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Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and the West: Sectarian Divide, Borderlands, and Diplomacy

The sectarian violence in the Middle East is seldom traced to imperial rivalries in the sixteenth century, when the rise of Safavid state in 1501 led to two centuries of warfare, militarization, conquest and religious persecution of sunnis in Iran and shi’i Qizilbash in the Ottoman empire. Moreover, few historians have studied these religious and political conflicts in the wider Mediterranean and European contexts or have compared them with the reformation in Europe and the rise of national states. There is no doubt that the establishment of twelver shi’ism in Iran helped ward off Ottoman expansion into Azerbaijan although this borderland region was occupied several times and suffered economic by the Ottomans. Numerous peace treaties signed between these two states did not end the wars until the treaty of Erzurum signed between the Qajar and Ottoman states in 1829 ended hostilities and set the borders. This panel brings historians of Ottoman empire and Iran together to a shed new light on the history of Ottoman-Iranian relations, borderlands, and Iranian shi’i communities in the Ottoman empire based on both Ottoman archival, European, and Persian sources. The first paper in this panel will examine the transformation of Ottoman-Safavid relations and the role Western European countries (the Habsburg empire) in Ottoman- Iranian wars to protect their own frontier in southeast Europe. The second paper will focus on the impact of Ottoman-Safavid wars on the society and economy of Azerbaijan, an important and rich borderland region, during the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries. The third paper will tackle the role of religion in Ottoman- Iranian relations and the changing Ottoman notions of frontier applied to Iran from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The final paper will examine the impact of diplomatic normalization between the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran on the status of the Iranian community in Istanbul. The paper will show that the emerging notion of Ottoman citizenship combined with the shi’i identity of Iranians actually hardened the Ottoman policies toward Iranians living in the empire.

Presentations

Azerbaijan Between Two Empires: Ottoman Administration of a Borderland Province
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The history of Ottoman-Safavid borderlands is beginning to get some attention by historians. The Ottoman campaigns into Iran aimed at punishing the Safavid state for supporting the Qizilbash in Anatolia, and bringing the silk growing region of Ganja and Shirvan as well as the city of Tabriz, which was the most important silk entrepôt in the eastern Mediterranean trade zone under Ottoman control. Based on Ottoman archival sources, I will examine the Ottoman administration of Azerbaijan in two periods, in the late sixteenth (1585-1603) and the early eighteenth centuries (1725-30), highlighting the transformation of Ottoman policies in administering this rich borderland region during these two periods. The first period witnessed a tight Ottoman central control and very harsh policies by Ottoman governors, in part due to sectarian warfare and the Celali rebellions, leading to great economic dislocation and local rebellions. The second occupation of Azerbaijan took place after the disintegration of the Safavid state and the Afghan occupation of Iran. The Ottomans state reached an agreement with peter the Great of Russia to occupy the northern and western provinces of Iran. The Ottoman empire followed a more decentralized control over Azerbaijan during this period and coopted members of local nobility as well as tribal leaders into its administration. It farmed out the sources of revenue to its own military as well as local ayan who submitted to Ottoman rule and followed the Persian tax registers in assessing taxes. This policy proved more effective in reviving the economy as revenues began rising. But the dispersal of some major local tribes between the Russian and Ottoman held territories caused a major uprising by the Shahsevan tribe against Ottoman and Russian policies. In brief, Ottoman policies in attempting to rule over tribes in Azerbaijan proved ineffective and the joint Russian-Ottoman control of this region caused major dislocation among the Shasevan tribe. Based on cadastral surveys and Muhimme registers, this paper will examine the nature of Ottoman administration of this important borderland, as well as the demographic makeup, agricultural and economic resources of this rich borderland province in two periods of Ottoman rule.

Legal Situation of the Iranians in the Ottoman Empire within the Context of Nasir al-Din Shah’s Istanbul Visit (1873)
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The legal situation of the Iranians residing within the Ottoman Empire and their social and economic demands were very effective in shaping the nineteenth century Ottoman- Qajar relationship. While Nasir al-Din Shah was in London in 1873, the Ottoman ambassador to London sent a telegram to the Ottoman state mentioning that the shah threatened the Ottoman state not to come to Istanbul if the problems regarding the legal situation of the Iranians within the Ottoman realm would not be solved. However, the shah went to Istanbul, and the two states discussed this issue in the Ottoman capital. Drawing from that, this paper will examine the legal situation of the Iranians residing within the Ottoman Empire within the context of Nasir al-Din Shah’s Istanbul visit, which was part of his first European tour (1873). In the first part, this paper will discuss such questions: Were the Iranians perceived as ‘indigenous people’ or ‘foreigners’? What were the problems between Ottoman and Qajar states regarding this issue? Then, in the second part, after narrating the shah’s days in Istanbul, this paper will focus on how the legal situation of the Iranians living within the Ottoman Empire shaped the political environment in which the shah’s visit took place. It also aims to contextualize the visit within the nineteenth century Ottoman-Qajar relations.

The Notion of Frontier in Ottoman-Iranian Relations
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The borderland was the physical locus of the wars fought between the Ottomans and the Safavids, and later between the Ottomans and the Afshar, Zand, and Qajar dynasties. This meant that the borderland peoples, who on occasion participated actively in such wars, suffered most directly from this long history of violent interstate disputes. While the real impact of such violence was felt on the ground, theoretical conceptualizations of the frontier shaped the evolution of Ottoman-Iranian relations. For example, from the emergence of the Safavids in 1501 until 1639, the Ottomans defined in Iran, and by extension its frontiers, in two distinct ways. In times of peace, when an uneasy coexistence prevailed, it was a rather vague dâr al-Islâm. However, such vagueness lent itself to instability; thus, in times of war, Iran easily became a dâr al-harb, or abode of war, and its borderland a space of religiously sanctified wars of submission, very much like the Ottoman frontiers with Europe. The long peace that followed the 1639 Treaty paved the way for yet another set of formulations, which were first put to paper in 1746. It was, however, only in 1823 that the Ottoman and Iranian states agreed to put religious differences aside, signing a treaty that contained no reference to sectarian grievances and related definitions of the frontier which in turn, set in motion the final delimitation and demarcation of the Ottoman-Iranian frontier.
My paper would examine the historical transformation of various notions related to border and the borderland in the context of the Ottoman-Iranian relations. It will, however, do this from an Ottoman perspective with references to the Iranian chronicles as well.

Safavid Iran and the “Turkish Question,” or How to Avoid a War on Two Fronts
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The so-called “Turkish Question,” the Christian-European concern about Ottoman aggression vis-à-vis southeastern Europe, the fear that the Turks might take Vienna and push into the heart of Europe, and the attempts to thwart this offensive by way of forging a grand Christian collation, exercised European rulers from 1453 until the late seventeenth century. It is also a well-worn research topic, especially in German- and Italian-language scholarship.

Less well known is that, next to the Habsburgs, the Spanish, the Papacy and the Russians, the Iranians were active participants in the long-standing efforts to challenge and repulse the Ottomans, both as recipients of countless envoys from European nations eager to complete the “cordon sanitaire” around the Ottomans by bringing the Safavids into the alliance, and as agents interested in neutralizing the Turks for their own reasons.

My paper looks at the role of Iran in this protracted geopolitical “game,” and it does so from the “Iranian” perspective, focusing on what moved and motivated successive Safavid rulers to play their part in it. Using a plethora of sources, from diplomatic letters in a dozen languages to travel accounts, missionary reports and court chronicles, it examines Safavid reactions to Western diplomatic overtures in the context of Iran’s own concerns. Involving a geopolitical universe that stretched all the way from Lisbon to Hyderabad, these concerns were marked by a visceral urge to avoid having to fight a war on two fronts simultaneously, which translates as a strong and carefully pursued policy aimed at maintaining a balance of power with the mostly Sunni neighbors, the Ottomans, the Uzbeks of Central Asia and the Indian Mughals.