The History of Ottoman Empire
5 min read
The Beginnings
The nomadic Turkish tribes converted to Islam during the eighth and ninth century after being forced out of their homeland in the Asian steppes by the Mongols. By the eleventh century, one of the Turkish tribes, the Seljuks, had established themselves as a powerful force in the Islamic world, adopting a settled lifestyle that encompassed Islamic orthodoxy, centralised administration, and taxation. Many other Turkish clans, on the other hand, remained nomadic and pursued the gazi tradition of conquering land for Islam and acquiring war loot for themselves.
This brought them into confrontation with the Seljuk Turks, who, in order to appease the nomadic tribes, directed them to the Byzantine Empire’s eastern territory in Anatolia. After 1071, the Ottomans arose from one of the lesser emirates that had been created in northeastern Anatolia. The dynasty was named after Osman Gazi (1259-1326), who began expanding his realm into the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor in 1326 and moved his capital to Bursa.
The Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century
The Muslim Ottoman Turks rule over a political and geographical entity. Their empire was centred in modern-day Turkey, although it spread into southeastern Europe and the Middle East. Europe could only hold off the Turks for a short time; the Battle of Varna in 1444 marked the turning point, when a European coalition force failed to block the Turkish advance. After Varna, only Constantinople (Istanbul) remained in Byzantine hands, and its conquest in 1453 seemed inescapable. Following that, the Turks formed an empire in Anatolia and southeastern Europe that lasted until the early twentieth century.
Although the Ottoman Empire is not considered a European kingdom in and of itself, Ottoman expansion had a significant impact on a continent already reeling from the disasters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the Ottoman Turks must thus be included in any study of Europe in the late Middle Ages. Because of the ease with which the Ottoman Empire won military triumphs, Western Europeans feared that further Ottoman success would destabilise the West’s political and social framework, resulting in the demise of Christendom. The Europeans staged crusades against the Ottomans in 1366, 1396, and 1444 in response to such a significant danger, but to no avail. The Ottomans continued to expand their empire.
The Ottomans were originally a nomadic people who practised a primitive shamanistic religion. They were one of several Turkish tribes that moved from the Central Asian steppe. Contact with other settled peoples led to the introduction of Islam, and the Turks acquired their finest fighting tradition, the gazi warrior, under Islamic influence. Gazi warriors were well-trained and talented, and they fought to conquer the infidels, gaining land and wealth in the process.
While the gazi warriors fought for Islam, the Ottoman Empire’s most valuable military asset was the Janissaries, a standing paid army of Christian troops. The janissaries were Christian captives from conquered countries when Orhan Gazi first founded them in 1330. The janissaries were compelled to offer annual tribute in the form of military service after being educated in the Islamic faith and trained as warriors. To deal with the Gazi nobles, Murad I (1319-1389) converted the new military force into the Sultan’s elite personal army. Janissaries swiftly climbed to fill the Ottoman Empire’s most significant administrative roles after being rewarded for their loyalty with grants of newly acquired land.
Political groups inside Byzantium used Ottoman Turks and janissaries as mercenaries in their own quests for imperial control during the Ottoman Empire’s early existence. A usurper’s appeal for Ottoman aid in an uprising against the emperor in the 1340s provided the pretext for an Ottoman invasion of Thrace on the Byzantine Empire’s northern boundary.
The Ottomans gained a foothold in Europe with the conquest of Thrace, from which they launched further expeditions into the Balkans and Greece, and Adrianople (Edirne) became the Ottoman capital in 1366. Over the next century, the Ottomans expanded their empire to include Anatolia as well as growing swaths of Byzantine territory in Eastern Europe and Asia Minor.
In the late 14th century, Ottoman expansion into Europe was well started. In 1354, Gallipoli was taken, and in 1396, a massive crusading army was defeated at the Battle of Nicopolis. The defeat was so severe that Western European knights were discouraged from organising another expedition against the Turks. Early in the fifteenth century, the appearance of the Tatars under Tamerlane momentarily slowed Turkish progress, but the Ottomans soon renewed their attacks on Byzantium and Eastern Europe. Murad II annihilated a Hungarian-Polish army at Varna in 1444, and Ottoman conquests were almost unrestrained during his son, Mehmed II the Conqueror’s rule (1432-1481).
The capture of Constantinople in 1453 sent shockwaves throughout Europe, and the city’s name was changed to Istanbul. Following the fall of Byzantium, a flood of Byzantine refugees fled to the Latin West, bringing with them classical and Hellenistic knowledge that fueled the Renaissance’s developing humanism.
Despite the fact that Athens fell to the Ottomans in 1456 and Belgrade narrowly evaded conquest the following year when a peasant army led by the Hungarian Janos Hunyadi held off a siege, Serbia, Bosnia, Wallachia, and the Khanate of Crimea were all under Ottoman authority by 1478. The Turks controlled the Black Sea and the northern Aegean, and European shipping was barred from numerous key trading routes. When an Ottoman beachhead was built in Otranto, Italy, in 1480, the Islamic menace loomed even larger.
Despite the fact that Turkey’s participation in Italy was brief, it appeared as if Rome would soon fall into Islamic hands. The Ottomans besieged Vienna in 1529 after moving up the Danube. The siege failed, and the Turks began to withdraw. Internal disputes began to erode the Ottoman Empire’s formerly overwhelming military power, despite the fact that the Ottomans remained to instil dread long into the 16th century. Fights were no longer a foregone result, and Europeans began to win battles against the Turks.
Despite their geographical expansion’s military success, the Ottoman Empire’s management and governance remained an issue. By elevating faithful former slaves and janissaries to administrative positions, Murad II aimed to limit the influence of the nobility and the gazi. Murad II and subsequent Sultans were able to play one side against the other as a result of these administrators providing an alternate voice to the nobles, a feature that came to characterise the Ottoman Empire. The janissaries’ influence often overtook a weak sultan, and the elite military force operated as “king-makers” on occasion.
Another flaw was that Islam did not recognise primogeniture, and the transfer of authority from a deceased sultan to his son was frequently contested. Succession was fiercely contested if a sultan died without a male successor or if he left multiple sons. To prevent recurring rivalries, the male relatives of a newly anointed sultan were executed in the early period. Later, the possible rivals were just imprisoned for the rest of their lives. Some historians believe that the Ottoman Empire’s decline was aided by the fact that mentally ill and politically immature sultans were saved from prison and installed on the throne. Despite many succession disputes, the Ottoman Empire was able to generate efficient leaders in the late Middle Ages and build a complete government programme.
Despite the challenges of succession and administrative control, the Ottomans had a number of advantages that helped them succeed, the most important of which was the Empire’s tremendous riches. As the Ottoman Empire grew, it gained control of the East’s commercial channels, and many European countries, including Venice and Genoa, paid a high price for access to these routes.
Although the “Infidel Turk’s” atrocities instilled fear in the hearts of all Christians in the late Middle Ages, the Ottomans often allowed religious groups to practise their own faiths within captured areas. They also tended to sustain feudal traditions and, in many cases, allowed for the coexistence of legal codes to manage various ethnic and religious groupings. Their administrative and governmental structures were well-developed and effective, and most Ottoman-controlled regions were well-managed at the time.
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