The Crescent of the Sultan

It is said that the population of the Ottoman Empire was not as good as that of the Greek classical era, but who knew that the classical era was the highest population peak in the Eastern Mediterranean before modern times.

It's not just the Eastern Mediterranean. According to historians, the population of the Roman Empire at its peak was about 50 million. In the relatively stable era of Charlemagne, the population of the entire Europe was about 25 million to 3,000. Five million people, excluding the Asian and African territories of the Roman Empire, there were also a lot of new European territories.

Can Emperor Sai say that all European rulers during this period were trash, similar to Nero?

Without taking other factors into consideration, a single comparison can be said to be an outrage.

First of all, it is true that the population of the Ottomans is not necessarily lower than that of ancient Rome at its peak, but according to climatological research, compared with 1,500 years ago, the precipitation in modern North Africa and West Asia has dropped significantly. This is the situation in North Africa and West Asia in the Middle Ages. The main reason why revival is hindered

We might as well assume that if the population of a region must have increased overall, then how did the population of the ancient Loulan country increase to the point where it has become a thousand-mile Gobi no-man's land?

This is the problem of external factors.

In the last round of Mediterranean economic expansion (the 15th-16th centuries after the Black Death subsided), the population increased and a large amount of coastal plains were reclaimed for the intensive cultivation of wheat and other crops, resulting in a decrease in land fertility and severe soil erosion.

The Little Ice Age, which began at the end of the 16th century, caused the Mediterranean climate to become wet and cold, and precipitation increased. The coastal plains with exhausted soil gradually turned into swamps with poor drainage.

Swamps lead to the spread of infectious diseases such as malaria. At the same time, small farmers lack the means to develop swamps, resulting in the abandonment of coastal plains (partly converted to low-density pastures) and the transfer of agricultural populations to mountainous areas with better sanitary conditions.

The geological conditions of the Mediterranean mountainous areas (shallow soil, unstable precipitation, and easy depletion of fertility) have prompted mountainous farmers to shift from growing wheat to growing olives and grapes, combined with small-scale animal husbandry, and gradually moving towards a self-sufficient economy of mixed agriculture and animal husbandry.

Grain crop yields declined, while Baltic-Eastern European wheat competition further suppressed the Mediterranean grain industry.

In this way, the total cultivated area decreased, the scale and complexity of agriculture decreased, and diseases became rampant, causing population growth throughout the Mediterranean region to stagnate.

The transfer of population to mountainous areas with inconvenient transportation also means that the regime's ability to control and register the population through census has declined, further reducing the number of people on paper.

This process is applicable to the Ottoman Empire in the east and the Iberian Peninsula, southern France, and Italy in the west.

But areas ruled by the Ottoman Empire were particularly hard hit because:

Most of the land and almost all of the core territory of the Ottoman Empire were along the Mediterranean coast (it occupied two-thirds of the coastline of the Mediterranean at its peak), and its political and economic system was basically established during the Mediterranean economic expansion period in the 15th and 16th centuries.

This meant that the decline of Mediterranean agriculture hit the Ottoman system hardest.

The decline in grain production (coupled with the impact of silver in the Americas) led to severe inflation in the Ottoman territory starting in the late 16th century. The decline in real income made bureaucrats, guards, and citizens dissatisfied, and coups and rebellions occurred frequently.

The decline in population in the plains and the increase in population in the mountains is especially bad news for the empire, because the empire’s main mountainous farmers and herders are the Wallachians and Albanians in the Balkans, the Turkic barbarians and Kurds in Asia Minor, and the Maronites in the Levant. Christians, Druze, and the Berber tribes in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa... are basically full-fledged rebels.

If these people are polite to the Ottoman Empire, then God may show up.

The most dangerous among them were the Turkic barbarians of Asia Minor, given their rebellious habits and their inextricable connections with the empire's mortal enemies, the Safavid dynasty of Persia and its Shia heretical red-headed tribes.

Beginning at the end of the 16th century, the Gerali Rebellion in Asia Minor was undoubtedly related to the activities of the Turkic barbarians. This war, which lasted for nearly a hundred years, resulted in the waste of land in Asia Minor and the devastation of ten houses. Even agriculture in Cilicia and the Menderes Valley was destroyed. The hinterland was reduced to winter pasture for Turkic barbarians.

As troubled as the mountain rebels are the plain nomads who have expanded with the decline of plain agriculture - the Bedouins of the Arabian Desert. This is also the next key target of King Sai. After all, King Sai is one of the two saints. protector of the city

Although the entire Fertile Crescent (Syria + Iraq) region has fallen into a vicious cycle of agricultural decline - intensified nomadic activities - ecological environment deterioration - and continued agricultural decline since the Mongol invasion and even before.

At the same time, the tug of war between the empire and Safavid Persia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries caused Iraq to be almost completely destroyed.

But this process reached its culmination in the empire of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Especially after tribal herdsmen moved north from the hinterland of the Arabian Peninsula into Syria in the late 17th century, the fragile balance between the various Bedouin tribes and the Ottoman Empire government was broken. Every year, the nomads rushed to the walls of Damascus and Aleppo to thresh the valleys.

Because the government cannot guarantee the safety of the countryside and roads, farmers in the plains have abandoned their farmland and fled into the relative safety of the Alawi Mountains and the Lebanon Mountains.

By the 19th century, the entire plains of Syria and Iraq, except for a few large cities, had almost completely turned into uncultivated wasteland, which astonished European scholars who came to discover the ancient Mesopotamia civilization.

On the contrary, the mountainous areas with inconvenient transportation around the plains were prosperous, with men farming and women weaving. The local snakes in the mountains - such as the Druze - soon became the emperors who gave the Ottoman government a headache.

Of course, not all Ottoman provinces were equally affected, as the vast empire also had areas less affected by the Mediterranean climate - such as Egypt, with its steady irrigation from the Nile River, and the northern Balkans/Northern Black Sea coast, which had a continental climate.

As a result, these two areas have become the breadbasket of the Ottomans, and their population has continued to increase in proportion to the total population of the empire. This is why Emperor Sai was worried. Too many Orthodox Christians is not a good thing.

By the way, the most severe period of population decline in Egypt was during the Mamluk dynasty, due to the Black Death and the transfer of sweaters from the Red Sea. The Ottoman Empire did not actually eliminate the Mamluks after conquering Egypt, so who does Egypt have to blame?

Throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, this long process of decline continued until the mid-to-late 19th century before being interrupted.

With the introduction of Western water conservancy technology and the spread of anti-malarial drugs such as quinine, the plains and swamps along the Mediterranean coast were redeveloped for agriculture.

The peace under the British Empire, especially the opening of the Suez Canal, also increased the demand for grains, accelerated the revival of Mediterranean agriculture and re-growth of the population. Unfortunately, at this time, the Ottoman Empire had one leg in the coffin.

Of course, we can give another example. At the peak of Justinian I, Eastern Rome had 36.5 million people.

The production conditions it has are far stronger than those of the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, the production conditions and support capabilities of Justinian's many Italian regions and southern Iberia are stronger than those of the Ottoman Empire's extra territory in the Balkans. .

There were 7.5 million people in Italy during the Roman era, but could Emperor Seth say that Justinian was a waste?

To compare during the same period, during the Little Ice Age, the Mughals had almost 7 figures for each major famine.

In 1668, a French doctor staying in Delhi recorded this.

"Among the states that make up the vast territory of the Indian Empire, many places are little better than a barren land. There are also many places with bare mountains and barren fields, with few people inhabiting them. Even a large part of the fertile land remains uncultivated due to lack of manpower. plow"

The Ottoman Empire, which was roughly located at the same latitude, also suffered from the Little Ice Age, but it survived until the 18th century.

If Akbar knew this he would burst into tears. Therefore, when evaluating a country's administrative capabilities, we should not simply compare numbers, but consider the broader comprehensive impact.

Under the influence of these comprehensive factors, the Ottoman ship finally sailed into the nineteenth century.

The situation of constantly sucking blood from various parts of the empire to replenish the capital has caused the decline of various places, but it has also brought a benefit.

That is, if a capable strongman appears in the center of the empire to promote reforms, the capital's resources will be enough to suppress the local areas.

This is what gave Selim the confidence to carry out his furious reform plan.

There are too many citations, so I won’t list them all. I don’t know what you think, but I did my best.