The Ottoman Empire was one of the largestsuperpowersand longest - lived dynasties in man history . At its peak , the Islamic empire extended far beyond modern - Clarence Shepard Day Jr. Turkey — from Egypt and Northern Africa through the Middle East , Greece , the Balkans ( Bulgaria , Romania , etc . ) , and right up to the gates of Vienna , Austria .
In the sixteenth century , the Ottoman Empire was not only a dominant military force-out , but a diverse and multicultural society . The glorification would n’t last , however , and after centuries of political crises , the Ottoman Empire was finally dismantled after World War I.
So , what led to its downfall ? First , let ’s go back to its start .
It All Started with Osman
Osman Gazi is known as the father of the Ottoman dynasty , the first in a long line of military leader and grand Turk who come to rule the Ottoman Empire for six centuries . In fact , the word of honor Ottoman in English derives from the Italian pronunciation of Osman ’s name .
Osman was wear in 1258 in the Anatolian town of Söğüt ( in New - day Turkey ) . He led one of many smallIslamicprincipalities in the neighborhood at the time , but Osman was n’t satisfied with a provincial kingdom . He raised an army of trigger-happy frontier warrior know asGhazisand marched against Byzantine strongholds in Asia Minor .
allot to Ottoman traditional knowledge , Osman had a dream in which all the known worldly concern was unified under Ottoman formula , typify by the canopy of a monumental tree rising from his body and covering the earth . This vision , first published 150 years after Osman ’s death , provided divine authority for the Ottoman conquests to get along , excuse historiographer Caroline Finkel in " Osman ’s aspiration : The chronicle of the Ottoman Empire . "
The Gunpowder Empire
In 1453 , Sultan Mehmed II , aka Mehmed the Conqueror , laid siege to the greatly step down Byzantine capital ofConstantinople . Although its universe had dwindled , the fabled urban center still had its impenetrable wall . But the Ottomans come prepared with a novel eccentric of weaponry : cannon .
" The Ottomans were some of the first to apply ordnance on a mass scale of measurement in the fifteenth century , " says Chris Gratien , a account prof at the University of Virginia and carbon monoxide - Maker of theOttoman History Podcast . Mehmed bombard the fortified city walls for weeks before his army broke through , making Constantinople ( later Istanbul ) the new Ottoman capital , which it would remain for over four centuries .
By unseating the Byzantine Empire , Sultan Mehmed could arrogate his station in the papist imperial tradition . It ’s at this moment , historian believe , thatthe Ottoman Empire was born .
A Multicultural Caliphate
The Ottomans and most of their functionary were Muslim , but the grand Turk and the ruling elite group were strategic and pragmatical about the role of religion in their ever - expanding conglomerate .
For conquest of predominantly Islamic region like Egypt , the Ottomans established themselves as the true caliphate without completely erasing their Muslim subjects ' existing political complex body part . Non - Moslem communities throughout the Mediterranean govern much of their own affairs under the Ottomans , as Christians and Jews were considered " protect people " in the Islamic political tradition .
Gratien says that the Ottomans were able to successfully govern and keep such an extensive terra firma empire not only through military might but " a combination of cooption and via media . "
The Golden Age of the Ottoman Empire
In the 16th one C , the Ottoman Empire reached its territorial and political apex under the 46 - yr rule of Suleiman I , well know as Suleiman the Magnificent , who was intent on making his Mediterranean realm aEuropean superpower .
Militarily , this was the " period of peak Ottoman dominance , " suppose Gratien . Suleiman commanded an elite professional fight force known as theJanissaries . The scrapper were taken by force from Christian families as young , educated and train as soldiers and made to commute to Islam . Fearless in conflict , the Janissaries were also companion by some of theworld ’s first military bands .
Suleiman ’s reign also coincided with a period of great wealth for the Ottoman Empire , which controlled some of the most productive agricultural domain ( Egypt ) and most trafficked trade road in Europe and the Mediterranean .
But Gratien says that the Age of Suleiman was about more than just power and money ; it was also about Justice Department . In Turkish , Suleiman ’s nickname wasKanuni — " the lawmaker " — and he search to jut out the image of a just rule in the Muslim custom . In larger townsfolk across the empire , citizens could take their disputes to local Islamic courts , the phonograph record of which are still around today . Not just Muslims , but Christians and Jews . And not just man , but adult female .
" These were places where women could go claim their right wing in cases of hereditary pattern or divorcement , for example , " says Gratien .
Roxelana and the ‘Sultanate of Women’
A fascinating and reasonably overlooked trope in Ottoman story is Roxelana , the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent . As historian Leslie Peirce showed in his book " Empress of the East : How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire , " Roxelana , roll in the hay asHürrem Sultanin Turkish , ushered in a new age of distaff political exponent in the castle , sometimes jazz as the " Sultanate of Women . "
Roxelana was a non - Muslim kidnapped by slavers at 13 and eventually sold into the sultan ’s harem . According to Ottoman majestic tradition , the sultan would discontinue slumber with a paramour once she have him a male heir . But Suleiman stuck with Roxelana , who bore him a total of six children andbecame one of his snug confidante and political aides — and perhaps most shockingly , his wife .
Thanks to Roxelana ’s example , the imperial harem charter on a newfangled role as an influential political body , and generation of Ottoman cleaning woman ruled alongside their sultan husbands and Son .
Military Decline and Internal Reforms
In 1683 , the Ottomans tried for a 2d time to conquer Vienna but were repulsed by an unlikely alliance of the Hapsburg Dynasty , the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish - Lithuanian Commonwealth . Not only did the Ottomans give way to enchant Vienna , but they ended up losing Hungary and other district in the ensuing war .
The once unvanquishable Ottoman fighters lose loss after red ink throughout the eighteenth and 19th centuries as more Ottoman territories declared independence or were snatched up by neighboring power like Russia .
But Gratien says that while the Ottoman Empire shrunk in size , it also concentrate its authorities and become more mired in the lives of its citizen . It raised more taxes and spread out public schools and hospitals . The economy and universe density grew rapidly in the nineteenth century even as the armed services put up painful loss . The Ottoman Empire also became the destination for millions of Muslim immigrants and refugee from former Ottoman soil and neighboring regions .
" big - scale immigration is associated with place like the United States in the nineteenth century , but people do n’t think of the Ottoman Empire as something that was also produce and dynamic during that time , " say Gratien .
The Rise of the ‘Young Turks’
In the late 19th century , the Ottoman Empire try out with a constitutional monarchy and an elected parliament , but that come to stop in 1878 when Sultan Abdülhamid II dissolved the democratic institutions and ushered in 30 years of bossy principle .
Abdülhamid ’s hardline approach inseminate the seeds of gyration , and the leading Ottoman opposition group was the Committee of Union and Progress party ( CUP ) , also known as the " Young Turks . " Though its drawing card were Turkish nationalists , the CUP shape a coalition of ethnoreligious group , include Armenians , Jews , Arabs , Greeks and Albanians .
The Young Turks wanted to restore the organisation , determine the monarchy and reestablish the greatness of the imperium . Their triumph in the 1908 gyration was widely celebrate as a win for liberty , equality , and Ottoman brotherhood . But the gyration chop-chop soured as factions split and more fervid nationalists consolidated what became increasingly authoritarian linguistic rule .
coincide with this internal upheaval was the First Balkan War in 1912 , in which the Ottomans fall behind their remaining European dominion in Albania and Macedonia . And as World War I approached , the militarily weakened Ottomans threw their fate in with Germany , who they hoped would protect them from their vitriolic enemy Russia .
The Armenian Genocide - The Empire’s Final Shameful Chapter
With the ultranationalist wing of the Young Turks in charge , the Ottoman government initiated a program to deport and resettle millions of ethnic Greeks and Armenians , groups whose loyalty to the crumbling empire was in interrogation .
Under the screen of " security business organisation , " the Ottoman government ordered the arrest of notable Armenian pol and intellectuals on April 24 , 1915 , a sidereal day hump asRed Sunday . What surveil was the wedge deportation of more than a million Armenian citizen , include death marches across the desert to Syria and alleged massacres by soldier , irregulars , and other armed groups in the neighborhood . In all , an estimated 1.5 million Armenians ( out of 2 million in the Ottoman Empire ) were killed between 1915 and 1923,according to the Armenian Genocide Museum - Institute .
Most scholarly person and historian hold that what happened to the Ottoman Armenians constitutes ethnical cleanup and racial extermination , but Turkeyand anumber of its allies still refuse to call it by that name .
frustration in World War I was the last death blow to the Ottoman Empire , but the sultanate was n’t officially dissolved until 1922 , when the Turkish nationalist resistivity leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk rose to power and established a secular commonwealth . Under his tenner - long , one - party rule , Atatürk tried to erase Ottoman mental hospital and ethnic symbols , brought in Western legal codes and laid the fundament for New Turkey .
