Not Always “The Sick Man of Europe”
 As
the Mongol Empire fell, the
Muslim Ottoman Empire, founded by
Osman Bey, rose in Anatolia (eastern
parts of Turkey)
 Osman Bey’s soldiers, the ghazis,
had only one reason to exist, to
fight for their Muslim faith
 In the middle years of the 1300s, the
Ottomans pushed out the last
Byzantine governors of Anatolia and
installed their own leaders
 Farms
that were once held by Greeks or
Armenians were turned over to sipahis, the
Ottoman cavalrymen
 The land remained the property of the
Ottoman sultan (Muslim ruler) but was
distributed to his soldiers
 Sipahis could use the land as long as they
were enlisted in the Ottoman army
 During
the reign of Sultan Murad I, the
Ottomans were acknowledged as the leading
power of Anatolia and the Balkans
 Murad had interests in both
 In Anatolia, a number of Turkish
principalities had to be brought under
Ottoman control, a task that was almost
concluded when once again the Mongols
attacked
 This time the Mongol leader was Timur the
Lame or Timur Leng
 In
1402 C.E., Timur the Lame’s army was at
Ankara, awaiting the then Ottoman Sultan
Bayezid
 Battle ensued and the Ottomans were
crushed
 Sultan Bayezid was captured
 Timur the Lame kept the once proud sultan
in a cage to display to his enemies
 Timur’s
forces reached as far as Izmir; then
Timur the Lame turned eastward, and the
rest of Southwest Asia breathed easier
 After
a period of war, the
Ottomans regained Anatolia,
although their hold was
threatened by other Turkish
leaders who wanted to be free of
Ottoman rule
 But in 1500 C.E., the reigning
sultan, Bayezid II, could well be
satisfied with the
accomplishments of his ancestors
 Anatolia was now safely Ottoman,
and the Greek and Armenian
population was resigned to a
minority position
 The
Turkish element in Anatolia was on the
increase as more nomadic people poured into
the region
 Mamluk Egypt was a rival in Syria and
Palestine, but that could be solved later
 And Persia was still reeling from the Mongols
 The future of the Ottomans looked very
bright
 In
1453, the Ottomans had invaded
Constantinople, thereby ending the
Byzantine Empire
 The Ottomans made Constantinople their
capital city, renamed it Istanbul, and
converted the great cathedrals such as the
Hagia Sophia into mosques
 In
the expanding empire, Christians and Jews
were allowed to practice their religions,
making the empire one of the more tolerant
of the time
 Within a hundred years, Ottomans conquered
most of the regions previously held by the
ancient Roman Empire, except for Italy
westward
 The Ottoman empire extended from Greece
eastward to Persia, and then all the way
around the Mediterranean into Egypt and
northern Africa
 As
the empire grew, so too did religious
persecution
 To conquer large territories, the Ottomans
enslaved children of their Christian subjects
and turned them into fighting warriors,
known as Janissaries
 Much
of this expansion occurred during the
reign of Selim I, who came to power in 1512
 Significantly, Selim claimed that he was the
rightful heir to Islamic tradition under the
Arab caliphs
 With that claim, and with a huge empire,
Istanbul became the center of Islamic
civilization
 Just
eight years later, Suleiman I
(a.k.a. Suleiman the Magnificent)
rose to power
 Suleiman not only built up the
Ottoman military, but also actively
encouraged the development of the
arts
 For this reason, the Ottoman Empire
experienced a golden age under his
reign, which lasted from 1520 until
1566
 During
this time, the
Ottomans tried to push to
Europe through Hungary
 The Holy Roman Empire had
been weakened by the
Protestant Reformation
 The Ottoman armies took
advantage of this weakness;
after taking parts of
Hungary, the Turks tried to
move into Austria
 In 1529, the empire laid
siege to Vienna, a
significant cultural center
 But Vienna was as far as the
Turks ever got
 Although
the Austrian princes and the
Ottomans battled continually for the next
century, the Ottomans were never able to
expand much beyond the European
territories of Byzantine influence
 Still,
the Ottoman Empire lasted until 1922,
making it one of the world’s most significant
empires
 In that time, it greatly expanded the reach
of Islam, while also keeping eastern Europe
in a constant state of flux
 This
allowed the powers of Western Europe
to dominate, and once they started exploring
the oceans, they were able to circumvent
their eastern neighbors and trade directly
with India, China, and their American
colonies
 It
is, however, worth remembering that the
chief rivals of the Ottoman Empire was their
eastern neighbor, the Safavid Empire
 The Safavid Empire was based on military
conquest and was dominated by Shia Islam
unlike the Sunni dominance of the Ottoman
Empire
 The Safavid Empire’s location between the
Ottomans and the Mughals, in what is
present-day Iran, resulted in often
contentious relationships between Muslim
states, alliances with Europeans against the
Ottomans, and a continuation of the longstanding rift between Sunni and Shia sects
 The
Ottoman Empire was the one 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 as the
major power in the Eastern Mediterranean
 Highly
centralized
 Power was always transferred to a
single person, and not split between
rival princes
-The Ottoman Empire was successfully ruled
by a single family for 7 centuries
 State-run
education system
 Religion was incorporated in the state
structure, and the Sultan was regarded
as "the protector of Islam"
 State-run
judicial system
 Ruthless in dealing with local leaders
 Promotion to positions of power largely
depended on merit
 Created alliances across political and
racial groups
 United by Islamic ideology
 United by Islamic warrior code with ideal
of increasing Muslim territory through
Jihad
 United by Islamic organizational and
administrative structures
 Highly pragmatic, taking the best ideas
from other cultures and making them
their own
 Encouraged
loyalty from other faith groups
 Private power and wealth were controlled
 Very strong military

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Strong slave-based army
Expert in developing gunpowder as a military
tool
Military ethos pervaded whole administration
 Non-Muslim
communities were
organized according to the millet
system, which gave minority
religious/ethnic/geographical
communities a limited amount of
power to regulate their own
affairs - under the overall
supremacy of the Ottoman
administration
 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
 Non-Muslims
in parts of the empire had
to hand over some of their children as a
tax under the devshirme (“gathering”)
system introduced in the 14th century
 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, the devshirme system was a
rather privileged form of slavery for
some
 Some
of the youngsters were
trained for government
service, where they were
able to reach very high
ranks, even that of Grand
Vezir
 Many of the others served in
the elite military corps of
the Ottoman Empire, called
the Janissaries, which was
almost exclusively made up
of forced converts from
Christianity
 Although
members of the devshirme
class were technically slaves, they
were of great importance to the
Sultan because they owed him their
absolute loyalty and became vital to
his power
 This status enabled some of the
“slaves” to become both powerful
and wealthy
 Their status remained restricted, and
their children were not permitted to
inherit their wealth or follow in their
footsteps
 The devshirme system continued until
the end of the seventeenth century
 Sultan
Selim introduced the policy of fratricide
(the murder of brothers)
 Under this system whenever a new Sultan
ascended to the throne his brothers would be
locked up
 As soon as the Sultan had produced his first son
the brothers (and their sons) would be killed
 The new Sultan's sons would be then confined
until their father's death and the whole system
would start again
 This often meant that dozens of sons would be
killed while only one would become Sultan
 In the later centuries of Ottoman rule, the
brothers were imprisoned rather than executed
 The
Sultans lived in the Topkapi Palace in
Istanbul
 The Sultan's life was run by rituals copied from
the Byzantine court
 For example, the Sultan wore his silk robes once
and then they were discarded
 It
was in the Harem that the Sultan spent his
life
 Every inhabitant of the 230 small dark rooms
in the Topkapi palace was his to command
 The number of concubines often exceeded a
thousand and came from all over the world
 The only permanent male staff consisted of
eunuchs
 Access to the Sultan meant power
 But no one was to be trusted - The Sultan
moved every night to avoid assassination
 The
harem was a paradox, since it was a
feature of the Ottoman Empire (and other
Islamic states) yet contained much that
was not permissible in Islam
 The harem was extravagant, 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 access to the most
powerful man in the Empire - the Sultan
 The
power of the empire was waning by 1683
when the second and last attempt was made to
conquer Vienna
 It failed
 Without the conquest of Europe and the
acquisition of significant new wealth the Empire
lost momentum and went into a slow decline
 Economic problems
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Competition from trade 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 centralized,
and central control weakened
 Sultans being less severe in maintaining
rigorous standards of integrity in the
administration of the Empire
 Sultans becoming less sensitive to public
opinion
 The low quality Sultans of the 17th and 18th
centuries
 The ending of the execution of Sultan's sons
and brothers, imprisoning them instead
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This apparently humane process led to men
becoming Sultan after spending years in prison not the best training for absolute power