Unraveling the Epic Legacy of the Ottoman Empire: From Ascension to the Fall of the Caliphate
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| FALL OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE |
Muslim Ummah and Ottoman Caliphate
Among the major wounds inflicted on the existence of the Muslim Ummah over a period of nearly fifteen hundred years is the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate. This empire, which originated from a small province in Anatolia (Asia Minor), expanded during the forty-year reign of Caliph Suleiman the Magnificent or Suleiman the Magnificent in the sixteenth century and reached east of the Red Sea, from North Africa to the Balkan states and beyond to the walls of Vienna in Eastern Europe. Its territory was so vast that not only Muslims but also Christians and a large number of Jews lived in peace and tranquility within it.
Due to its power and grandeur, it had become a topic of discussion for European thinkers and art experts, but the cycle of globalization took hold of it and by the end of the eighteenth century, its glory and splendor began to fade. The center of authority was the personality of the Caliph. Due to the lack of administrative division, the Caliph's grip on distant territories began to weaken.
Influential and Corrupt Pashas of Ottoman’s
Corruption took root among the influential “pashas” who formed a circle around the Caliph. The empire became economically hollow. The Jewish moneylenders and bank owners, having accumulated wealth, became richer than the state. “Coins are impossible in the factory of nature… Stability is a change in time.” In this universe of Allah Almighty, we see situations and events changing every moment. Change is change, stability belongs to no nation, neither to an individual, countries nor empires. The guidance of Allah Almighty is: “These are the ups and downs of time, which we keep circulating among the people.”
That is why it has been said that “every perfection is a decline,” meaning that whoever sees the height of rise eventually falls into the lows of decline. Great empires came. Dara and Jamshed passed away. Conquerors like Alexander and Napoleon in modern times raised flags of conquest in the world, but there was a limit to their conquests determined by nature. The empire of the Nimrods of Babylon did not survive, nor did the power of the Pharaohs of Egypt endure. “There is no tomb of Alexander, nor is there the tomb of Darius… How can the names of the people who have been erased be remembered?”
Every Perfection Meets Its Decline
Having reached this limit, the famous one himself also fell asleep in the dust, and the power of the empires also sat down as dust. In the evening, the lamp of the Umayyad Empire was extinguished, and the candles of the Abbasid Empire were lit in Baghdad. The material progress and prosperity of this empire reached its peak. It was such a knowledge of its vastness that one day, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid was standing on the roof of his palace and enjoying the weather.
A piece of cloud in the sky moved from one side of the palace to the other, so Harun al-Rashid said, “O piece of cloud! In whatever part of the world you fall, its tribute will come to my treasury.” After touching the heights of economic prosperity, civilization and civilization, the light of sciences and arts, jurisprudence and hadith, philosophy and mysticism, this empire fell prey to the terror of the Tatars. Baghdad became a ruin, and the destruction of books had turned the waters of the Tigris black. Autumn plundered the entire garden. “There are no flowers, no buds, no shoots, no leaves… How has the garden become an offering of autumn?”
An Umayyad prince, Abd al-Rahman al-Dakhil, who fled the oppression of the Abbasids and entered Andalusia through Morocco and then across the Gulf, had already left the mark of the Umayyad Empire there. For seven hundred years in Andalusia, this Muslim empire left behind traces of civilization, science, and art, whose light spread to Europe, but in 1492 AD, it too disappeared, leaving behind traces like the Mosque of Cordoba and the Alhambra Palace. Even before the decline of the Muslim empire of Andalusia, Osman I ibn Artagral had laid the foundation of a great empire in Turkey in 1299 AD.
In February 1451, in fulfillment of a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Sultan Muhammad the Conqueror defeated the Byzantine Romans and razed their magnificent towers to the ground. The Byzantine capital, Constantinople, was taken from the Romans. Constantinople was renamed Istanbul.
Then, for six hundred and twenty-four years, the Ottoman Empire showed its glory, majesty, and splendor. Until the caliphate of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, this empire had some glory and splendor, but due to the financial condition of the empire and some administrative errors, it lost its strength. The Balkan wars further weakened it.
The treasury of the empire was empty, and the Jews, taking advantage of the freedom that the Sultan had given to the Jews, had deposited all their wealth in banks in Turkey and abroad. There were also Jews who were richer than the state. They lent money to the needy among the Turkish people at high interest rates and exploited them by taking advantage of their interest. Under these circumstances, at the end of World War I, various parts of the Ottoman Empire were divided between France, Britain, and Russia. In these circumstances, the Caliphate was lifeless.
1924, Mustafa Kemal Pasha
Finally, in 1924, Mustafa Kemal struck him down with a dictatorial blow, and the institution of the Caliphate was destroyed forever. Amir Minai said in the rhyme of Haider Ali Atish Hai: “How did the name become unmarked? How did the earth consume the sky? How did it become?” But among the conspiracies against the Ottoman Caliphate on a global scale, Turkish and Arab nationalism are particularly noteworthy.
Sultan Abdul Hamid II was conservative by nature. Religious circles had an influence on him, but these circles were suffering from intellectual stagnation. The doors of ijtihad had already been closed, and the effects of Sufism were profound. The modern mind was not accepting such superstitions, which were skillfully made into a cult of Western civilization and civilization, and the “Young Turk Movement” was a manifestation of these Western-oriented tendencies.
There was no justification for Turkey to join the First World War, but there were people like Enver Pasha in its army who pushed the Ottoman Empire into this quagmire. The alliance with Germany in the war was also the result of the efforts of these people. These same people had played a heinous role in the massacres in Albania and Cyprus, the stain of which is still etched on Turkish soil.
In 1908, Sultan Abdul Hamid II accepted a demand from the “Young Turk Organization” and restored the constitution and handed over many of his powers to the parliament, but the hero of the Young Turk Revolution or the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), Enver Pasha, whose group also included Cemal Pasha and Talat Pasha, had his own ambitions. Mustafa Kemal was also associated with the Young Turk movement, but there was competition and rivalry between Enver Pasha and Mustafa Kemal.
The situation changed, and the government that was established in January 1919 after the war ended forcibly separated Enver Pasha from the army. He fled to Germany. In his absence, he was court-martialed and sentenced to death for unnecessarily pushing the country into war, for expelling the Armenian people from the country by brutal military force, and for leaving the country without permission. This move cleared the way for Mustafa Kemal Pasha.
Power Tussle Between Mustafa Kemal Pasha and Enver Pasha
After the war, Mustafa Kemal became the master of Turkey's black and white as a powerful man. He closed the chapter of the caliphate forever in 1924. He put Turkey on the path of modernization and Westernization. Clothing, decoration, and manners all changed. In order to make the Turkish language similar to the West, the Latin script was introduced instead of the Arabic, Persian, and Urdu scripts, which caused the new generations to lose contact with the Quran and Hadith, jurisprudence and commentary, and the storehouse of knowledge and literature in Arabic.
The call to prayer for religious education and prayers, and the veil for women, as well as the hijab, i.e. the headscarf, were banned. Hagia Sophia was converted from a mosque into a museum. There is no evidence that Mustafa Kemal was a regular member of the Freemasons, but the effects of this mysterious Jewish organization on the hearts and minds of the young officers of the Young Turk Movement and the Military Medical School Academy were very deep.
If we look at the activities of the Committee of Union and Progress, which was active for about three decades in the Ottoman Caliphate, sometimes underground, sometimes in distant provinces, and sometimes in Britain, all its roles in the Turkish Revolution appear to be tools of foreign powers. During the war, Defense Minister Enver Pasha and his group had secret ties with Germany, and Mustafa Kemal was in the hands of Britain.
Regardless of whether this theory is true or false, there have been reports that the British forces deliberately retreated in the Battle of Gallipoli, giving Mustafa Kemal the opportunity to win the battle and making him a hero. Mustafa Kemal ended the Ottoman Caliphate, breaking not only Turkey's six hundred years of glorious and proud past but also Islam. According to him, Islam was not the religion of the Turks but only of the Arabs.
Rise and Fall of Muslim Empires
The existence and non-existence of empires and their rise and fall are part of the great scheme of nature, but before that, it used to happen that a Muslim empire was uprooted by the winds of decline, and then another Muslim empire was settled in another part. But the great tragedy was that in the twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire's Gulistan was devastated by its own hands to the point that there was no possibility of its population remaining. It has been a hundred years since this incident. Several movements arose to restore the Caliphate, but the institution of the Caliphate could not be restored.
Different nations and nationalities have drawn such deep lines that now the authority of a figure declared as a Caliph in one Muslim country is not accepted by another country. The empire whose flags of splendor, majesty, and awe and power flew for six hundred years and whose awe and power made three continents tremble, its cloak has been torn, and its glory and splendor has become a fictional tale. "The ignorant Turks have torn the cloak of the Caliphate... Look at the simplicity of the Muslim, look at the arrogance of others too."
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