Page 188 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

warfare—islamic world 1965

The military slave system not only revolutionized Mus- The experience of the various Islamic states with
lim warfare, it also had far-reaching political conse- firearms varied greatly and the nature,success,or failure of
quences. Recruited from among outsiders with no this experience depended on historical, social, economic,
“political baggage” and entirely dependent on the state and cultural factors rather than on religion.The Ottomans
for its subsistence, the slave soldiers were a loyal and were especially successful in integrating gunpowder tech-
effective force. However, isolated from the rest of the soci- nology into their land forces and navy. Preceding their
ety, their main concern was to preserve their status by Muslim and Christian rivals, in the fifteenth century the
dominating the government and policy. This led to the Ottomans set up permanent troops specialized in the
Abbasids’ loss of control over their empire and the emer- manufacturing and handling of firearms: artillerymen,
gence of local dynasties and military dictatorships as well armorers,bombardiers,grenadiers,and the Janissaries,the
as to bitter wars among competing dynasties. sultan’s elite slave-soldiers,recruited through the child levy
In the west,the Spanish Umayyads (756–1031),Almo- from among the empire’s Christian population. The
hads (1130–1269), and the Nasrids (1230–1492) not Ottomans also established a robust arms industry that
only held on to their conquests for shorter or longer peri- made their empire largely self-sufficient in weapons and
ods in Spain,they also established flourishing cultural cen- ammunition until the mid-eighteenth century. Favorable
ters (Cordova, Seville, Granada). In the east, the Turkish geopolitical location, ample resources, efficient central
Ghaznavids of Afghanistan (977–1187) spread Islam to and provincial bureaucracy, talented statesmen, well-
the Punjab,laying the foundations of the religious division trained and well-equipped professional soldiers,and supe-
of the Indo-Afghan frontier, the latest consequences of rior logistics made the Ottoman army, with a deployable
which have been the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and the troop strength of 80,000 to 100,000, a formidable force.
conflict between Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India.
In the wars within Islam, the division between Sunni Crescent and Cross before
and Shiite Muslims played a crucial role.The Shiite Buyids the Nineteenth Century
(c. 945–1055) and Fatimids (909–1171) launched sev- Eurocentric narratives of Islamic history concentrate on
eral campaigns against their Sunni rivals.The Buyids’ rule the clash between Crescent and Cross, as well as on the
was ended by the Sunni Seljuks (1038–1157), while the supposed superiority of the “West.” However, wars within
Fatimid empire was extinguished by Saladin (1137/38- Islam and against non-Muslim enemies other than Chris-
1193), the founder of the Ayyubids of Egypt (1169– tians were equally important. Similarly, the triumph of the
1252). Saladin also distinguished himself against the West is largely a phenomenon of the nineteenth and
Crusaders, defeating them in the battle of Hattin (1187) twentieth centuries, and to project that triumph back into
and recapturing Jerusalem, Islam’s third-holiest place. earlier centuries is anachronistic.
Of the conflicts with non-Muslims, the Mongol inva- While the Ottomans devoted considerable resources to
sion in the 1250s had far grater impact on the history of their wars against their Christian opponents (Byzan-
the Islamic heartlands than the Crusades. In 1258 tium, Venice, Hungary, Habsburg Spain and Austria,
Hülegü, Genghis Khan’s grandson, eliminated the last Portugal, and Russia), they also absorbed a dozen or so
vestiges of the Abbasid caliphate. However, in 1260 the Turkish-Muslim principalities in Anatolia (fourteenth and
Mongols were defeated in Syria and driven back by the fifteenth centuries), were defeated by Timur (1402),
Mamluks of Egypt.The Mamluk sultanate (1250–1517) destroyed the Mamluk sultanate (1516–1517), and
was the most sophisticated of the military states set up by fought countless and exhausting wars against their
Turkish slave soldiers in the Middle East, with a mobi- Safavid Shiite neighbor, Persia.
lizable professional cavalry numbering between 40,000 For the Safavids, not Portuguese imperialism, but the
and 70,000 in the late thirteenth century. Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Shaybanid Uzbeks of