For a long time the story after Suleiman was told as a long slide. Weak sultans raised in the palace, scheming women of the harem, corrupt officials and unruly Janissaries supposedly sapped a great empire until it became the "sick man of Europe." The interesting twist is where this story came from. Ottoman writers of the seventeenth century themselves complained of decline, in works of political advice to the sultan. The most famous, a memorandum by Koçi Bey to Murad IV around 1630, blamed the empire's troubles on departures from the practices of Suleiman's day. Later European and Turkish historians took such complaints at face value.

Recent historians read them differently. The advice writers often came from groups losing out to change, such as the old timar cavalry, so their nostalgia was also self-interest. What looked like decay can often be seen as adaptation to new conditions. Power shifted from the person of the sultan to viziers, royal mothers, the Janissaries, religious scholars and provincial notables, which some historians see as a broadening of political life rather than mere disorder.

Crisis around 1600

The pressures were real. Silver from the Americas fed inflation; population growth outran land; and a cooling climate, part of what is called the Little Ice Age, brought drought and famine. Warfare changed too: musket-armed infantry mattered more and cavalry less. The state hired more salaried troops, then struggled to pay them. The Celali revolts were waves of rebellion in Anatolia around 1600, led by unemployed soldiers, bandits and discontented officials, that devastated the countryside. To raise cash the state turned increasingly to tax farming, selling the right to collect taxes to the highest bidder, and in 1695 began selling such rights for life.

The Janissaries, meanwhile, became a political force. In 1622 rebellious Janissaries killed the young sultan Osman II, who was said to be planning to replace them. It was the first time Ottoman subjects had killed their sultan, and it would not be the last time soldiers made or unmade a ruler.

Revival and the second siege of Vienna

Recovery came too. From 1656 a family of grand viziers, the Köprülüs, restored order with ruthless efficiency and completed the conquest of Crete in 1669. In 1683 the grand vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha led a huge army to besiege Vienna a second time. A relief army led by King Jan III Sobieski of Poland broke the second siege of Vienna in 1683, and the disaster turned into sixteen years of war against a Holy League of Austria, Poland, Venice and later Russia.

The war ended in a treaty that marked a turning point. At Karlowitz in 1699, the Ottomans for the first time signed away large territories to a coalition of European powers: most of Hungary and Transylvania to the Habsburgs, Podolia to Poland and the Morea to Venice. They also accepted English and Dutch diplomats as mediators, a sign that the empire was now part of a European system of negotiated peace rather than standing above it.

Tulips and type

The early eighteenth century brought a burst of cultural openness, later named the Tulip Era after the elite's passion for the flowers, roughly from 1718 to 1730. An Ottoman envoy visited Paris in 1720 and reported on French palaces and gardens. In this setting came a famous innovation. Jewish printers had worked in Istanbul since the 1490s, but the first press printing Ottoman Turkish in Arabic script opened only in 1727, under İbrahim Müteferrika, a Hungarian-born convert. Why it came so late is debated: religious objections, the interests of scribes, the prestige of calligraphy and limited demand all play a role in different accounts. A popular revolt in 1730 ended the Tulip Era and toppled its grand vizier.

The rise of Russia

The most dangerous new rival lay to the north. A war with Catherine the Great's Russia from 1768 to 1774 went badly, and the peace was harsh. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774 made the Crimean Khanate independent of the sultan, and Russia annexed it in 1783. For the first time a land with a large Muslim population passed from Ottoman protection to Christian rule. Russia read the treaty as giving it a right to speak for the sultan's Orthodox Christian subjects, an interpretation that gave it a pretext for intervention for the next century.

Worked example: testing the decline story

A straight line of decline predicts steady losses from 1566 onward. Check it against the record. In 1669 the empire completed the conquest of Crete. In 1683 it was strong enough to besiege Vienna. The loss at Karlowitz in 1699 was severe, but in 1711 an Ottoman army trapped Peter the Great of Russia on the Pruth River and forced him to return the fortress of Azov. In 1739 the Treaty of Belgrade won back Belgrade from the Habsburgs. Only after 1768 did losses become steady and severe.

The record looks less like a slide than a long contest with ups and downs, in which rivals such as Russia and Austria grew stronger faster. A better question than "why did the Ottomans decline?" is "how did the Ottomans adapt, and why did their adaptations fall behind their neighbors'?" Framing matters: a word like "decline" can carry a conclusion before any evidence is examined.