Middle East and Northern Africa
eunuchs in the ruling elite circles of Islamic governments over a broad span of time. It was published
posthumously and seems to lack several elements of
integration that would have improved its readability.
Twelve appendixes (almost half the total of printed
pages) cover a variety of subthemes that must have
remained in note form. Several of these are so critical
to the main theses of the book that the facts they
contain would have strengthened the overall argument
if they had been inserted into the main text. The core
chapters of the book are organized in chronological
fashion, beginning with the earliest traces of roles
played by eunuchs in Islamic society (probably under
the mid-seventh-century C.E. Umayyad Caliph
Mdawiyah I) through Abbasid, Seljuq, Zangid, and
Ayyubid/Mamluk times. Although some data relate to
the early Ottoman period, the post-1400 period is
clearly very sketchy.
Ayalon depends on the apparent synonymy of the
words khasi (literally "castrated one") and khadim
(literally "servant") to guide him through the vast body
of literature he surveyed over his long career. If his
assumption that khadim can be synonymous with khasi
is correct, then there is a clear need to reread all
recorded references to the former and to look carefully at contexts that suggest that the person in question was, in all likelihood, a eunuch. Indeed, this book
does just that, offering literally hundreds of citations
translated from original texts that reveal how centra]
the role of eunuchs must have been, not only in Islamic
courts but in the upper echelons of civil society. A
prominent example of the Jatter (among dozens
throughout the text) would be the case of Kurdish amir
Nasr al-Dawla b. Marwan in eleventh-century DiyaraIbn Marwan had five hundred concubines and five
hundred eunuchs in his household!
Again, if Ayalon's thesis on synonymy is indeed
correct, our reading not only of the numbers of
eunuchs involved in court life from Abbasid through
the Mamluk periods but of the very nature of the role
of eunuchs stands to be altered considerably. It is the
second question that merits closer attention in this
brief review.
First, Ayalon's multiple (excessive?) citations from a
variety of original texts allows us to escape the limitations of one obvious supposition that Islamic rulers
chose eunuchs as attendants in the private sanctuary of
the harim. The extraordinary number of references to
khadims filling many different functions, beginning
with the very important responsibility of tutoring palace elite slaves (mamluks), suggests that acquisition
and use of eunuchs was an integral part of palace
political strategy. Ayalon definitely linked the apparent growth in numbers of eunuchs at Islamic courts
with the concurrent appearance of rulers' reliance on
mamluks to serve as palace military elites. In fact, it
was not too long after the reign of HárCin ar Rashid
(previously identified as a period of expansion in the
numbers of identifiable eunuchs at court) that Caliph
al Mu`tasim (r. 833-842) created what has been con-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 295
sidered the first mamluk regiment. Ayalon argues that
the two palace groups would be linked from that point
onward, primarily because Islamic courts would entrust the early education and training of their mamluks
mainly, if not solely, to highly loyal eunuchs.
At least two other "official" functions merit treatment either as chapters or subsections of main chapters: caliphal dependence on highly trusted eunuchs to
represent their interests in negotiations for the exchange of prisoners (mainly on the Christian-Islamic
border between the Abassids and the Byzantines) and
in the supervision of empire-wide communications
through the barid, or imperial mail service. Ayalon
even found that a prominent eunuch, Wasif, khadim of
Caliph al-Mdta'did's governor of Azerbaijan and Armenia, was himself named governor of the border
region next to Byzantine lands—this near the year 900
C.E.
Although systematic treatment of the author's main
genera] thesis is wanting, Ayalon concludes with the
suggestion that a "great triangle" (Ayalon's term denoting relations between the inner harem, court eunuchs and mamluks) probably existed at all periods in
Islamic history. Taking the obvious political influence
wielded by all three segments together, he contends
that this configuration "was by far the strongest and
most durable social, socio-administrative and sociomilitary combination which Islamic society ever created" (p. 197).
BYRON D. CANNON
University of Utah
RHOADS MURPHEY. Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700. New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. 1999. Pp.
xxii, 278. Cloth $55.00, paper $25.00.
Splendidly illustrating the potential for revisionist
military history of the Ottoman Empire, this book will
enlighten Ottoman specialists and fundamentally challenge European-exceptionalist military historians.
White neglecting such important topics as naval war or
the challenge created by seventeenth-century innovations in dril] and discipline, the book emphasizes
preparation and planning for war, the "post-war impact of military activity," the constraints and limitations on war-making, its "uncontrollable and unpredictable aspects," and the "physical and psychological
realities" that Ottoman soldiers experienced (p. xviii).
At the end of the seventeenth century, Rhoads Murphey argues, the Ottomans' position as a "universally
acknowledged European `superpower' was stil] largely
intact." Despite Karlowitz (1699), until the mid-eighteenth century Europeans stil] regarded the Ottomans
"with considerable awe" (p. 53).
Challenging ideas of unvarying Ottoman military
aggressiveness, Murphey emphasizes the relative quiescence on the Eastern European front (from 1566 to
1683, with unbroken detente from 1606 to 1660), the
accommodation with Safavid Iran represented by the
Treaty of Amasya (1555), and the infrequency with
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296
Reviews of Books
which either the Ottomans or their opponents could
field large armies in this period. He emphasizes five
limiting factors as constraining the concentration of
military force in the early modern period. Technologically, while the Ottomans remained up-to-date
throughout this period, the effectiveness of gunpowder
and firearms was limited, a point that he illustrates
with vivid examples. Fiscally, while the Ottomans took
the lead early in creating a centrally funded standing
army, the need to rely increasingly over time on paid
infantry as opposed to land-holding cavalry made it
difficult to keep military expenditure within sustainable limits. Environmentally, distance and the seasons
limited the "maximum range of operations" (pp. xiv
[Map 4], 21). Motivationally, far from being uniformly
fired by Islamic zeal, Ottoman troops performed very
differently depending on whether they were permanently paid regulars, or temporarily hired irregulars.
Politically, government efforts to control the military
were challenged by factional rivalries among commanders, by episodic military revolts, and by the
unpredictability of vassals such as the Crimean Tatars
or the Kurdish begs of eastern Anatolia. The empire
was "far from being an armed camp," and its military
institutions were far from dominating "civil society";
the Ottoman advantage lay in administrative support
for the forces in the field (p. 49).
Murphey sheds especially valuable light on Ottoman
adaptability and resourcefulness: for example, the
huge cuts in the salaried palace cavalry regiments
undertaken to offset the growth in salaried infantry
forces (1609-1692, p. 52) or the "administrative precision and finesse" that supported military transport
and logistics (p. 63). "It was the efficient central
requisitioning and distribution of military supplies in
the period 1500-1700 that most set the Ottomans
apart from their European adversaries" (p. 99). Far
from suffering from any technology gap before the
mid-eighteenth century, the Ottomans, in Murphey's
view, fully participated in a shared military technology
characterized by "multi-directional" transfer of ideas
(p. 108). Detailed accounts of the siege of Baghdad
(1638) and the Eastern European campaign of 1664
back up his assertions. Far from conceding that the
Ottoman provincial cavalry became obsolete in this
period, Murphey sees the Ottoman combination of
Janissary infantry and timar-holding cavalry, under
effective leadership, as "a formidable, and for most of
the period 1500-1700 virtually undefeatable, alliance"
(p. 166). Challenging prevailing opinion among Ottomanists, Murphey does not see the employment of
irregular sekban infantry and sarica cavalry as detracting from this picture. `Roth the scale of. . . recruitment. . . and the size of rural society's response were
too small" for the mobilization and demobilization of
such forces to have been "a precipitant factor" in the
seventeenth-century agrarian crisis in Anatolia or in
"state fiscal crisis" (pp. 190-91).
Prudently dedicating his book to those who will
come after him ("posterioribus"), Murphey has written
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW a pioneering work that will no doubt prove to have
both the strengths and weaknesses inherent in that
fact. Ottoman historians are greatly indebted to him.
Any Europeanists who believe that the Ottomans
"missed" the military revolution or that they were
atavistically motivated by religious fanaticism—especially as compared with their European counterparts
of the period from the Reformation through the Thirty
Years' War—have much to learn from him.
CARTER VAUGHN FINDLEY
Ohio State University
and INARI KARSH. Empires of the Sand:
The Struggle for Mastel} in the Middle East 1789-1923.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1999. Pp.
x, 409. $29.95.
EFRAIM KARSH
,
Despite the persistent efforts of a small number of
Ottomanists, the general approach to late Ottoman
history has been limited to explaining it within the
context of the so-called Eastern Question, which in
effect describes a great game among the great powers
of Europe who were eager to partition the estate of a
sick man. This approach finds it unnecessary to take
internal factors into consideration, since they lack the
importance of a single note verbale from the foreign
office of a great power. This approach is allo rather
convenient: it saves the student of history from the
burden of examining the records of the "sick man,"
since they have no value in understanding the great
game. Thus the studies that attempt to explain what
happened in this periphery are heavily based on European sources. Although no one would give credence
to a work on modern Spanish history depending solely
on British Foreign Office papers, such works have
become standard on the late Ottoman Empire in
European and American academia.
Interestingly, while many challenges to this approach by Ottomanists have fallen on deaf ears, a
challenge coming from within has caused an unmistakable stir in the aforementioned academie circles. This
book by Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh has the merit of
providing some of the basic information about late
Ottoman history that was sidelined by traditional
essays on the Eastern Question, which maintained that
the main bone of contention between the Ottomans
and the European powers was religious, stemming
from Ottoman ill-treatment of their non-Muslim subjects. The authors argue that "there was no clash of
civilisations" and that Middle Eastern political actors,
including the Ottoman leadership, often sought "infidel" support. Ottoman treaties of alliance with Christian powers, for instance, go back as far as 1536.
During the Wahhabi revolt, the Ottoman government
seriously considered soliciting the support of the Royal
Navy to defeat rebels who had gained the upper hand
in the Persian Gulf. In addition, Kuwait, Qatar, and
Bahrain emerged as autonomous regions within the
Ottoman Empire as a result of the grant of British
protection to them, and almost every sheikh sought
FEBRUARY 2001