in Halil Inalcik and Cemal Kafadar (eds), Suleyman the Second and His Time, Isis Press, Istanbul, 1993, pp. 229-248.
Any "original" sixteenth-century source -- be it Ottoman or Safavid, Austrian or French -- contains its own set of preconceptions and inbuilt biases. But, thanks to recent scholarly effort, we now have works from a broad spectrum of opinion in print on which to base our study of mid sixteenth-century Ottoman affairs. Through the texts of in-house government memoranda ('arz) from the time of Ibrahim Pasha's vizierate, and denunciations and complaints directed at Suleyman's sixth grand vizier Rustem Pasha, the inner dimensions of Ottoman policy making begin to take much clearer shape.l In particular, two important new sources have recently been rediscovered and edited: the Ottoman defterdar Seyfi Celebi's history, and the memoirs and observations of Me'mun Beg of Sehrizor J. Walsh's publication of correspondence sent to the refugee Safavid prince Elkas Mirza has opened up further new perspectives on that episode in Ottoman-Safavid relations, to say nothing of the numerous publications of Bacque-Grammont. We are now able to undertake a more multidimensional approach to the establishment of the Ottoman regime in eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq. As Hammer was writing his account of Suleyman's eastern campaigns in the third volume of his Geschichte published in 1828, he could rely on only a few official chronicles and the distorted accounts of events presented in documents such as the ferman dispatched to King Ferdinand of Hungary in 1548 at the conclusion of the second, and least successful, of Suleyman's three excursions. We can now draw on sources from a far broader range of the parties to the conflict. But the sources may still conspire to mislead us if we confine our attention to the public stance of the emperors or their personal beliefs. These sentiments rarely acted as the sole determinant of actual policy. As an example, if we tried to define the basis of Ottoman policy towards the Safavids through evidence collected from the poetry of Muhibbi (Sultan Siileyman's nom de plume) as he projected his claim to leadership over the entire Islamic world, we would conclude that he was so obsessed with the exterrnination of the Shi i heretics as to be willing to abandon all other causes. Yet the record shows that of thirteen full-scale imperial campaigns carried out during his reign, only three were directed against Iran, and the remaining ten against Europe.
At various times during the Shah's reign, particularly during the years immediately following Tahmasb's coronation in 1524, Suleyman sent tehid-names inviting the young ruler to renounce his adherence to Shi'i doctrine. Niewohner-Eberhard's article has documented the use of polemics by both sides, while indicating the perhaps more extreme forms adopted by the Safavids, who regularized the practice known as tebarralĄ or cursing the first three Muslim caliphs. But these outward expressions of disgust with one another were theatrically-staged events intended as much for internal audiences within each of their respective countries as for one another. The threat posed by the heterodox movement spearheaded by Mulla Kabir and his followers in Istanbul was handled in public rather calmly and discreetly through the invitation to Kabir to engage in debate in 1527 with the Seyhu'l-islam and to recant his beliefs in front of an assemblage of Ottoman scholars and learned officials. Behind the scene, however, a major crackdown was underway and scores of suspects were being rounded up and either executed or expelled from the city. What this pattern of public and non public behavior shows is not that stated ideology or policy was part of a massive disinformation carnpaign by the emperors to confuse their enemies -- although there is a great deal of that element in them --, but rather that this propaganda was manufactured for specific purposes and that it should not be taken literally. The Sunni Ottomans and the Shi'i Safavids were enemies, it is true, but much of their enmity had its origin in non ideological issues.
Two principal factors hampered the Ottomans' conduct of war with the Safavids and explain in part why Suleyman directed only three of his thirteen imperial campaigns towards the east. The first was constraints placed on the conduct of war by the requirements of etiquette and custom which dictated the acceptable manner for waging war against a Muslim or even a lapsed Muslim foe. The second vas limitations imposed by the physical environment and the difficulty of keeping men and horses supplied and fed while the army campaigned in remote areas, far removed from the imperial supply system or menzilhane network.
Even in the context of an anti-Christian crusade, mutually accepted convention established certain rules for the conduct of warfare. Making war on a lapsed or heretical Muslim rival had to be justified by the edict (fetva) of excommunication. Ottoman official policy labelled the kizilbas according to three overlapping categories asapostate,schismatic, and atheist and heretic, but none of these states of conscience was considered irremediable, and before such lapsed believers could be condemned to eternal damnation it was the duty of every good Muslim to try to coax them back to the true faith. A formal opportunity to recant heretical beliefs was offered by convention as the obligatory prologue to each eastern campaign. Siileyman dutifully dispatched yet another tehdidname to Tahmasb in the spring of 1554, despite the fact tbat both sides had been openly preparing for war throughout the previous year. The text of Suleyman's exhortation to God to give Tahmasb "right guidance" makes reference to the existence of a tradition of offering a foe the option of accepting Islam as an alternative to war. Even in the extirpation of kizibas the sultan was extremely wary of any action which might be construed in a way that would tarnish his image as a just and righteous ruler.
Poor weather conditions, shortage of supplies, and unavailability of water and grazing land for the army pack animals figure prominently in the campaign diary of the 1534-1535 Baghdad expedition. These adverse conditions sometimes necessitated the premature cessation of military action before the usual end of the campaigning season in late fall, or forced a retreat at the height of the army's forward progress. On several occasions during eastern campaigns the otherwise inexplicable halts and reversals in the routes of march followed by the Ottoman armies can be understood only if we look beyond strategic to logistical concems. The seemingly erratic movements of the army during the sultan's second Iranian campaign for example become intelligible if we interpret them as the army's search en masse for fodder for the cavalry's mounts. Tbis interpretation is validated in the detailed descriptions of this campaign and of the Safavid counter-offensive of 1551-1552 recorded in Lutfi Pasha's history. The kind of warfare described by Lutfi Pasha closely resembles modern guerrilla warfare, where the defensive force's main preoccupation is interrupting the offensive force's supply lines, only rarely confronting them directly in open combat. When such direct confrontation did occur it was usually carried out by small contingents commanded by provincial governors and not the main corps of the sanding army. Lufi Pasha describes such combat as "dog fights'' (kpek sava). The tactical retreat employed by the defensive forces tended to prolong the campaign, which ultimately compelled the offensive forces into a forced retreat due to scarcity of provisions. That this is precisely what occurred during the 1548-1549 catnpaign is made clear in Lutfi Pasha's account.
Tahmasb's "scorched earth" tactic of burning whatever crops or forage lay in the attackers' way greatly exacerbated the effect of environmentally-caused shortages, but even without this the supply situaion for the Ottoman armies operating in eastern Anatolia was far from easy. The problem of grazing tbe herds was perhaps the gravest arnong a number of problems of supply faced during operations in the sparsely vegetated, arid and remote terrain of eastern and southeastern Anatolia. The immobilization of the Ottoman army and its missing of many opportunities to strike back against the tantalizingly close forces of the kizilbas during the late summer of 1548, for instance, is attributed by Lutfi Pasha to the forced retreat of large numbers of mounted forces to the pasture lands of Hoova in the region of Diyarbakir. Under conditions such as those described above, war in the east may be said to have been waged as much against people as against set fortified or strategic positions. Burning of crops crippled the advance of the attacking armies but it also created major difficulties for civilian population who had to inhabit the territory after their retreat.
Thus sensitivity about the permissibility of attacks against Muslim adversaries, worries about logistics, and concern over the impact of guerrilla warfare on the civilian population all contributed to Ottoman hesitation about ordering mobilization for eastern campaigns. We can therefore view the outbreak of war in the east (in particular Suleyman's second and third Iranian offensives) as acts of last resort in retaliation for ongoing harrassment, rather than as unprovoked aggression for the sole purpose of extending Ottoman territorial control.
One major cause of dispute which had already been removed by Suleyman early in his reign was the trade embargo which his predecessor Selim I (r. 1512- 1520) had imposed against Iran and Iranian merchants. While may issues remained to be settled before the two sides were ready to reach an agreement at Amasya in 1555, Suleyman's reign represents, even from its beginnings, a softening of the Ottoman position on relations with its eastern neighbors. While Selim had pursued an all-out war against Iran with all means available to him -- trade war, military confrontation, and psychological warfare -- , Suleyman seems to have been more interested in healing than in widening the rifts opened by his father's policies. While not averse to seizing the opportunity offered by tbe internal confusion present in his rival's country during the so-called ''kizilbas interregnum" from 1524 to 1533 or even 1537, Suleyman actually pursued a cautious policy aimed more at containment than conquest and anxious to avoid disruption of trade. The last thing Suleyrnan wanted to see was the erection of a Berlin wall between Sunni Anatolia and the kizilbas in neigbboring Safavid Azerbaijan, or the embroilment of Muslim states in a mutually destructive war in the Persian Gulf which would hasten the triumph of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean.
In contrast to bis father's militant and exclusionist Sunnism aimed at permanently driving the heterodox Iranians from the Muslim fold, Suleyman gambled on the acceptability of an Ottoman-sponsored Sunni universalism like the one accomplished by his Oguz progenitors who had founded the Great Seljukid empire in eleventh-century Iran. His dream of Islamic unity was in fact mostly realized, and the next phase of direct Ottoman-Safavid confrontation over control of the Caucasus was postponed until the late 1580s. Selim's unrealistic and hardline view that the only proper resolution to the Ottomans' dispute with Iran would come with an Armaggedon-style showdown between the forces of good" and "evil" was discarded in favor of a more latitudinarian approach. The danger which would come from fostering splits in the Muslim camp must have been apparent to Suleyman, whose European policy had benefitted so decisively from the existence of just such an unbridgeable gap between the Catholic and Protestant powers. With the addition of Baghdad in 1535 to Cairo (captured by Selim in 1517), the Ottomans controlled both former centers of the Islamic caliphate, but one of Suleyman's first acts after returning from the east in December of 1535 was to sign a treaty with the Christian ruler of France, Francois I, in February of 1536. The message conveyed by this symbolic agreement was that Ottoman leadership in the Islamic world was to be guided as much by worldly pragmatism as by ideological purity.
Apart from the most visible forms of diplomacy and treaties, a continuous process of lower-level negotiation was being carried on -- especially during periods which saw the outbreak of war -- on both an official and an unofficial basis. Groundwork for the defection or rebellion of a major figure in the enemy carnp -- a member of the royal farnily or an irnportant provincial governor -- actively engaged both sides in a conflict. The agents of this kind of diplomacy were not necessarily ambassadors or even statesmen. It seems clear from evidence examined by Hans Roemers for instance, that while the plotting to destabilize the situation along the eastern frontiers of Iran was encouraged and perhaps even instigated by both the Uzbek khan 'Ubayd and by Suleyman, the rebellion of the Shah's brother Sam Mirza in 1534 which cleared the way for 'Ubayd's forces to capture Herat in 1535 should not be considered the outcome of any formal alliance but the independent achievement of a propaganda carnpaign executed and conceived at the tribal leadership level between 'Ubayd's Uzbek amirs and their counterparts, the Turkmen amirs, in the service of Shah Tahmasb. All of both Safavid and Ottoman foreign policy cannot be covered in the survey treatment offered here which instead centers on the policymaking concerns of the "Great" powers or empires, and those which guided the "Lesser" powers or small states.
There is liltle evidence for the early and middle parts of the sixteenth century that any of the three major Sunni powers, the Uzbeks, the Mughals, and the Ottomans, was driven by an evangelical spirit. There are a number of reasons why a grand Sunni Triple Alliance failed to materialize at this time, most importantly the internal weakness of the Mughal state in India and its uncertain dynastic history during the reigns of the first two emperors, Babur (r. 1526-1530) and Humayun (r. 1530-1540 and, following the fifteen-year Suri interregnum, 1555-1556). The critical period of the Ottoman-Safavid battle for control over western Iran corresponded exactly with Humayun's overthrow and exile. During a part of his exile Humayun, while not espousing Tahmasb's hardline Shi a views (except perhaps outwardly through the practice of takiyye or dissimulation), did nonetheless act in close cooperation with Tahmasb. The period of closest cooperation seems to have been the years 1544-1546, but Mughal neutrality throughout most of the 1540s and 1550s in the Ottoman-Safavid and the Uzbek- Safavid conflicts along Iran's northwestern and eastern borders helped secure the continuance of Shi' Iran as one of the four great centers of power in the sixteenth-century Islamic world.
Concurrent with the collapse of Mughal authority in northern India, the Ottomans were pursuing their alliance with the Gujarati sultanate of India's western coast which was important for the Ottomans' naval and commercial empire in the east. Suleyman maintained close ties with the Gujarati sultanate, especially in the period after 1538, by which time the Ottomans had secured a foothold on the Persian Gulf at Basra. It was only after the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605) had settled the internal affairs of his own country and, perhaps more significantly, succeeded in annexing Gujarat in 1573, that Ottoman-Mughal relations become very cordial. The convergence of interests which led to the formation of the Sunni Triple Alliance was to take place only during the reign of Suleymn's grandson Sultan Murad III (r. 1574-1595).
The Shaibanid Uzbek khans of Transoxania, representing the other major Muslim power of the sixteenth century, were plagued by similar if less severe internal problems. Martin Dickson's work on the khanate of 'Ubayd reveals an empire which had reached a precarious stage in its dynastic history. The Uzbeks' relationship with the Ottomans under 'Ubayd (r. 1533-1539) and his immediate successors may be characterized as generally cordial, but inconsistent. Despite the diplomatic blitz being conducted by the Ottomans, an effort which can be well documented from Feridun's collection of sultanic correspondence, there was a relatively low success rate in coordinating joint military manoeuvers. It is emblematic of their relationship during the early and middle decades of the sixteenth century that the 300 cannoniers and Janissaries sent to the Shaibanids by Suleyman during 1553 (960 A.H.) as part of his preparations for a campaign against Tahmasb arrived in Bukhara in the midst of a succession struggle and in any case too late to be of any use in assisting the Ottoman attack against Nahcivan (Nakhjivan) in mid-summer 1554 (961 A.H.)
After Suleyman's death, succeeding Ottoman sultans were to gain recognition as "Caliph of the Muslims of the North," but in this case the context was not an anti-Safavid crusade; it rather relects efforts to stem the tide of the Muscovite advance towards the Black Sea and the Caspian which had been underway for some time under the confident command of Czar Ivan IV (r. 1553- 1584). However, even this later rapprochement which resulted in the formation of grand alliances and put at the Ottomans' disposal tens of thousands of Nogay and Uzbek akinci raiders should not, as in the case of the Ottoman-Mughal alliance, be regarded as an unqualified love feast. Barely suppressed jealousies and rivalries inherent to these alliances affected Ottoman relations with their Crimean and Central Asian allies and supporters. Mostly acknowledging Ottoman superiority and their own subservient position, the Central Asian powers agreed to supply large numbers of auxlliary mounted forces to bolster the pride of the Ottomans' own arrny, the well-equipped and technically-proficient Janissaries and artillerymen. Notwithstanding, an awareness in the case of the Crimean khans of the Ghengizid genealogy and in the case of the Uzbeks of their direct succession from the world-conquering Timur was an ever-present source of friction. Aside from genealogy, differences in military technique and style of warfare also created an additional source of disputes. The steppe warriors, being of the old school, believed in the validity of the bard's maxim "rifles came into existence, manliness disappeared", while the Janissaries and Ottoman arquebusiers were proud of their military prowess and strong defenders of their own quite different codes of honor and regimental loyalty.
The small independent and semi independent Muslim dynasties located at the fringes of the Iranian world included Gilan and Shirvan in the Caspian region, and Hormuz, geographically a part of Iran, dominated by the Portuguese, but ruled by a semi independent dynasty of Muslim monarchs. The economic and political survival of these kingdoms was dependent on peaceful coexistence with the great powers of their immediate vicinity; Muslim or Christian, members of the same sect or "heretics." As a general rule, fixed religious affiliations and fixed political alliances were luxuries which these smaller states could not afford. Their primary anxiety was to avoid absorption and annexation by neighboring great powers, and their re1ative isolation made trading and even military alliances necessary with sometimes the oddest of partners. The following cases may be considered illustrative of some more general patterns: the Gujarati sultan's appeal to the "infidel" Portuguese for help in forestalling the invasion of his country by the Mughal emperor Humayun in 1535, and the cooperation in pursuit of mutual economic gain between the Muslim sultans of Hormuz and the Portuguese traders, at a time when they supposedly held opposite sides in a Christian versus Muslim crusade in the Indian Ocean.
This general pattern is described for us in the account of the Ottoman defterdar Seyfi Celebi. In portraying the kingdom of Turan Shah, Hormuz's ruler in the late sixteenth century, Seyfi Celebi reports that the Portuguese believed that it was to their advantage to grant quarter to the Muslim population of Hormuz in accordance with the following logic:
"If no Muslim remained [on the island] Muslim traders would cease calling at the port. Moreover, as a consequence of the island's location in the proximity of Shiraz, the majority of the merchants engaged in trade there were Muslims. For that reason, the Portuguese undertook not to interfere with the Muslim population. Furthermore, the island population depended for its survival on the agricultural produce of the province of Shiraz. [For these reasons] the [Muslim] ruler of Hormuz and the infidels came to an understanding whereby they agreed that whatsoever revenues are derived from customs dues on trade or from any other source shall be divided in equal parts between us both, and it is under this agreement and understanding that they presently [i.e. circa 1580 A.D.] order their relations with one another."
The arrangemenl described here seems to have little or no connection with doctrinal hairsplitling, sovereignty disputes, or any other ideological concern, but evidences rather a relationship based entirely on mutual self-interest.
Gilan, a small kingdom stretching along the southern coast of the Caspian, jealously guarded its Shi'i confession and its political independence but was confronted with the choice between absorption by the Safavid Empire and alliance with a Sunni ruler, the Ottoman Sultan Suleynan. The rulers of Gilan offered their close cooperation to the Ottomans, the Sunni superpower of the day, based on a calculation of two benefits: maintenance of market ties with the west via the trans-Anatolian routes for their principal export product of silk, and ability to resist or at least delay annexation by their coreligionist but hated political adversaries, the rulers of the Safavid dynasty whose capital-to-be Qazvin (that is after 1555) was located at a distance of only two days march. Despite his presumably firm Shi'i convictions the ruler of Gilan, Melik Muzaffer, is commended in the most reliable Ottoman sources for the invaluable assistance he provided to the Ottoman forces coverging on Azerbaijan in 1534. He is given credit for sending accurate military inteiligence about the Shah's position and situation in a campaign in which the Safavids were simultaneously embroiled against the Uzbeks in Khorasan. Thanks to their reliance on the Ottoman connection and token recognition of Ottoman suzerainty, the kingdom of Gilan was able to stavc off the much more serious threat to its sovereignty posed by the Safavid empire. It was not until the year of the hicra millenium, 1592 A.D., that the kingdom was incorporated into the Safavid realm.
The situation in the kingdom of Shirwan along the western shores of the Caspian was similar. While not exactly eager to run from the grasp of one expansionist empire into the arms of another, the short-term political interests of the Shirvan-shahid dynasty in the mid-sixteenth century seemed best served by alliance with the Ottomans. The background of the persistent Safavid effort aimed at annexation of Shirvan may be traced back to the days of the first Safavid ruler Isma'il who by marriage diplomacy and other means had tried to consolidate his control over the Shirvan-shahids' territory. The rulers in Shirvan resisted these encroachments on their sovereignty and, after the forced exile of the Shirvan-shahid ruler Burhan 'Ali beginning in 1540, tried to reclaim their patrimony through alliance with the Ottomans.
A short history of this dynasty's relationship with the Ottornans during the period of Suleyman's three eastern carnpaigns reveals an Ottoman policy which, outwardly at least, highlighted the Ottomans' role as guarantors and protectors of the sovereignty of Muslim rulers through an aggressive pursuit of their battle on many fronts against both kafirs (i.e., the Christians of Georgia and mulhids (i.e., the kizilbas) Shah Tahmasb had used the latter both as shock troops for his invasion of Shirvan in 1539 and as a force of occupation following the execution of the Shirvan-shahid ruler Shah Rukh. In the short run, thanks to Ottoman military assistance Burhan 'Ali, the exiled heir to the Shirvanid throne, was able to reclaim independent rule over his country for a brief period in the years 1549-1550. However, upon Burhan 'Ali's death in 1551, the territory was immediately reoccupied by Tahmasb and remained in Safavid hands until the resumption of the Ottoman-Safavid battle for Caucasia in 1578.
It would be unrealistic to assume that, despite their public prostestations to the contrary, the Ottomans offered their assistance to or had traffic only with Muslim potentates whose kingdoms had been threatened by Shah Tahmasb's Caucasian initiatives. The Ottomans also sought to enlist the support of Christian princes and exiled nobility of the aznavur class whose military skills had been sharpened by a centuries-long tradition of service to the various states which had held sway in the region since the first penetration of the Bab al-Abwab by the Muslim armies under the Caliph 'Umar ibn al-Khatab. Suleyman was not to be outdone in the building of Christian alliances by his rival Tahmasb, who had lavished attention on the creation of a reliable Georgian alliance especially during the period 1548-1553 which coincided with the second of Suleyrnan's three eastern campaigns and the vigorously pursued Safavid counter-offensive of 1551-1552. During the third Ottoman offensive usually called the Nakhjivan campaign of 1554-1555, Suleyman pursued a comparable strategy by promise of rewards including the offer of timar assignments to Georgian Chrisian knights willing to fight and others willing spy or otherwise cooperate with the Ottoman war effort. This seldom mentioned fact is well attested in reliable Ottoman sources.
Different as the philosophical perspectives of tbe two rival powers in the Caucasus and the Indian Ocean/Persian Gulf may have been, the barriers which separated them were less insurmountable than that which separated all the lesser powers as a group from the greater powers. Diplomatic opportunism and political pragmatism were tbe universal international standard of the day. Preoccupation with doctrinal maners in the rather bombastic literary style of sixteenth-century diplomatic correspondence may well have been mostly confined to the pro forma rituals which signalled the initiation and conclusion of military campaigning. It would be a mistake to assume that tbese statements actually governed state actions or placed any constraint on tbe rulers' exercise of those options which they perceived to be tbe most advantageous to their subjects' welfare.
In the first half century of Ottoman-Safavid relations military confrontation occurred only on a very intermittent basis. The interval between the Caldiran campaign of 1514 and the Baghdad campaign of 1534 was fully two decades, and Suleyman's second Iranian campaign in 1548 followed the conclusion of tbe first only after twelve years. During these intervals, a great deal of activity and informal diplomacy was being conducted, as each side vied to win the loyalty of the predominantly tribal populations along their mutual frontiers. Because of their itinerant habits, these tribal groups could submit to the overlordship of either state and their strategic situation made their cooperation a valuable asset to both. The stakes in the competition for the loyalty of the tribes were high, but activity aimed at securing the defection of high-ranking officials, in particular blood relations of the head of the ruling dynasty, had greater psychological value. Apart from their military use as auxiliary forces, the presence of dignitaries, VIPs, expatriates, hostages and defectors in the Ottoman camp added lustre to the sultan's reputation as a great monarch to whom all the world appealed for refuge and asylum. Occasionally, as in the case of the Shah's brother Ilkas Mirza who defected to the Ottomans, served in one campaign, and then redefected to the Safavids, these figures proved unreliable as military allies, but the propaganda value which both sides attached to the services of such traitors, opportunists, and mercenaries far outweighed the risks involved in their employment. I will limit my remarks here to the first group -- the tribes -- and leave aside consideration of the exiles and defectors, whose situation may be considered exceptional, for another occasion.
The territory over whose control the Ottomans and Safavids contended between 1514-1555 was called the "Two Iraqs," i.e., Iraq proper and Iraq-i 'Acem. The conflict coincided with an early expansionary phase in the development of each state. Tahmasb was only second in succession to a newly-founded dynasty, and the Ottomans too were relative newcomers to the region. While both Ezurum (1515) and Diyarbakir (1516) had been annexed as Ottoman provinces shortly after Caldiran, Zulkadriyye (1522) and Baghdad (1535) were added only in the early part of Suleyman's reign. Sehrizor's joining the union had to await the outcome of the conflict with the Safavids in the two Iraqs which did not reach its culmination unlil 1552 at the conclusion of Shah Tahmasb's counter offensive. The consolidation of Otloman adminislration east of the Euphrates thus proceeded in piecemeal fashion over the first three decades of Suleyman's reign between 1522 and 1552. Because the outcome of the Oltomans' conflict with the Safavids still hung in the balance until the Treaty of Amasya in May 1555, the battle for control over the two Iraqs had also to be fought as a war of words and escalating offers of rewards and incentives. The Ottomans, who had developed techniques for winning the support of the local tribal and military leadership as a result of their experience in the fourteenth-century conquest of the Balkans, were well aware of the fact that their ultimate success depended on far more than arms.
Of the two formulators of Suleyman's eastern policy, his two alter egos, first Ibrahim Pasha and then Rustem Pasha (both of whom had been invested with boundless authority as the sultan's vezlr-i mutlak), Ibrahim Pasha seems to have been the more informed and skilled promoter of Ottoman interests, especially in cajoling the tribal emirs of the frontier and creating conditions favorable to Ottoman annexation. A few details (drawn in large part from Celalzade's history but also from the history of Lutfi Pasha and the reports and correspondence of Ibrahim Pasha himself) may help to illustrate this facet of Ottoman strategy known in formal terms as the istimalet policy. This consisted of measures aimed at attracting allies and enlisting supporters of the Ottoman cause among independent and semi-independent populations on either side of tbe line of demarcation dividing Ottoman territories in the Dar al Islam from the lands of indeterminate status not explicitly labelled "Darul kafir" but hardly considered as qualitatively different from such an imaginary land.
Ibrahim Pasha's tribal policy had its inception during the widespread unrest in central Anatolia during 1527, a generalized phenomenon which is usually referred to as the Kalender revolt. Rather than seeking a purely military solution to these disturbances and realizing that they had a strong social and economic as well as political basis, Ibrahim decided to confront the problem by istimalet. He was aware that the involvement in these uprisings of clans such as the Bisanlu who belonged to the Zulkadirlu confederation could be explained by the resentment they felt as a consequence of the sultan's order for the execution of one of their forrner leaders, Sehsuvarogli 'Ali Beg, and the subsequent Ottoman annexation of the Zulkadirid principality in 1522. Instead of further punishment Ibrahirn recomrnended leniency towards the displaced tribesmen, and disbursement of benefactions (in 'amat) and timar assignments to secure their future cooperation. As a general practice Ottoman military carnpaigns were begun with the offer of incentives and concluded with the divying up of rewards, appointments and promolions, but Ibrahim had developed these techniques to a fine point.
For instance, after the defection of Seref (Sharaf) Khan, the hereditary ruler of Bitlis, to the Shah in 1532 Ibrahim refused to bow to pressure exerted by another Safavid defector, Ulama who had been the Shah's governor in Azerbaijan and who was waiting in expectation of an appointment of similar rank in Ottoman service. Instead Ibrahim carefully sensitive to tribal feelings, insisted that the vacant office be settled on Seref Khan's son Semseddin. But the efficacy of Ibrahim's policies aimed at securing pro-Ottoman alignments (a translation of istimalet itself whose root meaning is "to lean" or "incline in the direction of") among the tribes was most fully demonstrated during the course of the first campaign of the two Iraqs in 1534-1535. From his winter base at Aleppo in 1534 Ibrahim pursued a vigorous diplomacy which resulted in the securing of the services of a number of frontier tribes. These groups functioned both as scouts (kilavuz) and travelling larderers for the Ottoman armies preparing to advance into unfamiliar and remote regions of Azerbaijan.
Enhancing the attractiveness of affiliation with the Ottoman regime formed another dimension of the istimalet policy. This was accomplished in part by spelling out the terms of association with the Ottoman state in the imperial land survey which followed all Ottoman conquests. It may be assumed that Ibrahim Pasha, even though he was not present in Baghdad following its capture in December of 1534, took a close interest in this aspect of his administrative duties. Number 1028 in the Imperial Surveys series shows the Ottomans' concern to be recognized as more just rulers than their Safavid predecessors. For example, while the Safavid governors had collected a tax called the [chehar-mahe] (i.e., the "tax of the four seasons") which had taken more than 17 percent of the harvest, the Ottomans ended such abusive or extra-legal practices (bid'at) introduced by preceding regimes, an act which gave Ottoman lawmakers special pride. In undertaking to establish their rule in Iraq the Ottomans were conscious of the responsibility which their claim to rule entai]ed.
In contrast to his predecessor Ibrahim, Rustem's tenure as vizier is marked by controversy. Powerful men stimulate both sycophantic praise and bitter recrimination, but guided by the adage "where there is smoke there must be fire'' we may assume that the persistent pattern of complaints about Rustem is an indication that all was not well. We are fortunate to have two contemporary sources on Rustem Pasha's role as policymaker, the texts of denunciations (ibarname) against him published by Tayyib Gokbilgin, and the memoirs of the Kurdish emir Me'mun published by Ismet Parmaksizoglu. The complaints voiced in these sources about Rustem Pasha's cupidity and bribe-taking were still being echoed in reform tracts of the early seventeenth century, eighty years after the event. The allegations about misconduct during the Sultan's second Iranian campaign center around Rustem Pasha's role in the Elkas affair, which is treated in greatest detail in Me'mu's memoirs. According to Me'mun Beg's account of the events, matters reached a head after the return of Elkasfrom his bootyraiding foray deep into Safavid territory during the course of which he had raced through Hamadan, Dergezin, Kashan and Isfahan before turning back to his base in northern Iraq in the autumn of I548. Following this, disputes arose over the Sultan's intention to reward Elkas for his rnilitary services and in recognition of the spoils which he presented to Suleyman, part of which consisted of objects highly valued by his adversary Shah Tahmasb.
Unfounded rumours casting aspersions on Elkas' loyalty are said by Me'mun to have been circulated by both the second vizier Sofu Mehmed Pasha, and by Rustem Pasha himself. The upshot of this treatrnent was that Elkas was forced to take flight, and eventually to redefect to the Shah. His own assessment sums up the situation nicely: "the viziers [through their actions] seek to force me into rebellion." In addition to blaming Rustem for Elkas redefection to the Shah, Me'mun Beg goes on to accuse Rustem of personally profitting from his manipulation of royal favor, particularly in the assignment of provincial governorships. After the eastern campaign of 1548-1549, Me'mun's father Bige had been appointed as Sancakbegi of Kirkuk with a stipend fief worth 300,000 akces in recognition for his services during the campaign. Both he and Me'mun, who had been offered the governorship of the soon-to-be-created province of Sehrizor, were later supplanted, allegedly as the result of Rustem's conspiring with Huseyin Beg, the hereditary ruler (hakim) of Imadiye ('Amadiya), a small principality located northeast of Mosul. Me'mun openly accuses Rustem of accepting bribes from Huseyin Beg in return for his support for Huseyin Beg's bid for preeminence over the other tribal chieftains of northern Iraq. Ultimately, Me'mun Beg himself was placated, or perhaps more exactly silenced, by Rustem's offer of a palace appointment as muteferrika with a daily salary of 100 akces, but the disruption caused to regular administration in those provinces was not so easily set right. A comparison of Suleyman's two main policy chiefs responsible for conducting war and diplomacy in the east leaves little doubt that Rustem lacked both Ibrahim's perspicacity and his consistency.
Suleyman was faced with two alternatives early in his reign. His state's resources in the aftermath of the victory at Mohacs in 1526 were sufficient either for a vigorous pursuit of the war in the Mediterranean and in Hungary, or for a fully elaborated eastern policy, but not for both. The Sultan by his march on Bosnia in 1527 and on Buda and Vienna in 1529 had clearly signalled his intentions, and the course was not abandoned at any tirne during the remainder of his long reign. The Ottoman war effort during the decade following the Treaty of Amasya was to be devoted unreservedly to the European theater, and it seems that the aim of Suleyman's eastern policy, even during its most active phases, was limited. It does not appear that the conquest of Iran was ever seriously intended during the sixteenth century, a period when on other fronts the Ottomans came closer than ever before to realizing their ambition for world rule. The consequences of continued confrontation between the Muslim powers were well understood by both Suleyman and Tahmasb, as is shown in their mutual readiness to sign the Amasya Peace Treaty. Furthermore, just as the main Ottoman orientation after 1526 was shifted by Suleyman to the west, in the Safavid state there was a shift in the post-Caldlran era away from Azerbaijan to the central Iranian highlands as well as a growing preoccupation with the Uzbek threat along its eastern frontier. Thus the territory over which the two states contended was in fact not the primary locus of concern for either state. Relations between the two empires in the period 1535-1555 were characterized by ambivalence on both sides. The Ottoman onslaught against Azerbaijan had forced the removal of the Safavid capital to Qazvin in 1555, but the Ottomans showed no intention of establishing a permanent presence or pressing for the annexation of Safavid Karabagh.
The main sources of the Ottomans' commercial and agricultural wealth lay in their westem territories and the economic survival of the empire depended on control of the transportation nexus which linked Crimea and the Danubian lands with the capital and other population centers along the Marmara and Aegean littoral. Apart from strategic concems, the government had a primary commitment to protect the economic viability and internal security of its western possessions. Just as in the east the isimalet policy had been used to enlist the support of tribal proponents of the Ottoman cause, it served an equally critical function in the western lands helping to ensure durable acceptance of Ottoman rule, here not so much with tribal populations as with the mercantile and agricultural classes. In some areas, in particular the central Balkans, the predominant part of the population was neither Turkish nor Muslim. This presented a special challenge to Ottoman policy makers, who were compelled to abandon the old rhetoric of Muslim jihad of the fourteenth and fifteenth-century conquest of the region. In the sober aftermath of battle these warlike attitudes were replaced with a less exclusionist basis for "citizenship" in the Ottoman polity. The development of an official policy of Ottoman latitudinarianism is the special achievement of Suleyman's reign. As an emerging world power the Ottomans were anxious to retain the affection of populations in their conquered territories and to attract new converts to the Ottoman way of life from among alienated or otherwise unattached groups, including religious nonconformists such as Calvinists from Hungary and displaced Jewish communities from all parts of Europe. Militant Shi'i ideology had served its purpose in Iran during the time of Shah Isma'il (r. 1501-1524) by contributing to the unification of diverse ethnic and religious groups of Iran under a single banner born by the shah in his dual role as head of state and head of tarika. The hardline Ottoman response to militant Shi'ism in Iran under Selim I (r. 1512-1520) was perhaps equally appropriate under the special conditions and unusual threat to state security faced at that time. By the 1550s, though, these methods had been discredited and were replaced by different state creeds and diplomatic strategies better adapted to the needs of the times. By the mid-sixteenth century the survival of the Ottoman state had come to depend on ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious ecumenism. The Safavids, while clearly not ready to abandon their own brand of religious particularism, were practical enough to realize the danger which all-out confrontation wih Sunni orthodoxy defended by the military might of the Ottoman state would pose. On either side the fervor of religious conviction needed to be tempered by the demands of imperial administration, and neither could afford the folly of unbending devotion to ideals formu1ated, at least in part, for propaganda purposes.