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| 1804 |
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| The Serbian uprising (See 1804–13). Misrule and excesses by the Janissary garrison in Belgrade sparked an insurrection led by a local chief, George Petrovich, or Karageorge (c. 1768–1817). Directed initially against the Janissaries, it developed into a full-scale revolt against Ottoman rule. With Russian aid the rebels established their own authority until they were suppressed by the Ottomans in 1813. Karageorge fled to Habsburg territory. | 1 |
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| 1805, June |
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| The Janissaries in Aleppo won virtual domination of the city and its resources after defeating the forces of the governor and the ashraf (lineal descendants of the prophet Muhammad). An Ottoman force dislodged them in 1813. | 2 |
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| 1806–12 |
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| War with Russia. The Russian invasion of Moldavia and Wallachia in Nov. 1806, brought on by fears of growing French influence in the empire, precipitated a war that dragged on for six years. The Russians made substantial territorial gains in the Balkans and Caucasus, but the French invasion of Russia prompted them to settle with the Ottomans in the Treaty of Bucharest (May 28, 1812). They returned to Ottoman control the two principalities as well as their gains in the Caucasus and north of the Black Sea, but retained Bessarabia. | 3 |
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| 1807–9 |
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| War with Britain. The British went to war against the Ottomans in support of their Russian allies, but their operations were limited to a show of naval force off Istanbul (Feb. 1807) and an abortive attempt to reinstall the Mamluks in Egypt (March–Sept. 1807). In the peace treaty of the Dardanelles (Jan. 5, 1809), Britain had its capitulatory rights reaffirmed and became the first European power to acknowledge the right of the Ottomans to close the straits to foreign warships in time of peace (a principle that received general European recognition in the London convention of July 13, 1841). | 4 |
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| 1807, May 29 |
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| The fall of Selim III. A revolt in Istanbul led by Janissaries, ulama, and various conservatives long opposed to the sultan forced his abdication in favor of his cousin Mustafa. | 5 |
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| 1807–8 |
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| SULTAN MUSTAFA IV. As a puppet of the conservative power figures behind the reaction, Mustafa IV decreed the end of Selim's reforms and the restoration of the preexisting arrangements. The New Order troops were hunted down and killed. Some of Selim's supporters took refuge at Ruschuk in Bulgaria with the local governor, Bayrakdar Mustafa Pasha, who emerged as the leader of the movement to restore Selim III. In July 1808 Bayrakdar entered Istanbul with his army and crushed the groups in control. In the turmoil, Selim III was assassinated and Bayrakdar placed his cousin Mahmud on the throne (July 28, 1808). (See The Ottoman Empire) | 6 |
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