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establishing a corps of rapid-fire artillery (süratçı); de Tott created a cannon
foundry and a school of engineering, thus following in Bonneval’s footsteps,12
while similar measures were undertaken to aid the recovery of the Ottoman
navy under the admiral Gazi Hasan Pasha. Furthermore, the grand vizier Halil
Hamid Pasha (1782–85), previously (like Rağıb Pasha earlier) the chief of for-
eign affairs (reisülküttab), strengthened and broadened these attempts while
at the same time seriously trying to prevent violations of the old timar and
janissary regulations. Halil Hamid also encouraged Ottoman manufacturing,
especially textile production, taking measures against the import of European
and Indian cloth, while he also made efficient moves to revive Müteferrika’s
printing house.13
However, continuous internal tumult, factional strife inside the govern-
ment, and external warfare did not allow any of these efforts to bear signifi-
cant fruit. During the 1760s and 1770s the power of the provincial ayan and
the centrifugal tendencies of the provinces continued to increase, with ayan
in Syria, Egypt, Epirus (western Greece), and Baghdad increasing their power,
while the Wahhabi revivalist movement in the Arabian peninsula also posed
a serious threat to the sultan’s rule in neighbouring lands. At the same time,
dynastic upheavals in Iran, where the new Zand dynasty had succeeded Nader
Shah, ultimately contributed to further the disintegration of Ottoman rule
in Iraq. Moreover, after settling her internal problems—namely, Pugachev’s
major rural revolt—Catherine the Great profited from a local dynastic conflict
to annex the Crimea in 1783, thereby leading to Halil Hamid’s fall; his succes-
sor, the grand vizier Koca Yusuf Pasha, led the pro-war party in Istanbul in an
attempt at revenge. This second war, which started in 1787 and ended in 1792,
again saw Austria allying with Russia against the Ottomans, who often man-
aged to resist their enemies. However, the destructive battle of Maçin in 1791,
(which was marked by an unprecedented collective petition by the Ottoman
army to the sultan, Selim III, declaring its inability to fight successfully against
a disciplined and organized enemy),14 together with Austrian troubles due to
the French Revolution, led to the Treaty of Jassy (1792) and to the sultan recog-
nizing Russian gains in the Crimea, Georgia, and some of the Danubian prin-
cipalities. These territorial losses notwithstanding, this peace allowed Selim
12 Cf. Aksan 2001. One cannot overestimate the importance of Aksan’s work for understand-
ing Ottoman military power and reforms in the eighteenth century (most of the relevant
articles can now be found in Aksan 2004); see also Ágoston 2011, 2014 (for a more general
survey). On Abdülhamid’s reign see also Sarıcaoğlu 2001.
13 Shaw 1976, 1:256–57; Uzunçarşılı 1936; Aksan 1995, 180–184; Sarıcaoğlu 2001, 147ff.;
Menchinger 2017, 96–105.
14 Beydilli 1999b, 30; Menchinger 2014a, 141–147; Yıldız 2016; Menchinger 2017, 152–157.