Product Code Database
Ottoman Hungary () encompassed the parts of the Kingdom of Hungary which were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire from the occupation of Buda in 1541 until the liberation of the region under Habsburg leadership during the Great Turkish War (1683–1699), until the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. The territory was incorporated into the empire, under the name Macaristan. For most of its duration, Ottoman Hungary covered Southern Transdanubia and almost the entire region of the Great Hungarian Plain.
Ottoman Hungary was divided for administrative purposes into Eyalet (provinces), which were further divided into Sanjak. Ownership of much of the land was distributed to Ottoman soldiers and officials with the remaining territory being retained by the Ottoman state. As a border territory, much of Ottoman Hungary was heavily fortified with troop garrisons. Remaining economically under-developed, it became a drain on Ottoman resources. During the centuries long three-way Hungarian–Habsburg–Ottoman wars the Hungarian population was highly decimated.
In 1686, Buda was recaptured from the Ottomans, and in 1687, after the Second Battle of Mohács, the Hungarian parliament recognized that the inheritance of the Hungarian crown had passed to the Habsburgs. The imperial armies pushed the Turks out of Hungary relatively quickly and occupied Transylvania as well. Following the defeat of the Ottomans in the Great Turkish War, the Ottomans recognized the loss of the Ottoman Hungary by the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. The remaining Ottoman occupied territories (that encompassed the southern border regions of the Kingdom of Hungary), Temeşvar Eyalet, Syrmia and Belgrade, were reconquered by the Habsburgs during the Austro-Turkish War between 1716 and 1718, the cession of these regions was acknowledged by signing of the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718.
In 1521, Hungary was invaded by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. The key border fortress of Belgrade, considered the southern gate of the Kingdom of Hungary, was captured by the Ottomans following the Third Siege of Belgrade. The Sultan launched an attack against the Kingdom of Hungary, defeating its smaller army at the Battle of Mohács in 1526, during which King Louis II of Hungary died.
After the death of the Hungarian king, both the Austrian Habsburg family and the Hungarian noble Zápolya family claimed the whole kingdom. King John I of Hungary ruled the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom, and the Habsburgs ruled the western part of Hungary. The Habsburgs tried several times to unite all of Hungary under their rule, but the Ottoman Empire prevented that by supporting the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom. King John I died in 1540, the Habsburg forces besieged Buda, the Hungarian capital, in 1541. Sultan Suleiman led a relief force and defeated the Habsburgs, the Ottomans captured the city by a trick during the Siege of Buda and the south central and central areas of the kingdom came under the authority of the Ottoman Empire, therefore Hungary was divided into three parts. The north-western rim of the Hungarian kingdom remained unconquered and recognised members of the House of Habsburg as Kings of Hungary, giving it the name "Royal Hungary". The Eastern Hungarian Kingdom is the predecessor of the Principality of Transylvania, which was established by the Treaty of Speyer in 1570 and the Eastern Hungarian King became the first Prince of Transylvania. The Principality of Transylvania was a semi-independent state, and a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, it continued to be part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the sense of public law, John Sigismund's possessions belonged to the Holy Crown of Hungary, and was a symbol of the survival of Hungarian statehood. The boundary between the three territories thereupon became the frontline in the Ottoman–Habsburg wars over the next 150 years.
In these times, the territory of present-day Hungary began to undergo changes due to the Ottoman occupation. Vast lands remained unpopulated and covered with woods. Flood plains became marshes. The life of the inhabitants on the Ottoman side was unsafe. Peasants fled to the woods and marshes, forming guerrilla bands, known as the Hajdú troops. Eventually, the territory of present-day Hungary became a drain on the Ottoman Empire, swallowing much of its revenue into the maintenance of a long chain of border forts. However, some parts of the economy flourished. In the huge unpopulated areas, townships bred cattle that were herded to south Germany and northern Italy - in some years they exported 500,000 head of cattle. Wine was traded to the Czech lands, Austria and Poland.
The defeat of Ottoman forces led by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha at the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, at the hands of the combined armies of Poland and the Holy Roman Empire under John III Sobieski swung the balance of power in the region. Still, in 1686, Buda was recaptured by the Ottomans. In 1699, under the terms of the Treaty of Karlowitz, which ended the Great Turkish War, the Ottomans ceded to Habsburgs much of the territory they had previously taken from the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. Following this treaty, the members of the Habsburg dynasty administered a much enlarged Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary (previously they controlled only area known as "Royal Hungary"; see Kingdom of Hungary (1526–1867)).
In the 1540s, the total of the four principal fortresses of Buda (2,965), Pest (1,481), Székesfehérvár (2,978) and Esztergom (2,775) were 10,200 troops.Ottoman Warfare 1500-1700, Rhoads Murphey, 1999, p.227
The number of Ottoman garrison troops stationed in Ottoman Hungary vary, but during the peak period in the mid-16th century it rose to between 20,000 and 22,000 men. As a force of occupation for a country the size of Hungary, even confined to central portions it was a rather low-profile military presence in much of the country and a relatively large proportion of it was concentrated in a few key fortresses. Ottoman Warfare 1500–1700, Rhoads Murphey, 1999, p.56
In 1640 when the front remained relatively quiet, 8,000 Janissary supported by an undocumented number of local recruits was sufficient to garrison the whole of the Eyalet of Budin.
The Sublime Porte (Ottoman rulers) became the sole landowner and managed about 20 percent of the land for its own benefit, apportioning the rest among soldiers and civil servants. The Ottoman landlords were interested mainly in squeezing as much wealth from the land as quickly as possible. Of major importance to the Sublime Porte was the collection of taxes. Taxation left little for the former landlords to collect; Most of the nobility and large numbers of burghers emigrated into the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary ("Royal Hungary") province.
After the final Ottoman conquest of Hungary in 1541, there were frequent border raids by Ottoman and Crimean-Tartar troops toward Christian border lands, during which civilian were killed or captured, marched away and sold in to slavery in the Ottoman Empire at the slave markets of Istanbul and Sarajevo.Sefiloğlu M. S. (2023). Manhunt On The Austrian Border; Evliya Çelebi, Slave Raids And Enslavement Fenerbahçe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimleri Dergisi 2023;3(1), 47-60 Between 1522 and 1717, Tatars, soldiers from the Crimean Khanate, often participated in the Ottoman campaigns in the Hungarian border zones, and during these campaigns the tatars often captured slaves in Hungary and Austria; the long way back to the Crimea did provide opportunity for prisoners to escape, but many were abducted to Crimea, where they were either ransomed (if they were rich), or (if they were poor) sold on the Crimean slave trade.Ransom Slavery Along the Ottoman Borders: Early Fifteenth-early Eighteenth Centuries. (2007). Nederländerna: Brill. p.201-202
Wars, slave raids, and the emigration of nobles who lost their land caused a depopulation of the countryside. However, the Ottomans practiced relative religious tolerance and allowed the various ethnicities living within the empire significant autonomy in internal affairs. Towns maintained some self-government, and a prosperous middle class developed through artisanry and trade.
The decay of the southernmost counties of the Kingdom of Hungary had started long before the Ottoman rule, the Ottomans had already invaded Hungary's southern parts between 1390 and 1400.
As a consequence of the 150 years of constant warfare between the Christian states and Ottomans, population growth was stunted, and the network of ethnic Hungarian medieval settlements, with their urbanized bourgeois inhabitants, perished. The ethnic composition of the territory that had been part of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary was fundamentally changed through deportations and massacres, so that the number of ethnic Hungarians in existence at the end of the Ottoman period was substantially diminished.
The Hungarian journey of Evliya Çelebi, a Turkish traveller in 1660–1664:
The economic decline of Buda, the Hungarian capital at the time of the Ottoman conquest, was emblematic of its stagnated growth rate. The city's population was no larger in 1686 than it had been two centuries prior. The Ottomans allowed the Hungarian royal palace to fall into ruins. The Ottomans later transformed the palace into a gunpowder store and magazine, which caused its detonation during the siege in 1686. The Christian Hungarian population significantly shrank in the next decades, due to them fleeing to the Habsburg-ruled Royal Hungary, especially by 1547 the number of the original Christian population of Buda was down to about a thousand, and by 1647 it had fallen to only about seventy.Peter F. Sugar, Péter Hanák, Tibor Frank, A History of Hungary, Indiana University Press, 1994 pp. 11-143.[1] The number of Jewish and Gypsy immigrants became dominant during the Ottoman rule in Buda.Ga ́bor A ́goston, Bruce Alan Masters (2025). 9781438110257, Infobase Publishing. . ISBN 9781438110257
The Hungarian inhabitants of cities moved to other places when they felt threatened by the Ottoman military presence. Without exception, in the cities that became Ottoman administrative centers the Christian population decreased. The Hungarian population remained only in some cities, where the Ottoman garrisons were not installed. From the early 17th century, Serbian refugees were the ethnic majority in large parts of Ottoman-controlled Hungary. That area included territories between the great rivers Sava, Drava, and the Danube–Tisza Interfluve (the territory between the Danube and Tisza rivers).
According to estimates made by Hungarian historians, the proportion of Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin was around 75-80% at the end of the 15th century, and non-Hungarians were little more than 20 to 25% of the total population. Historical World Atlas. With the commendation of the Royal Geographical Society. Carthographia, Budapest, Hungary, 2005. CM The Hungarian population began to decrease at the time of the Ottoman Empire conquest. The decline of the Hungarians was due to the constant wars, Ottoman raids, famines, and plagues during the 150 years of Ottoman rule. The main zones of war were the territories inhabited by the Hungarians, so the death toll depleted them much faster than other nationalities. (2025). 9789639545649, Eötvös Loránd Research Network (ELKH), Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences (CSFK), Geographical Institute. . ISBN 9789639545649 (2025). 9789639545489, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Geographical Institute. . ISBN 9789639545489
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman conquest turned Kingdom of Hungary into a battlefield. According to Hungarian historiography, the ethnic pattern of Hungary changed significantly due to the centuries long wars. During the Ottoman occupation, the Principality of Transylvania maintained the continuity of Hungarian statehood. The Habsburg–Wallachian military campaigns between 1599 and 1604, and Ottoman–Tatar military campaigns between 1657 and 1661 were destructive for the Hungarians living in the region and the Hungarian settlements connecting the Hungarian ethnic blocks of the Partium and Székely Land suffered the most extensive destruction. Between the Battle of Mohács in 1526 and the suppression of Rákóczi's War of Independence in 1711, the Hungarian and Catholic dominated population structure of the Late Medieval Kingdom of Hungary was broken up, in Transylvania the Romanians became majority and the Hungarians became a minority population, and in the more sheltered mountainous regions, the Romanian population steadily grew, benefiting from additional immigration from Wallachia and Moldavia. (2025). 9789639545489, The Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences Geographical Institute. . ISBN 9789639545489 (2025). 9789639545649, Eötvös Loránd Research Network (ELKH), Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences (CSFK), Geographical Institute. . ISBN 9789639545649 (2025). 9789639545489, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Geographical Institute. . ISBN 9789639545489
The three parts of Hungary; the Habsburg Hungary, Ottoman Hungary and Transylvania, experienced only minor differences in population increase in the 17th century. Ottoman Warfare 1500–1700, Rhoads Murphey, 1999, p.173-174
The South Slavic peoples (Serbs, Bosniaks) expanded northward in the wake of the Ottoman conquest, while the Hungarian population that survived the Ottoman conquest fled the area over the course of the 17th century. Throughout the 17th century, the newly settled Orthodox South Slavic population ensured the military garrisons, logistical support, and food supply of the Ottoman army in this region. Consequently, the Hungarians derisively referred to the region of Ottoman conquest as "Rascia" (Serbia) from that period onward.
The Magyarab people are a small Magyar (Hungarian) community living within Nubia, along the Nile in Sudan and Egypt.Géza Balázs, The Story of Hungarian: A Guide to the Language, Corvina Books, 1997,p. 20Iván Boldizsár, The New Hungarian Quarterly, Volume 7, Lapkiadó Publishing House, 1966, p. 148 They have distant Hungarian ancestors who intermarried with locals.Hansjoachim von der Esch, Weenak - die Karawane ruft (Brockhaus, Leipzig 1941) The Ottoman Empire had to recruit troops from conquered Christian people, most notably through the Devshirme system, a special "tribute in blood", by which the Janissary corps was primarily staffed. In this system, Christian youths were taken, or children where kidnapped during Ottoman raids, primarily from the Balkan provinces, then converted to Islam and drafted into Ottoman service. The Hungarian population experienced the recruitment of its people under the Ottoman regime. The Hungarians who were relocated from Hungary to the banks of the Nile were soldiers in the Ottoman army, brought there by Sultan Selim to serve as border guards. These groups of Hungarians ended up in Egypt-Sudan after retiring from military service, concluding their army careers there.
Hungary's population in the late 16th century was in Ottoman Hungary 900,000, in Habsburg Hungary 1,800,000 and 'free' (Transylvania) Hungary 800,000, making a total of 3,500,000 inhabitants for the whole of Hungary.
The population growth in Ottoman Hungary during the 17th century was slight: from 900,000 to approximately 1,000,000 inhabitants, a rate similar to that experienced in Royal Hungary and Transylvania.
In the , people not only prayed, but were taught to read and write, to read the Koran, and prayers. The sermons were the most effective form of political education. There were numerous elementary and secondary schools besides the mosques, and the monasteries of the Dervish orders also served as centers of culture and education.
The spread of culture was supported by the libraries. The mosque complex and türbe of Sokollu Mustafa Pasha in Budin (Buda) was built by Ottoman chief architect Mimar Sinan and contained a school and library offering Muslim religious sciences, literature, works on oratory, poetry, astronomy, music, architecture, and medical sciences.Papp, Adrienn. (2011). Building and builder: Constructions under Sokollu Mustafa Pasha's reign in medieval Buda. In Biedronska-Slota, B.; Ginter-Frolow, M. & Malinowski, J. (ed). The Art of the Islamic World and the Artistic Relationships Between Poland and Islamic Countries. Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology & Polish Institute of World Art Studies. pp. 75-83.
Meanwhile he the wins converts by craft more than by force, and snatches away Christ by fraud out of the hearts of men. For the Turk, it is true, at the present time compels no country by violence to apostatise; but he uses other means whereby imperceptibly he roots out Christianity...The preaching of Islam: a history of the propagation of the Muslim faith By Sir Thomas Walker Arnold, pg. 136
The relative religious tolerance of the Ottomans enabled Protestantism in Hungary (such as the Reformed Church in Hungary) to survive against the oppression of the Catholic Habsburg-ruled Hungarian domains.
There were approximately 80,000 Muslim settlers in the Ottoman-controlled territory of Hungary; being mainly administrators, soldiers, artisans, and merchants of Crimean Tatars origin. The religious life of the Muslims was supervised by the mosques that were either newly built or transformed from older Christian churches. Payment for the servants of the mosques, as well as the maintenance of the churches, was the responsibility of the Ottoman state or charities.
Besides Sunni Islam, a number of dervish communities also flourished including the , the Alevi, and the . The famous Gül Baba monastery of Budin (Buda), sheltering 60 dervishes, belonged to the bektasi order. Situated close to the janissaries camp, it was built by Jahjapasazáde Mehmed Pasha, the third begler bey (governor) of Budin. Gul Baba's tomb (türbe) is to this day the northernmost site of Islamic conquest.Christina Shea, Joseph S. Lieber, Erzsébet Barát, Frommer's Budapest & the Best of Hungary, John Wiley and Sons, 2004, p 122-123 [4]
Another famous monastery of its time was that of the halveti dervishes. Built around 1576 next to the türbe of Sultan Süleyman I the Magnificent (1520–1566) in Sigetvar (Szigetvár), it soon became the religious and cultural centre of the area. A famous prior of the zavije (monastery) was the Bosnians Šejh Ali Dede. The monastery of Jakovali Hasan Paša in Peçuy (Pécs) was another famous location. Its most outstanding prior was Mevlevian dervish Peçevi Arifi Ahmed Dede, a Turk and native of Peçuy.
By the end of the sixteenth century, around 90% of the inhabitants of Ottoman Hungary were Protestant, most of them being Calvinist.
Muslims settled in Baranya and Pécs in Ottoman Hungary. Following the successful Habsburg Siege of Pécs, some Muslims converted to Catholicism between 1686 and 1713.
|
|
