Ottoman Empire

I Digress

15 Aug

Today we digress from Hagia Sophia and Petra to discover just how the Ottoman Empire spread to become one of the largest Empires in the world.

Rise of the Empire

Founded as early as 1299, the Ottoman Empire was an imperial state that resulted in the merging of several Turkish tribes. Osman I, as a leader of one of the tribes in Anatolia, found himself as the leader of this new-born empire.

He started with conquering the other regions and raiding the already weakened Byzantine Empire. And declared himself ‘supreme leader’, which seems to be a common thing among male conquerors.

So Osman’s set up a formal government and his successors continued to expand their territory further and further into what used to be ruled by the Byzantines. We see this expansion continue as we see rulers come and go, there was Osman, Orhan, Murad and Bayezid.

Suddenly we find ourselves in the 1400s and all Turkish land is now controlled by the Ottomans. In fact it was Mehmed II who seized the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, in 1453, effectively putting an end to the Byzantine Empire there and then. Mehmed renamed the city to the current Istanbul and kept the city as the capital of the Ottoman Empire, where it pretty much flourished, becoming a

dominant international centre for trade and culture.

So for the first few hundred years of the Ottoman Empire it was all about expansion and gaining as much land as possible. And this need to expand didn't really end, until it was just too late.

Spread of the Empire

As the Ottoman empire reached its peak, you could have called yourself an Ottoman if you lived in Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. Pretty much massive swaths of Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East were under Ottoman rule for over 600 years.

For an empire such as this, the Sultan, or the Emperor, was basically given absolute authority over the religious and political needs of his people. At the time the west saw the Ottoman’s fast expansion, mainly due to their advanced military organisation for the time, as a threat to their freedom and way of life, but within the Ottoman Empire there was pretty much stability and security. You also had amazing advancements in science, the arts, and religion and culture.

Coming out of the Ottoman Empire we see, calligraphy, poetry, painting, textiles such as ceramics and carpet weaving, and music. Science to the Ottomans was an important vocation and many learned about astronomy, philosophy, geography, chemistry, physics, and advanced mathematics.

The Ottoman’s excelled, particularly, in medicine. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have forceps, scalpels, pincers or catheters. Quite the medical pioneers.

The consensus amongst most scholars is that the Ottoman’s were generally pretty tolerant of other religions, there were a couple things that I imagine most people won’t agree with, like selling your children, but at the time you weren’t persecuted if you weren’t Muslim. You were just categorised into a millet system. Basically minority groups, in this case minority religions, were given limited powers over their own affairs, but hey, you got to live as an Ottoman, and what could be better than that?

So it’s anytime roughly between 1520 and 1566, and the Ottoman Empire is living its best life. We’ve got Suleiman the Magnificent as Sultan and life is good. There’s great stability, massive amounts of wealth coming into the Empire and the power that the Ottoman’s wield is slightly terrifying for those just on the outside.

But our man Suleiman’s no idiot. Like old mate Shi Huangdi, we started to see uniformity sweep through the empire. There’s one system of law and an influx of arts and literature. We're seeing flourishment in almost all parts of life. The economy is going great guns, politically everything’s looking pretty stable, there’s peace throughout the empire and if you’re not enjoying life throughout this time, then you’re clearly living wrong.

But it seems that it was actually Suleiman who held all the luck. Because as soon as he dies, the Ottoman Empire starts to lose power when they're defeated at the 1571 Battle of Lepanto.

When they were at their best, the Ottoman Empire had a real say in what happened in Europe, but as they began to lose their hold on Europe, we really start to see the Ottoman Empire falter.

Decline of the Empire

So as we head into the 1600s and throughout the 1700s, there’s no question that the Ottoman Empire is clearly in decline. Instead of military successes, there seem to be more and more military defeats. And with the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution in Europe really taking off, Europe seems to be pushing back against the Ottoman expansion. Not to mention that those who came after him, were no Suleiman’s, and sea trade with the Americas, and especially India, was definitely strengthening; the need to trade with Asia Minor over land just wasn’t as strong.

In the mid-1600s, there was a spark of hope when the Turks experienced a couple of military victories in Persia and Venice, but these were short lived, because by 1683, they were defeated at the Battle of Vienna, and by 1699, they had actively started to lose territory.

And the 1700s weren’t that much better, in fact, they were kinda worse. Between the Russo-Turkish Wars we start to see some proper deterioration. Some European treaties even cause the empire to lose some of that classic economic independence and stability. And with the Crimean War, we see the Ottoman Empire properly start to struggle. Even the Russian Tsar at the time, Nicholas I, described Turkey as

the sick man of Europe

in 1844.

It was actually in 1856, that the Ottoman Empire was recognised as an independent state by the Congress of Paris. But alas, this could not stop the downfall of the once great Empire.

The late 1800s was all about the rebellions, and several of them meant that the Ottomans were losing territory just a little bit faster than they would have liked. In 1830, Greece was free from Ottoman Control after a revolt, and the Congress of Berlin gave Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria their independence in 1878. And when the Balkan Wars hit in 1912 and 1913, Turkish nationalists answered the call to rise up against the empire, seeing the Ottoman territory decrease further with political and social instability starting to peak.

The results of the Balkan Wars meant that the Ottomans lost about 33 percent of the territory they had left, and 20 percent of their population went with it.

As the First World War kicked off, we already know that the Empire wasn’t doing too great. But they had it even worse by joining the wrong side. They entered the war in 1914, supporting the Central Powers, so basically Germany and Austria-Hungary. But as we all know it didn’t really turn out too well for these guys in 1918. And the Ottoman Empire was cancelled with the signing of the Treaty of Sevres in 1920.

Out of the dust appeared an army officer, who had the good fortune to be in a position to find the independent Republic of Turkey, and on the 29 October 1923, Turkey was declared an independent republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He spent the rest of his life serving as Turkey’s first president, secularising and westernising the country as best he could.

Despite its collapse shortly after WWI, the Ottoman Empire can claim that it was

one of the largest, longest-lasting, and most successful empires in the world’s history.

Now this statement can probably be argued from here to Timbuktu, but it’s no mystery as to how this Empire was able to stay so strong for so long. They were incredibly organised, both their military and their government. I mean you can’t really go too wrong with a centralised political structure, and for the Ottoman Turks, it just worked, really really well.

And even though there are only mere remnants that remain of the Ottoman Empire, it should be remembered for its diversity, military, artistry, religious tolerance and architectural marvels, like our dear friend the Hagia Sophia.

And as a modern society, we can still see the Ottoman influence in our everyday, particularly in the modern Turkish Republic.

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