The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars

Bruce B. de Mesquita

In practice, [Ottomans had] two kinds of war. The first was the war of imperial campaigns, formally legitimized by the [..] state's chief religious authority, the sheikh ul-Islam [Ottoman's version of the Catholic Church, the reason for its existence was co-opting religion for the empire, for plundering and mafia ..]. The second was the perpetual war of raid and counter-raid along the borders of the Ottoman Empire and its Christian neighbors. This type of conflict was called ghazi warfare, from the term ghaza, a raid; it was the concrete manifestation of the unceasing obligation of the faithful to expand the boundaries of the darulislam. Ghazi was an honored title and the legitimacy of the Osmanli regime derived largely from Ottoman success as ghazis. The closest equivalent Christian concept is the crusade, but crusades were efforts of limited duration mounted in pursuit of discrete and clearly specified objectives, usually geographical. The traditional numbering of crusades is indicative; the concept of a first, second, or seventy-fifth ghaza would have been inconceivable to a ghazi for the ghaza was unending. Although crusades are associated with major field battles or brief sieges, ghazi warfare was a matter of incessant raids, skirmishes, and prolonged blockades.

The emphasis placed on ghazi warfare by the Osmanli state was unusual even by Islamic standards. This emphasis, a function of the absorption of large numbers of semi-Islamized Turks and Mongols, reduced the importance of the jihad. Although the practice of formally proclaiming the jihad to justify war for a specific purpose was common in most Islamic states, the Ottomans rarely went to the trouble. With a stolid, matter-of-fact [manner], matched in the west only by the Iberians, they  considered themselves always justified-and always at war. [..]

Some of the Christian military groups along the frontiers with Islam approached war in much the same way as the ghazi; the Knights of St. John and Habsburg Croatian Grenzers are prominent examples, and the generalization might be expanded to include Spanish and Portuguese fighting men. These individuals viewed war in terms much like the ghazis, but, unlike the ghazis, they functioned outside the mainstream of their culture. The concept of perpetual war to [..] expand its boundaries was inherently compatible with the Ottoman world view.