When Does the Ottoman Empire Begin Again

Introduction

The Ottoman Empire

The Great Mosque in Damascus, Syria ©

The Ottoman Empire was the i of the largest and longest lasting Empires in history.

It was an empire inspired and sustained by Islam, and Islamic institutions.

It replaced the Byzantine Empire equally the major power in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Ottoman Empire reached its height under Suleiman the Magnificent (reigned 1520-66), when it expanded to cover the Balkans and Hungary, and reached the gates of Vienna.

The Empire began to decline after being defeated at the Battle of Lepanto (1571) and losing almost its entire navy. It declined further during the side by side centuries, and was effectively finished off by the Starting time Globe War and the Balkan Wars.

One legacy of the Islamic Ottoman Empire is the robust secularism of modern Turkey.

At its tiptop it included:

• Turkey
• Egypt
• Greece
• Bulgaria
• Romania
• Republic of macedonia
• Hungary
• Palestine
• Jordan
• Lebanon
• Syria
• Parts of Arabia
• Much of the coastal strip of Due north Africa

Why was the Empire successful?

The recipe for success

In that location were many reasons why the Ottoman Empire was so successful:

• Highly centralised
• Power was e'er transferred to a single person, and not carve up between rival princes
  • The Ottoman Empire was successfully ruled by a single family for 7 centuries.
• State-run educational activity system
• Organized religion was incorporated in the state structure, and the Sultan was regarded as "the protector of Islam".
• Country-run judicial organization
• Ruthless in dealing with local leaders
• Promotion to positions of power largely depended on merit
• Created alliances across political and racial groups
• United past Islamic ideology
• United by Islamic warrior lawmaking with ideal of increasing Muslim territory through Jihad
• United past Islamic organisational and administrative structures
• Highly businesslike, taking the best ideas from other cultures and making them their ain
• Encouraged loyalty from other faith groups
• Individual power and wealth were controlled
• Very strong armed forces
  • Strong slave-based ground forces
  • Expert in developing gunpowder as a armed forces tool
  • Armed services ethos pervaded whole assistants

Origin

After Baghdad fell to the Mongols, the Seljuks alleged an independent Sultanate in eastward and central Asia Pocket-sized.

In 1301, Uthman, an Uzbek of the Ottoman clan, overthrew the Seljuk aristocracy and proclaimed himself the Sultan of Asia Minor.

Dominion of force

At kickoff the dominion of the Ottoman Sultans was insecure. To consolidate their Empire the Ottoman Sultans formed groups of fanatical fighters - the orders of the Janissaries, a crevice infantry grouping of slaves and Christian converts to Islam.

The Ottomans inflicted a series of defeats on the declining Christian Byzantine Empire and then quickly expanded due west.

Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the heart of the Byzantine Empire. It became the upper-case letter of the Ottoman Empire when it was conquered in 1453 by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II.

Sultan Suleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey ©

Mehmet slaughtered many of the population and forced the remainder into exile, later repopulating the metropolis by importing people from elsewhere in Ottoman territory.

Mehmet renamed Constantinople Istanbul – the 'city of Islam' - and set about rebuilding it, both physically and politically, as his capital.

Economic science

Istanbul became non only a political and military machine capital letter, only because of its position at the junction of Europe, Africa, and Asia, one of the smashing trade centres of the world. Some other of import city was Bursa, which was a centre of the silk merchandise.

Some of the later Ottoman conquests were clearly intended to requite them command of other merchandise routes.

Among the appurtenances traded were:

• Silk and other textile
• Musk
• Rhubarb
• Porcelain from China
• Spices such as pepper
• Dyestuffs such as indigo

The economic force of the Empire also owed much to Mehmet'south policy of increasing the number of traders and artisans in the Empire.

He offset encouraged merchants to move to Istanbul, and later on forcibly resettled merchants from captured territories such as Caffa.

He also encouraged Jewish traders from Europe to migrate to Istanbul and set up in business there. Later rulers continued these policies.

The siege of Constantinople

When Sultan Mehmet II rode into the city of Constantinople on a white equus caballus in 1453, it marked the end of a thousand years of the Byzantine Empire. Earlier attempts to capture the city had largely failed - so why did the Ottomans succeed this time? What effect did the autumn of Constantinople accept on the balance of the Christian world?

Roger Crowley, author and historian; Judith Herrin, Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at Male monarch's Higher London; and Colin Imber, formerly Reader in Turkish at Manchester University discuss these questions.

Effects of the fall of Constantinople

The capture of Constantinople ended the Byzantine Empire subsequently 1100 years. The effect of this on Christian Europe was enormous.

One unexpected effect was that many scholars fled from the new empire and went to Italy, where they were influential in sparking off the Renaissance, and increasing trade with the east.

Although the Pope demanded a crusade to recapture Istanbul from the Muslims, the Christian nations failed to produce an ground forces for him, and no attempt to retake the city was made.

The Muslim dominance of the trading centre of the former Constantinople increased the pressure on Western nations to find new ways to the East by going westwards. This eventually led to the expeditions of Columbus, Magellan, and Drake.

Other religions

The millet system

Churches were converted into mosques ©

Non-Muslim communities were organised according to the millet system, which gave minority religious/ethnic/geographical communities a limited amount of ability to regulate their own affairs - under the overall supremacy of the Ottoman assistants.

The first Orthodox Christian millet was established in 1454. This brought Orthodox Christians into a single community under the leadership of the Patriarch who had considerable authority given to him by the Sultan. Armenian Christian, Jewish and other millets followed in due class.

Some millets paid tax to the state as dhimmis, while others were exempted because they were seen to be performing services of value to the state.

The devshirme system

Non-Muslims in parts of the empire had to hand over some of their children as a taxation under the devshirme ('gathering') organization introduced in the 14th century. Conquered Christian communities, peculiarly in the Balkans, had to surrender twenty percent of their male person children to the state.

To the horror of their parents, and Western commentators, these children were converted to Islam and served as slaves.

Although the forced removal from their families and conversion was certainly traumatic and out of line with modernistic ideas of human rights, the devshirme system was a rather privileged class of slavery for some (although others were undoubtedly sick-used).

Some of the youngsters were trained for regime service, where they were able to reach very high ranks, even that of Grand Vezir. Many of the others served in the aristocracy military corps of the Ottoman Empire, called the Janissaries, which was almost exclusively made upwards of forced converts from Christianity.

The devshirme played a key function in Mehmet's conquest of Constantinople, and from so on regularly held very senior posts in the imperial administration.

Although members of the devshirme grade were technically slaves, they were of great importance to the Sultan because they owed him their accented loyalty and became vital to his ability. This status enabled some of the 'slaves' to become both powerful and wealthy. Their status remained restricted, and their children were non permitted to inherit their wealth or follow in their footsteps.

The devshirme organization continued until the end of the seventeenth century.

Life nether Mehmet

After battles between Muslims and Christians, churches were converted into mosques and mosques into churches co-ordinate to who was the winner.

Although Mehmet converted many churches into mosques, he did not suppress the Christian organized religion itself. There were practical reasons for this:

• Christians were the largest group of the population and coexistence was likely to be more than efficient than disharmonize
• The institutions of the church building provided a automobile for implementing Mehmet'due south rule

Merely Mehmet was as well influenced by the Islamic rule that Muslims should show respect to all religions.

Mehmet not but tolerated the Christians, he made special efforts to attract Jews to Istanbul. This was bonny to the Jews, who had previously been persecuted by the Orthodox Christian Church.

The not-Muslim communities (millets) were controlled by the Sultan acting through their religious leaders. These communities were given their ain parts of towns in which to live and worship. They were given a great deal of freedom to lead their lives according to their item faiths, and so were largely supportive of their Muslim overlords.

Later on Mehmet

Mehmet II died in 1481, and he nominated his eldest son Bayezid equally the new Sultan. The Shi'a Muslims in the Ottoman Empire revolted in favour of Bayezid'due south brother Jem. The Janissaries suppressed the defection and from then on became very important in Ottoman politics.

With Janissary support Bayezid'south son Selim laid the foundations for a world Ottoman Empire based entirely on the despotism of the Sultan. The Shi'every bit were ruthlessly suppressed and they retreated to Persia, joining with the local groups of Shi'a and eventually forming their ain state under the Safavid Shahs.

Fratricide

Sultan Selim introduced the policy of fratricide (the murder of brothers).

Nether this system whenever a new Sultan ascended to the throne his brothers would be locked up. Equally presently as the Sultan had produced his beginning son the brothers (and their sons) would be killed. The new Sultan'due south sons would be then bars until their father's death and the whole arrangement would starting time once more.

This often meant that dozens of sons would be killed while but ane would become Sultan.

In the later centuries of Ottoman rule, the brothers were imprisoned rather than executed.

Sultan and court

The Sultan's life

Main archway to the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, Turkey ©

The Sultans lived in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

The Sultan's life was run by rituals copied from the Byzantine courtroom. For instance, the Sultan wore his silk robes once and so they were discarded. (Many now are preserved in the Topkapi Musuem.)

The Topkapi Palace held many objects which were used to give legitimacy to the Ottomans and reinforce the Sultan'south claim to exist leader of all Muslims. The most important of these was the mantle of the Prophet Muhammad and his standard and footprint. These were brought from Egypt when Cairo fell to the Ottomans.

It was in the Harem that the Sultan spent his life. Every inhabitant of the 230 small night rooms in the Topkapi palace was his to control. The number of concubines frequently exceeded a k and came from all over the world. The merely permanent male staff consisted of eunuchs.

Admission to the Sultan meant power. But no one was to be trusted. The Sultan moved every night to avoid assassination. Favoured males were promoted to dominion places far away like Syria; males not in favour could be locked up inside the palace.

The harem was a paradox, since information technology was a feature of the Ottoman Empire (and other Islamic states) yet independent much that was not permissible in Islam. The harem was improvident, decadent, and vulgar. The concentration of wealth, suffering and injustice toward women was far from the ideals of marriage and married life in Islam.

Despite this, the harem could bring benefits to a family who had a woman in the harem. It meant patronage, wealth and power; it meant admission to the most powerful man in the Empire - the Sultan.

Influences and Construction

Although the Ottoman Empire was widely influenced past the faiths and customs of the peoples it incorporated, the virtually significant influences came from Islam.

The ruling elite worked their way up the hierarchy of the country madrassahs (religious schools) and the palace schools. They were trained to be concerned with the needs of government and to be mindful of the restrictions of Islamic law.

In its structure the ruling elite reflected a globe of order and bureaucracy in which promotion and status were rewarded on merit. Thus birth and genealogy, elite or tribe became virtually irrelevant to success in the system. Just one mail service, that of the Sultan, was determined past nascency.

Suleiman - a golden age

The Gilt Historic period of Suleiman

The Ottoman Empire reached the peak of its power during the rule of Selim'southward son, Suleiman the Magnificent (ruled 1520 -66) and his grandson Selim 2 (1566 - 74).

Suleiman came to the throne every bit one of the wealthiest rulers in the world. His strength owed much to the work his father Selim had done in stabilising government, removing opposition, frightening (but not succesfully conquering) the Safavid Empire of Iran into adopting a non-assailment policy, and conquering the Mamluk empire of Arab republic of egypt and Syria.

These conquests, which united the lands of Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean nether a unmarried ruler, brought a time of peace and stability, under which the Empire flourished.

Suleiman had no internal rivals for ability. His father had seen to that past executing his own brothers and their sons, and all 4 of Suleiman's brothers.

The Ottoman Empire at present included so much of the territory where Islam was practiced, and so many of the Islamic holy places, that Suleiman was widely regarded as the religious leader of Islam, as well as the earthly ruler of most Muslims.

The Empire attracted Muslim artists and craftsmen ©

The wealth and stability of the Empire at this fourth dimension attracted the top Muslim brains of the flow, and craftsmen, artists, intellectuals and writers were eager to motility to Istanbul.

Suleiman was named 'The Magnificent' by the Europeans, but his own people called him 'The Lawgiver'.

Brusque-termism

Ottoman rulers had a very short-term policy. They rejected the idea of developing territory and investing in it for proceeds at some time in the future; land and peoples were exploited to the point of burnout and and so more or less abandoned in favour of new footing.

This policy meant that the Ottoman Empire relied on continuous expansion for stability. If it did not grow, it was likely to collapse.

Pass up

Reject

The ability of the empire was waning by 1683 when the 2d and last endeavor was fabricated to conquer Vienna. Information technology failed. Without the conquest of Europe and the acquisition of significant new wealth the Empire lost momentum and went into a boring decline.

Several other factors contributed to the Empire's turn down:

• The European powers wanted to expand
• Economic issues
  • Competition from merchandise from the Americas
  • Competition from cheap products from India and the Far East
  • Development of other trade routes
  • Rising unemployment within the Empire
• Ottoman Empire became less centralised, and cardinal control weakened
• Sultans being less severe in maintaining rigorous standards of integrity in the adminstration of the Empire
• Sultans becoming less sensitive to public stance
• The low quality Sultans of the 17th and 18th centuries
• The ending of the execution of Sultan'southward sons and brothers, imprisoning them instead
  • This plainly humane process led to men becoming Sultan later spending years in prison - not the best training for absolute power

Kemal Ataturk created a new modern identity ©

Shortly the very word Turk became synonymous with treachery and cruelty. This led Turks like Kemal Ataturk, who was born late in the nineteenth century, to exist repelled by the Ottoman Turkish political arrangement and the culture it had evolved. Seeing little just decay and corruption, he led the Turks to create a new mod identity.

The empire officially ended on the 1st November 1922, when the Ottoman sultanate was abolished and Turkey was alleged a commonwealth. The Ottoman caliphate continued as an institution, with greatly reduced authority, until it too was abolished on the 3rd March 1924.

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Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/ottomanempire_1.shtml

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