What happened at the Battle of Konya?
On 21 December 1832 the Egyptian army of Ibrahim Pasha, son of Muhammad Ali, the rebellious governor of Egypt, defeated the far larger Ottoman army of Grand Vizier Reşid Mehmed Pasha outside Konya in central Anatolia. In thick fog the grand vizier rode into the Egyptian lines and was captured, and an Egyptian blow on the Ottoman left decided the day. The road to Istanbul lay open, and Sultan Mahmud II turned to Russia for help.1
Konya was a battle between two armies of the same empire. The sultan's governor in Egypt had built a modern army of his own, and in 1832 he turned it against his master. In a single winter's day it destroyed the last army the sultan could put in the field, and the shock brought a Russian fleet into the Bosphorus.2
Who won the Battle of Konya and why?
Ibrahim Pasha's Egyptians won. Their regiments were better drilled and knew the ground after weeks of exercises there, while the larger Ottoman army was made up largely of irregulars and had been ordered to attack against its commander's judgment. In the fog the grand vizier was captured, and an Egyptian blow on the Ottoman left broke the army.3
Background: the governor who outgrew the sultan
Muhammad Ali governed Egypt in the name of the Ottoman sultan. He strengthened his hold with reforms, above all a new army of conscripted Egyptian peasants trained on European lines, in which the French officer Joseph Sève, known in Egypt as Suleiman Pasha, played a leading part. Kemal Beydilli, writing in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, sees him dreaming of an independent state of his own.4
The sultan's own new army was still raw. Mahmud II had destroyed the Janissaries in 1826 to make way for a modern force, and the war with Russia that ended at Adrianople in 1829 had cost him many of the soldiers he had trained. Uzunçarşılı writes that most of the troops sent against Muhammad Ali were untrained and that even their officers did not know the new tactics; Creasy calls them armies of raw recruits, badly officered and worse led.5
At the sultan's request, Egyptian troops under Ibrahim fought the Greek rising in the 1820s and took the Morea, until the intervention of Britain, France and Russia forced them out; at Navarino in October 1827 an allied squadron destroyed the Ottoman and Egyptian fleets. Muhammad Ali wanted Syria in return for his losses and was refused. In 1831, using a quarrel with Abdullah Pasha, governor of Acre, as his pretext, he sent Ibrahim into Syria.6› Third siege of Missolonghi, 1825 to 1826
The campaign was a run of victories. Acre fell on 27 May 1832 after a siege of six months. In July Ibrahim beat an Ottoman army at Homs, and on 29 July he defeated the main army under Ağa Hüseyin Pasha at Belen, the pass known to Europeans as Bailan, then crossed the Taurus into Anatolia. In November he entered Konya, the old capital of the Seljuk sultans, without a fight.7
Armies and commanders
Ibrahim Pasha was Muhammad Ali's son. He had ended the war against the Wahhabis in Arabia by taking their stronghold of Deraya in 1818, had led the Egyptian expedition to the Morea from 1824, and had served beside the grand vizier at the siege of Missolonghi, which fell in April 1826.8
Reşid Mehmed Pasha, the grand vizier, was the sultan's most successful soldier, fresh from crushing revolts in Albania and Bosnia. He knew his opponent: at Missolonghi he had seen how well the Egyptians maneuvered. Mahmud II gave him command after Ağa Hüseyin's defeat, and in the autumn of 1832 he marched from Istanbul with troops raised in Rumelia, the sultan's European provinces.9
The numbers are disputed, but every account makes the Ottoman army much larger. Beydilli gives the grand vizier 80,000 men in all; Cameron counts 10,000 regulars, 40,000 irregular bashi-bozuks and 90 guns against 15,000 Egyptian regulars with 36 guns; Paton puts the Egyptians at 30,000 and the Ottomans at nearly twice as many. Rosen reports that an Ottoman reconnaissance counted only 17,000 Egyptian combatants. Ibrahim's own report, printed by Gouin, says the grand vizier admitted to seven regiments of infantry and six of cavalry on the field, against Ibrahim's five and six.10
The commanders' decisions
Reşid did not want a pitched battle. He halted in the strong camp of Akşehir, west of Konya, and meant to wear the Egyptians down in the winter with outflanking moves and a war of raids, using his numbers and the cold. Beydilli, Rosen and Cameron all describe this plan, and all three say it was overruled.11
The man who overruled it was the war minister, Koca Hüsrev Pasha, his rival at court. Rosen writes that Hüsrev, playing on the sultan's impatience, had Reşid ordered to attack at once and kept back the reserve he asked for, 25,000 men near İzmit in Rosen's account, 45,000 Bosnian veterans in Cameron's. Cameron adds that the Russian general Muravyov, newly arrived in Istanbul, backed Hüsrev. Beydilli and Rosen both blame the order to attack for the disaster that followed.12
Ibrahim used the weeks of waiting. Rosen describes him studying the ground around Konya and exercising his troops on it every day, so that they knew every fold of the plain; Cameron says the grand vizier in the end drew up his army on ground with which the Egyptians had been made familiar by frequent maneuvers.13
The battle in phases
The approach. In mid-December Reşid advanced across the winter plateau toward the town. On 18 December his Albanian vanguard attacked the Egyptian post at the village of Sileh, about an hour and a half beyond Konya, and was driven off with loss, and the next day Ibrahim threw an Ottoman detachment out of the fortified inn of Dokuzlu Han. Ibrahim's report puts the Albanians at Sileh at 14,000 and says 2,000 of them were taken; Rosen gives no figures.14
Fog. On 21 December a thick fog lay over the snow-covered plain and hid the armies from each other. Rosen writes that the morning passed in marching and countermarching, each side feeling for the other, and that the fighting began in earnest only around midday.15
The grand vizier captured. Early in the fighting Reşid rode forward through the fog to lead his men and found himself in the Egyptian lines. Paton writes that his Albanians had failed to follow him and that Bedouin horsemen, hearing a language they did not understand, took him prisoner. Gouin adds that the day before, expecting not to survive a defeat, he had handed the seals of office to his deputy, so the seal of the grand vizierate did not fall into Egyptian hands.16
The left flank. The Ottoman center and right fought well, and for a long time, Rosen writes, the day seemed to be going their way. What broke the army was a blow on the other wing. Cameron describes Ibrahim seeing, as the fog lifted, a wide gap between the Ottoman main body and its left, and sending his reserve into it; Rosen says simply that Ibrahim turned the Ottoman left and threw the whole line into disorder. Dodwell, writing from the British consular reports, has the Ottoman cavalry leaving the field early and the infantry drawn into an attack in which they were caught by fire from both flanks.17
The end of the day. Cameron credits Ibrahim with saving his own center, which the Ottomans were working around, by forming a square, massing his guns and launching a cavalry charge. By nightfall the Ottoman army was in flight. How long it all took depends on the account: Ibrahim's report speaks of an hour and a half of hard fighting, Gouin of less than six hours, Rosen of a battle of seven and a half hours that ran past sunset.18
Counting the losses
Ibrahim's bulletin, printed by Gouin and quoted by Cameron, put the Egyptian loss at 262 killed and 530 wounded. Rosen reports a far higher estimate, 8,000 Egyptians put out of action against only 2,000 more on the Ottoman side, and Paton speaks of a trifling loss on both sides before the Ottoman army simply fled.19
For the Ottomans, Gouin gives 3,000 dead, 10,000 prisoners and 92 guns left on the field. Ibrahim's report says a whole regiment of regulars was captured and that 7,000 Albanians and Bosnians went over to the Egyptians; Cameron gives the same 7,000. The heaviest loss was the grand vizier himself, and with him, in Rosen's words, the army's faith in itself.20
Turning point
The battle was lost twice over: once when the commander vanished into the fog, and again when the flank gave way. Without its general the Ottoman army broke up, and the troops scattered in every direction, many of them doubting, Rosen writes, that the sultan's cause was just.21
Ibrahim saw the road to the Bosphorus open before him. Kutluoğlu writes that he proposed to his father to march on Istanbul and depose the sultan, and Dodwell that he resolved to advance at once to face Europe with the sultan's overthrow. What stopped him was not an Ottoman army, for none was left, but his father: Muhammad Ali, fearing the reaction of the European powers, ordered him to halt.22
Aftermath
After Konya there was nothing between Ibrahim and the capital. On 2 February 1833 the Egyptians were at Kütahya, in western Anatolia, where Ibrahim received his father's order to halt. In January the sultan had sent the Russian general Muravyov to Alexandria to talk Muhammad Ali into peace. Dodwell writes that the viceroy gave way and promised to suspend hostilities; Rosen, that he answered with polite assurances and let his son go on toward Bursa.23
Anatolia itself showed little loyalty to the sultan. Rosen, from the diplomatic record, and Uzunçarşılı, from the Ottoman archives, both describe towns and notables in western Anatolia welcoming the Egyptians.24
The sultan first turned to Britain, his traditional friend, and was refused: Palmerston would not send warships, and Creasy writes that the answer was an expression of regret that England lacked the means. In early February the Porte asked Russia for help instead. On 20 February 1833 a Russian squadron anchored in the Bosphorus off Büyükdere. In early April Russian troops landed on the Asian shore near Beykoz, 5,000 men on 5 April according to Beydilli; Creasy gives 12,000 encamped by that date.25
Meanwhile the Porte sent the official Mustafa Reşid, then a young bureaucrat, who reached Ibrahim's camp at Kütahya on 29 March. Ibrahim insisted on Adana as well as the Syrian provinces, and Kutluoğlu writes that Mustafa Reşid went beyond his instructions and conceded it. Muhammad Ali kept Egypt and Crete and received all of Syria, and Ibrahim Adana. The sultan's decree confirming the settlement was sent on 6 May 1833.26
Russia then collected its price. On 8 July 1833 the Ottomans and Russians signed the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi, a defensive alliance for eight years with a secret article, which Creasy describes as binding the Porte to close the Dardanelles to the warships of other powers at Russia's request. The Russian fleet and troops sailed home soon after.27› The Greatest Battles of the Ottoman Empire
Legacy and memory
For Creasy, Konya was Mahmud's Cannae, and he wrote that it was the general opinion in Europe at the time that Turkey was ruined beyond repair. In Creasy's telling Mahmud did not give up, but went on rebuilding his army and finances. Dodwell, writing from the British side, judges that Ibrahim's haste to march on the capital was a ruinous blunder, because it brought Russia into the Bosphorus and roused the western powers against Egypt.28
The settlement did not last. In 1839 the sultan sent another army into Syria, and Ibrahim beat it at Nizip. Only the intervention of the European powers, with British warships on the Syrian coast, forced the Egyptians to give up Syria and Adana in 1840 and 1841, in return for the hereditary rule of Egypt for Muhammad Ali's family.29
