powers intervened.
But things began to change after the Crimean war. The western powers had invested a great deal of resources in the Crimean war and they did not wish to come to the aid of the faltering Muslim Empire and lose out tremendous resources in fighting against the rising Russian power which had the advantage of proximity to the war zone. The factor that Russia was a fellow European Christian power was secondary, but that also played a role in cementing the loose Anglo-Russo-Franco alliance against the Ottomans from 1860 to 1920. Thus during the WW1, the Ottoman Empire was attacked by British, and French along with the Russians bringing an end to the Ottoman Caliphate.
The Serbian Revolts against Turkish Tyranny
To overcome the economic crisis the Ottomans tried to initiate measures to prevent an economic collapse throughout the empire by increasing the Jaziya tax on non-Muslims. This touched off a revolt in Herzegovina. The revolt in Herzegovina, quickly spread to Bosnia and then Bulgaria. Soon Serbian armies also entered the war against the Turks.
These revolts were the first test of the new Ottoman armies. Even though they were not up to western European standards the army fought effectively and brutally, and with mass slaughter of the Serbs, the Ottomans again re-established their control. Soon the Balkan rebellions were beginning to falter.
In Europe, however, a new problem was developing. The papers of Russia were filled with reports of Turkish soldiers killing thousands of Slavs. Soon more than Russian propaganda was moving southwards and a new Russo-Turkish war had begun.
Despite fighting better than they ever had before, the advanced Ottoman armies still were not equal to the Russian forces. This time there was no help for the Ottomans from abroad, in truth many European nations supported the Russian war, as long as it did not get too close to Constantinople. Ten and a half months later when the war had ended, the age of Ottoman domination over the Balkans was over. The Ottomans had fought well, the new navy of Ironclads had won the battle for the Black Sea, and Russian advances in the Caucasus had been kept minimal.
In the Balkans, however, the Russian army, supported by rebels, had pushed the Ottoman army out of Bulgaria, Walachia, Romania, and much of East Rumelia and by the end of the war the artillery firing in Thrace could be heard in Constantinople. So close had the Russian army moved to the capital of the Caliphate of the Ottoman Turks.
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The Ostrog Monastery in Montenegro – one of the most important strongholds of Orthodox faith in the time of Ottoman rule. The Serbs built such monasteries into the mountainsides to serve the dual purpose of safeguarding the monasteries from the Muslim marauders and as safe havens during the struggle for deliverance from Turkish tyranny.
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In response to the Russian proximity to the straits the British, against the wishes of the Sultan, intervened in the war. A large task force representing British naval supremacy entered the straits of Marmara and anchored in view of both the royal palace and the Russian army. The British may have saved the Ottoman empire once again, but it ended the rosy relations between the two powers that had endured since the Crimean War. Looking at the prospect of a British entry into the war the Russians decided to settle the dispute. The treaty of San Stephano gave Romania and Montenegro their independence, Serbia and Russia each received extra territory, Austria was given control over Bosnia, and Bulgaria was given almost complete autonomy.
The autocratic Sultans of the Ottoman Empire had remained unchanged through the centuries, while the rest of the world slowly became more democratic and liberal. The loss of nearly a quarter of the Empire’s territory added to the already existing economic problems to make a situation ripe for revolution. The situation was especially dangerous in Constantinople, which contained thousands of refugees fleeing the Balkans.
A number of small coups broke out to overthrow the Sultan. None of them were well organized or even remotely successful, but they filled the then Ottoman emperor Abd-ul-Hamid II with a paranoia that lead to a self-imposed isolation in the palace of Yildiz. The entire Ottoman Empire was built around the Sultan, but this Sultan never left his palace and would only see a few trusted advisors. Unlike in the other states of Europe, such as Germany, where a weak ruler could be made up for by a powerful Prime Minister, there was no one who could make up for a weak Sultan.
While in his self-imposed exile the Sultan’s Empire continued to fall apart. Egypt had long been only loosely connected to the Ottoman Empire through the Mamelukes and in 1882 the British incorporated it into their empire to protect the Suez canal. In 1896 Crete revolted and received aid from the Greeks. This soon lead to a war between the Ottoman Empire and its former province. But surprisingly, for the first time in centuries the Ottoman Empire won a war unaided.
Greece was invaded from the North and the Ottoman armies marched south as far as Thermopylae before King George I of Greece agreed to an armistice. Greece lost some of Macedonia, and had to pay an indemnity to Turkey. Crete was, however, given almost complete autonomy to appease Britain and Russia who did not want to see its Christian inhabitants returned to the Turks.
The “Young Turks” and Mustafa Kemal Pasha
This Ottoman military victory did nothing to stop the rise of revolutionary sentiments among the subjects of the Empire. In 1902 a meeting in Paris brought together the leadership of the “Young Turks” – a group, mainly made of students, who were fervent Turkish nationalists wishing to do away with the archaic Empire. In Bulgaria, Serbia and Macedonia nationalist freedom fighters started bombing Ottoman banks and government buildings demanding total independence. The two rebellions eventually joined in 1908 when an army regiment stationed in Macedonia rebelled and fled into the hills. It was joined by Macedonian rebels as well as large numbers of Young Turks. This group called itself the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).
Soon other regiments in Bulgaria and Rumelia mutinied as did many of the Anatolian soldiers sent in to end the rebellion. Abd-ul-Hamid had no choice but to give into the revolutionaries’ demands. A constitution was adopted and a parliament created, Abd-ul-Hamid was now the leader of an Ottoman constitutional monarchy. Soon after the first election, which the CUP won easily, there was a counter coup by the more conservative military officers. The coup failed to destroy the new government, mainly due to the skill of an unknown Adjutant-Major named Mustafa Kemal.
When the liberals discovered that the Sultan had aided the coup they decided that he must go. Thus a fetva was issued and Abd-ul-Hamid II’s long reign was at an end.
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