138 ISLAM AT WAR
to grow amid the polyglot clans, tribes, and sects under Ottoman rule.
Hence, so the argument goes, the Europeans grew individually stronger,
while the Ottomans remained stagnant.
Another possibility is that the succession of struggles in Constantinople
weakened the central government. This argument suggests that the brutal
fratricide that successful contenders for the throne practiced in the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries, guaranteed an able sultan—none other could
possibly emerge. As the decades wore on and the sultans became more
secure, they could avoid the killing and simply sentence their family mem-
bers to genteel confinement. This is thought to have taken the edge off
the ability of rivals for the throne.
The above theory might be tied to one that suggests the debasement of
the Janissaries as a cause of decline. It is true that the well-armed and
highly disciplined Janissary corps of the fifteenth and sixteenth century
were the best and most modern infantry in the world. As the core of
Ottoman armies, they were far superior to any Western feudal levy that
could oppose them. As they became palace guards and entered into royal
intrigue, they lost their interest in the battlefield, and hence the sultan’s
military superiority began to decline. Or so goes the argument.
Another explanation of imperial decline follows a maritime thread. The
Turks never really progressed beyond the galley in naval technology. This
can be explained easily, because the galley makes a useful ship in the
coastal waters of the Mediterranean. Western European nations, facing
the rough Atlantic Ocean and frequently denied the Mediterranean by the
sultan’s fleets, developed efficient long-range sailing ships. These ships
permitted the Europeans to extend their interests far beyond the Mediter-
ranean basin and eventually to reach the eastern lands that were the source
of the spice trade. The Turks gathered great wealth from the taxation of
these spice routes, but suddenly the Europeans were claiming the lands
as colonies and the routes and markets as their own by right of their
superior ships. Thus, the same movement both weakened Turkey and
strengthened the West.
A final argument is that the Ottoman Empire grew out of a long tradition
of empire, but that the West grew out of different, and in the end, more
useful traditions. This line suggests that “empire,” in the Eastern sense at
least, existed to strengthen and enrich a certain tribe or group. Conquest
provided office and wealth for select members of the conquering tribe, be
they Arab, Seljuq, Mongol, or Ottoman. In contrast, the Western tradition
of empire, built by Rome, created governments that gave citizens individ-
ual rights and at least attempted protection. This is a system more likely
to attract and maintain adherents. These adherents, grounded in their