RISE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE Documentation of the early history of the Ottomans is scarce. According to semilegendary accounts, Estugrul, khan of the Kayi tribe of the Oguz Turks, fled from Persia in the mid-thirteenth century to escape the Mongol hordes and took service with the sultan of Rum at the head of a gazi force numbering 400 tents. He was granted territory--if he could seize and hold it--in Bithynia, facing the Byzantine strongholds at Bursa, Nicomedia (Izmit), and Nicaea. Leadership subsequently passed to Estugruls son, Osman I (reigned ca. 1299-1326), the eponymous founder of the Osmanli dynasty--better known in the West as the Ottomans-- that was to endure for 600 years. Osman Is small amirate attracted gazis--who required plunder from new conquests to maintain their way of life--from other amirates, siphoning off their strength while giving the Ottoman state a military stature that was out of proportion to its size. Osman I, who acquired the title sultan, organized a politically centralized administration in Sögüt that subordinated the activities of the gazis to its needs and facilitated rapid territorial expansion. Bursa fell in the final year of his reign. His successor, Orkhan (reigned 1326-59), crossed the Dardanelles in force and established a permanent European base at Gallipoli in 1354. Murad I (reigned 1359-89) annexed most of Thrace (called Rumelia, or Roman land, by the Turks), encircling Constantinople, and moved the seat of Ottoman government to Adrianople (present-day Edirne). In 1389 the Ottoman gazis defeated the Serbs at the Battle of Kosóvo, where Murad lost his life. The steady stream of Ottoman victories in the Balkans continued under Bayezid I (reigned 1389-1403). Bulgaria was subdued in 1393, and in 1396 a French-led crusade that had crossed the Danube from Hungary was annihilated at Nicopolis. In Anatolia, however, where Ottoman policy had been directed toward consolidating the sultans hold over the gazi amirates through conquest, usurpation, and purchase, the Ottomans were confronted by the Mongol hordes under Timur Lenk (Tamerlane), to whom many of the Turkish gazis had defected. Timur crushed Ottoman forces near Ankara in 1402 and captured Bayezid I, who, according to tradition, was displayed in an iron cage. The unfortunate sultan died in captivity the next year, leaving four heirs who for a decade competed for control of what remained of Ottoman Anatolia after Timur had restored the Seljuk amirs. Recovery of Ottoman prestige was slow, but Anatolia was gradually reabsorbed, and in the 1420s Ottoman power had revived sufficiently to undertake fresh campaigns in Greece. Aside from scattered outposts in Greece, all that remained of the Byzantine Empire was its capital, Constantinople. Cut off by land since 1365, the city, despite long periods of truce with the Turks, was supplied and reinforced by Venetian intermediaries, who made it possible for Constantinople to carry on its commerce by sea. On becoming sultan in 1451, Mehmed II (reigned 1451-81) immediately planned the systematic reduction of the citys stillformidable defenses. The military campaigning season of 1453 commenced with the fifty-day siege of Constantinople, during which Mehmed II brought warships overland on greased runners into the Golden Horn (inlet of the Bosporus Strait, port of Constantinople) to bypass the chain barrage and fortresses that had blocked the entrance to Constantinoples harbor. On May 29 the Turks fought their way through the gates of the city and brought the siege to a successful conclusion. News of the fall of Constantinople was heard with horror in Europe, but as an isolated military action it did not have a critical effect on European security. To the Ottoman Empire, however, the capture of the imperial capital was of supreme symbolic importance. Mehmed II, a man of culture and learning as well as a superb warrior, regarded himself as the successor of the Byzantine emperors without a break in continuity. He made Constantinople the capital of the Ottoman Empire as it had been of the Byzantine Empire, and he set about rebuilding the city. The basilica of Hagia Sophia was converted to a mosque, and Constantinople--which the Turks called Istanbul (from the Greek phrase eis tin polin, to the city)--replaced Baghdad as the center of Sunni Islam.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 13:34:54 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015