Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [95]
The recruits who did not make it into the askeri were assigned to the Janissaries, an elite infantry corps that formed the sultan's private guard. At the height of their effectiveness in the sixteenth century, when they were probably better trained than any troops in Europe, the Janissaries included roughly 20,000 men, none of them native Turks. The Janissaries enjoyed high living standards and, because they inherited the wealth of dead Janissaries, accumulated great collective wealth. Thus, while some Christian families saw the youth “tax” as the worst form of Ottoman oppression, others saw it as an avenue of upward mobility for their children, and a means of placing a family member in a position of status and authority otherwise unimaginable.7
The Ottomans derived great benefits from their strategic tolerance. First, it bought them the cooperation, or at least the acquiescence, of conquered populations from Transylvania to Yemen to the Iranian plateau. As with every empire, there were sporadic rebellions, put down viciously by the Ottoman war machine. But by and large, the fundamental ethnic and racial tolerance of Islam proved a stunning strategic asset for the Ottomans. Large numbers of Christians converted to Islam shortly after being conquered. While some may have been touched by the Prophet's revelation, for most, conversion to Islam was pragmatic.
For the Ottomans, the “color-blind” embrace of conversion meant a swelling of the ranks of more or less cooperative Islamic subjects, a huge pool of available agricultural and military manpower, and at the top level, a core of genuinely talented individuals who had risen through the strikingly meritocratic Ottoman system. As the Janissaries and Suleyman's grand viziers illustrate, the Ottomans were able to deploy conversion to create specially loyal, elite servants of the sultan.
Among those who did not convert, the Ottoman Empire's relative religious tolerance worked to enormous advantage as well. Non-Muslims of all stripes—Christian Maronites, Jacobites, Egyptian Copts, Nestorian Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians, Armenian Orthodox Christians, and Greek and Iberian Jews, just to name a few groups—contributed immensely to the economic expansion and vitality of the empire. In particular, Jews who fled the Hapsburgs brought to Turkey invaluable trade and financial networks, which helped Ottoman cities like Istanbul, Cairo, Aleppo, and Salonika become major centers of international commerce.
European Jews also provided the Ottomans with scientific and medical knowledge, as well as new technologies for industry, arms, and munitions. The remarkable Jewish contribution to Ottoman success was attested to by Nicolas de Nicolay and Pierre Bellon de Mans, two well-known European travelers who visited the empire around 1550:
[The Jews] have amongst them workmen of all artes and handicrafts moste excellent, and especially [the converses] of late banished and driven out of Spaine and Portugale, who to the great detriment of Christianitie, have taught the Turks divers inventions, craftes and engines of warre, as to make ar-tillerie, harquebuses, gunne powder, shot, and other munitions: they have also there set up printing, not before seen in those countries.
Many Greeks, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites, and other Christian groups were also extremely entrepreneurial, playing prominent roles in banking, shipbuilding, wool and tobacco production, and the luxury trades.8
In its heyday under Suleyman the Magnificent—with its spectacular territorial expansion, cultural blossoming, and prosperity—the Ottoman Empire looked as though it might become the first world-dominant Islamic power in history. It was not to be. Even at its peak, the Ottoman Empire was a regional power, surrounded on all sides by well-matched rivals,