Ottoman empire

The Ottoman Empire is one of the largest empires in history. In existence for 600 years, at its peak it included what is now Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Macedonia, Romania, Syria, parts of Arabia and the north coast of Africa. In some countries, it is a legacy best forgotten; in others, it is a hotly debated topic and, in a handful, national pride has been nailed to this vital part of their history. 1 The founder of the Ottoman empire was a man called Osman Osman, a Seljuk Turk, is the man who is seen as the founder of the empire (his name is sometimes spelt Ottman or Othman, hence the term ‘Ottoman’). The Seljuks had arrived from the Asiatic steppes in the 11th century AD and had been in Anatolia for generations, while Osman had ruled a tiny Anatolian territory at the end of the 13th century and the early 14th century. He was very much a warrior in the mould of other great cavalry officers of the Middle Ages (like It was on the coronation day of Osman’s successor that the tradition of wearing Osman’s sword, girded by his belt, began. This was the Ottoman equivalent of being anointed and crowned in the west and was a reminder to all of the 36 sultans who followed that their power and status came from this legendary warrior and that they were martial rulers. This certainly rang true in the first half of the history of the empire, and for the next 300 years, sultans would regularly be seen in battle. But as the e...

Süleyman died of natural causes during a campaign to besiege the fortress of Szigetvár in Süleyman the Magnificent, byname Süleyman I or the Lawgiver, Turkish Süleyman Muhteşem or Kanuni, (born November 1494–April 1495—died September 5/6, 1566, near Szigetvár, Hungary), Early life and reign Süleyman was the only son of Sultan sancak beyi (governor) of Kaffa in Understanding the Ottoman Empire Süleyman succeeded his father as sultan in September 1520 and began his reign with campaigns against the Christian powers in central The vacant throne of Hungary was now claimed by voivode (lord) of The campaign was successful, however, in a more immediate sense, for John was to rule thereafter over most of Hungary until his death, in 1540. A second great campaign in 1532, notable for the brilliant Christian defense of Güns, ended as a mere foray into Austrian border territories. The sultan, preoccupied with affairs in the East and convinced that Austria was not to be overcome at one stroke, granted a truce to the archduke Ferdinand in 1533. The death of John in 1540 and the prompt advance of Austrian forces once more into central Hungary drove Süleyman to modify profoundly the solution that he had Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Between 1543 and 1562 the war in Hungary continued, broken by truces and with few notable changes on either side; the most important was the Ottoman capture of the The campaigns against Süleyman waged three major ca...

The aftermath left the several petty states spread throughout Anatolia, otherwise known as the Anatolian beyliks, more or less on their own, to quarrel among each other. But one chieftain, Osman Ghazi (r. c. 1299-1324), set upon fulfilling a grand ambition to build a state that would dwarf even the mightiest powers of its time; this was the beginning of the Ottoman Empire. Consolidation of Anatolia beylik bordering the Byzantine lands to the west. He saw glory only in ġazā, a form of holy gazi (or ghazi). Using mostly guerrilla The 14th century saw more In his bid for absolute dominance and to secure his realm from envelopment from his Shia Safavid rivals of Iran in the east and the Mamluks to the south, Sultan Selim I (r. 1512-1520), who had early on wrested control of eastern Anatolia from the Persians, annexed this buffer in 1516 before moving on with a sweeping conquest of the Mamluk territories. By the early 16th century, the Ottomans held complete dominance over Anatolia. Conquests in Europe (Rumeli) The Ottomans referred to their possessions across the Dardanelles as Rumeli. This province sprang up from the seeds sown in the time of Orhan Ghazi, whose troops raised the Ottoman standards in Gallipoli (1354) as part of his arrangement with the These rapid advances did not go by unnoticed and the collective might of the European nobles and kings was soon set loose on the Ottomans in a series of military campaigns that some have loosely defined as Unknown Artist (Public...

" " The landmark Suleymaniye Mosque is the largest mosque in Istanbul and was built on the order of Sultan Suleiman (Suleiman the Magnificent) during the Ottoman Empire. Izzet Keribar/Getty Images The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest In the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire was not only a dominant military force, but a diverse and multicultural society. The glory wouldn't last, however, and after centuries of political crises, the Ottoman Empire was finally dismantled after World War I. Osman Gazi is known as the father of the Ottoman dynasty, the first in a long line of military leaders and sultans who came to rule the Ottoman Empire for six centuries. In fact, Osman was born in 1258 in the Anatolian town of Söğüt (in modern-day Turkey). He led one of many small Ghazis and marched against Byzantine strongholds in Asia Minor. The Ottomans and most of their functionaries were Muslim, but the sultans and the ruling elite were strategic and pragmatic about the role of religion in their ever-expanding empire. For conquests of predominantly Muslim regions like Egypt, the Ottomans established themselves as the true caliphate without completely erasing their Muslim subjects' existing political structure. Non-Muslim communities throughout the Mediterranean governed much of their own affairs under the Ottomans, as Christians and Jews were considered "protected people" in the Islamic political tradition. Suleiman's reign also coincided with a period of great wealth for the Ottom...

In the late 13th century a series of small principalities emerged in A Sultan was originally a person of religious authority; later, the term was used for regional rules. The Ottoman rulers used the term sultan for almost their entire dynasty. In 1517, Ottoman Sultan Selim I captured the Caliph in Cairo and adopted the term; Caliph is a disputed title that commonly means the leader of the Muslim world. The Ottoman use of the term ended in 1924 when the empire was replaced by the Republic of Turkey. The descendants of the royal house have continued to trace their line to the present day. Leemage/Getty Images Although Osman I gave his name to the Ottoman Empire, it was his father Ertugrul who formed the principality around Sögüt. It was from this that Osman fought to broaden his realm against the Byzantines, taking important defenses, conquering Bursa, and becoming regarded as ​the founder of the Ottoman Empire. Hulton Archive / Getty Images Orchan (sometimes written Orhan) was the son of Osman I and continued the expansion of his family’s territories by taking Nicea, Nicomedia, and Karasi while attracting an ever larger army. Rather than just fighting the Byzantines, Orchan allied with John VI Cantacuzenus and expanded Ottoman interest in the Balkans by fighting John’s rival, John V Palaeologus, winning rights, knowledge, and Gallipoli. Heritage Images/Getty Images The son of Orchan, Murad I oversaw a massive expansion of the Ottoman territories, taking Adrianople, subduing...

Main article: As with many Ottoman Turkish art forms, the poetry produced for the [ citation needed] a large number of By the 19th century and the era of Folk Literature [ ] According to Poet-musicians ( ozan), were travelling around the aşık was adopted starting from the 14th and 15th centuries, it was an equivalent of the name ozan. Aşıks were the poets with an instrument called Prose [ ] Main article: The Ottoman tradition of painting miniatures, to illustrate manuscripts or used in dedicated albums, was heavily influenced by the [ citation needed] A Greek academy of painters, the Nakkashane-i-Rum was established in the Nakkashane-i-Irani, was added. We can establish approximatively the reign of Mehmed II (1451–81) as a moment of `birth´ of the production of the Ottoman miniatures with the first pieces having been found coming from this era. During that era many manuscripts show a desire in the court to establish a painting studio in the recently annexed capital of the empire Istanbul. This project seems to have succeeded in the 1480s, while we have clear proof of its existence and of the opening of new studios in other cities around 1825. Carpet-weaving and textile arts [ ] The art of Jewelry [ ] The Ottoman Empire was noted for the quality of its altin), but the designs of Constantinople nevertheless spread throughout Ottoman territory and were reflected even in the metalwork of Most jewelers and goldsmiths were Christian Armenians and Jews, but the interest of the Ot...

The peak of Ottoman power, 1481–1566 Domination of southeastern Europe and the Middle East During the century that followed the reign of The reign of Mehmed II’s immediate successor, devşirme party and the Turkish devşirme, leaving Cem without major support. Cem then fled into exile in Mamluk In the meantime, however, the threat that Cem might lead a foreign attack compelled Bayezid to concentrate on internal consolidation. Most of the property confiscated by his father for military campaigns was restored to its original owners. Equal taxes were established around the avâriz-ı divaniye (“war chest”) tax, which provided for the extraordinary expenditures of war without special confiscations or heavy levies. The value of the coinage was restored, and Mehmed II’s plans for economic expansion were at last brought to fruition. To that end, thousands of Though Bayezid preferred to maintain peace—in order to have the time and resources to concentrate on internal development—he was forced into a number of campaigns by the devşirme followers. In Europe he rounded off the empire south of the Bayezid then turned to the east, where previous conquests as far as the Bayezid never was able to use that situation to make new conquests in Europe, because the rise of revolts in eastern Anatolia occupied much of his attention during the last years of his reign. There the old conflict resumed between the A series of revolts resulted, which Bayezid was unable or unwilling to suppress, because o...

At its peak in the 1500s, the But it didn’t last. Though the Ottoman Empire persisted for 600 years, it succumbed to what most historians describe as a long, slow decline, despite efforts to modernize. Finally, after fighting on the side of Germany in What caused the once awe-inspiring Ottoman Empire to collapse? Historians aren’t in complete agreement but below are some factors. It was too agrarian. While the industrial revolution swept through Europe in the 1700s and 1800s, the Ottoman economy remained dependent upon farming. The empire lacked the factories and mills to keep up with It wasn’t cohesive enough. At its apex, the Ottoman Empire included Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Macedonia, Romania, Syria, parts of Arabia and the north coast of Africa. Even if outside powers hadn’t eventually undermined the empire, Reynolds doesn’t think that it could have remained intact and evolved into a modern democratic nation. “The odds probably would have been against it, because of the empire’s tremendous diversity in terms of ethnicity, language, economics, and geography,” he says. “Homogenous societies democratize more easily than heterogeneous ones.” The various peoples who were part of the empire grew more and more rebellious, and by the 1870s, the empire had to allow Bulgaria and other countries to become independent and ceded more and more territory. After losing the losing the 1912-1913 The Ottoman Empire at its g...

Like all great empires, history has to offer, the initial rise of the Ottoman Empire is shrouded in mystery with facts interspersed with legends. Anyhow, beyond romantic musings and heroic endeavors, the state was probably founded by Osman I (the Ottomans are named after him) some time in 1299 AD, long after his original tribe fled from the Interestingly, Osman himself might not have had any princely lineage, but surely demonstrated his leadership qualities over a rag-tag bunch of followers who ranged from Turcoman nomads, free-booting religious volunteers (known as gazis), nominal peasants, and even Christian border guards who were dissatisfied with their Eastern Roman overlords. Ruling from the saddle, Osman was known for his lightning military raids, and consequently, his small realm quickly expanded to incorporate some frontier castles and a few towns, thus providing a semblance to a tiny yet independent kingdom. Yet this ‘kingdom’ was perched precariously on the very borders of the This inspired many gazis and religious brotherhoods to flock to the frontier lands of the Ottoman state to wage their ‘ These were valuable military experiences gathered by Osman’s followers. Meanwhile, the border skirmishes tended to disassociate the conflict from the inward-situated towns and villages, thus providing the much-needed ‘breathing space’ for the incoming civilian population to settle down. Religious Sympathy Resulting in Boosted Support Interestingly, in spite of the initial ...

The political and geographical entity governed by the Although the Ottoman Empire is not considered a European kingdom per se, Ottoman expansion had a profound impact on a continent already stunned by the calamities of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the Ottoman Turks must, therefore, be considered in any study of Europe in the late Middle Ages. The ease with which the Ottoman Empire achieved military victories led Western Europeans to fear that ongoing Ottoman success would collapse the political and social infrastructure of the West and bring about the downfall of Christendom. Such a momentous threat could not be ignored and the Europeans mounted One of a number of While the gazi warriors fought for Islam, the greatest military asset of the During the early history of the Ottoman Empire, political factions within Ottoman expansion into Europe was well underway in the late 14th century. Constantinople itself was Athens fell in 1456 and Belgrade narrowly escaped capture when a peasant army led by the Hungarian Janos Hunyadi held off a siege in the same year, nevertheless, Serbia, Bosnia, Wallachia, and the Khanate of Crimea were all under Ottoman control by 1478. The Turks commanded the Although the Turkish presence in Italy was short-lived, it appeared as if Rome itself must soon fall into Islamic hands. In 1529, the Ottomans had moved up the Danube and besieged Vienna. The siege was unsuccessful and the Turks began to retreat. Although the Ottomans continued t...