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Certainly the Arabs regard their Ottoman centuries as years of cultural stagnation, but this is largely because of the downgrading of Arabic combined with the loss of political self-confidence. What is undeniable is that, as the empire weakened and declined, its leaders – sultans, pashas, generals and men of religion – turned in upon themselves to become increasingly hostile and outwardly contemptuous towards innovation, originality and external influences of all kinds. Muslim national pride demanded that attempts should be made to match the European powers by adopting some of their ideas and techniques, but these could succeed only if the rigid and reactionary Ottoman system was reformed from within. Efforts to achieve these reforms, although sincere and far-reaching, ultimately came to nothing.
    The second Ottoman failure to take Vienna, in 1683, marked a decisive stage in the long decline of Ottoman power in Europe and the enforced shift in the empire’s centre of gravity in the east. At the end of the seventeenth century, a new rival and enemy emerged in the form of aggressive and expansionist imperial Russia. Tsar Peter the Great was bent on making Russia a great European and Asian power, and the Ottoman Empire was his principal obstacle. Two centuries of intermittent Russo-Turkish wars, separated by periods of hostile peace, had begun.
    Although the Ottoman Empire was more often than not on the defensive, its withdrawal from Europe was slow and irregular. The Ottoman armies were still brave and formidable, and they benefited from rivalries between the Christian powers of Europe. In the first half of the eighteenth century some lost ground – the Grecian Morea, Belgrade – was recovered. At the end of the century, Empress Catherine the Great failed in her declared aim of dismembering the Ottoman Empire and making Constantinople the capital of a New Byzantium. Nevertheless, under the Treaty of Küchük Kainarji in1774, Sultan Mustafa III lost not only his control over some of his Christian subjects but also his suzerainty over the Muslim Tartars of the Crimea. As he claimed to be the Caliph of Islam, this was a greater blow than his conceding to Catherine a virtual protectorate over his Orthodox Christian subjects.

2. Islam on the Defensive, 1800–
    At the end of the eighteenth century, the balance of power between the European Christian states and the Islamic world represented by the Ottoman Empire had swung decisively against Istanbul. The progressive retreat from Europe meant that the focus of the empire moved eastwards. In the first three centuries of its existence, the weight of Ottoman interest was directed towards the conquest and control of Christian lands – the spread of the world of Islam towards the West. It was from this that the empire’s power and glory derived. Possession of the vast territories inhabited mainly by Muslim Arabs – including the Islamic holy places in Arabia and the great Muslim cities with a prestigious past such as Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad – was important but might be said to have been taken for granted. The Arabic-speaking provinces, economically stagnant or declining, enjoyed a large measure of autonomy under local dynasties such as the Mamlukes in Egypt and Mesopotamia or the Druze emirs in Mount Lebanon.
    In the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire had become the Sick Man of Europe in Western eyes. In reaction, successive Ottoman sultans placed greater emphasis on their leadership of Islam: the Sick Man of Europe could still be the Strong Man of Asia. The title of ‘Caliph of Islam’ – disused for five centuries – was revived and, through a false analogy between the caliphate and the papacy, the sultan’s representatives began to claim spiritual authority over all Muslims, even when they were under non-Muslim rule.
    The expansionist and colonizing empire of the first centuries was becoming an Islamic fortress under siege. The world of Islam did not face a