The Ottoman Empire was one of the most powerful empires of its time,
growing from a small kingdom in northwestern Anatolia
to dominating the eastern Mediterranean and beyond in barely 200 years.
But where did the Ottomans come from, and just how did a tiny Turkic kingdom in
western Anatolia come to build such a large empire?
The Ottoman Empire began in the year 1299, when it was founded by Osman I,
but the story of the Ottomans goes back way further.
About 1,500 kilometers to the east and 250 years earlier,
the Great Seljuk Empire rose from Central Asia,
swiftly conquering all of Persia in one fell swoop,
as well as the Levant and the Holy Land-- insert some crusades here
Take that!
And take that!
And take this…
Are you done yet?
Nah I’m gonna attack some fellow Christians now
The most crucial region for our story though was Anatolia.
While the Seljuk Empire administratively spoke Persian
(and used Arabic for liturgical affairs), the empire, or at least the ruling dynasty,
was still Turkic, specifically Oghuz Turkic which…
actually I’ll probably explain all the different Turkic peoples in a future video.
Of course, as with a surprising amount of Persian-based empires,
the Seljuk Empire didn’t last very long, collapsing into a metric million different
pieces by 1194, with its Anatolian holdings breaking up into
the Sultanate of Rum and numerous different Anatolian Beyliks.
While it was the Sultanate of Rum that jockeyed for power with the Eastern-Byzantine-Roman-whatever
Empire, it was from the Beylik ruled by a man named
Osman Ghazi in the region once known as Bithynia that
the Ottomans would arise… wait actually I should probably explain what
a Beylik is.
Only problem is it would take a while to explain… actually no it wouldn’t, it’s literally
just like a small principality ruled by a Bey
(the Turkish word for something like a “chief”) whose family owns the area,
a little like a duchy or an emirate or something like that.
Osman, Osman I, Osman Ghazi, however you want to refer to him,
was the Uç bey of the Sultanate of Rum, a kind of semi-autonomous tribal leader,
when one night he had a dream about the moon going into his chest
and a tree sprouting from his belly button that would encompass the world.
With the support of both Turkish tribal leaders and Byzantine renegades,
Osman’s empire quickly grew from its capital Söğüt to dominate the region,
surrounding the aging Byzantine Empire.
By the early 15th century, the Ottoman Empire had grown through a series
of military victories, moving its capital to Bursa after its conquest
by Osman’s son Orhan in 1326, and then to Adrianople/Edirne after a successful
conquest of Thrace by Sultan Murad I in 1363, followed then by a conquest of the strategic
city of Thessaloniki from the Republic of Venice in 1387.
Of course Bursa and Edirne were just temporary capitals before the real prize,
Constantinople.
That city however was still very much property of the Christian Byzantine Empire,
and they had impenetrable walls that had withstood invasions from countless enemies
for over 1,000 years.
“You won’t be getting past these walls” “Well the world has advanced by about 1,000
years.
Would a cannon break through them?”
“Well that…
Oh.
Oh actually yeah it might.
Hey Europe, can we get some help over here?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“Okay maybe a little, but we still hate you from that messy breakup we had 400 years
ago.”
And like that the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453.
Well it was a bit more complicated than that of course,
but after a multi-month long siege, the city would fall to the Ottomans,
becoming their capital city.
Constantinople was located at a crucial point between both Europe and Asia,
and the Black Sea and the rest of the world, and it was from here the Ottomans could most
effectively set up their base of operations.
Sultan Mehmet II came saw and conquered Constantinople when it was but a shell of its former self,
but immediately set out to rebuild the city as the capital of yet another grand empire,
refitting the Hagia Sophia as a mosque (hence the minarets on what had previously
been a church), and ordering the construction of the nearby
Topkapı Palace, which would serve as both the royal palace
and the administrative center of the empire.
From its grand capital, the Ottoman Empire would expand further under Selim I and Suleiman
the Magnificent, conquering most of the Balkans, the Levant,
Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Red Sea coast, and all the way
over to the coast of Algeria, even establishing a protectorate over the
Sultanate of Aceh in Indonesia.
Crucially though they also conquered Mecca and Medina,
giving the Ottoman Sultan the additional title of Islamic Caliph.
Most of the Ottomans’ success in conquering far off foreign lands
had to do with a strong and effective military, but once new provinces were brought into the
empire, they needed a stable government to keep them
all together.
In a sense, the Ottoman imperial government /was/ the Sultan,
who had executive authority over the empire’s affairs.
The Sultan was a royal title, passed on to after death a relative within the House of
Osman.
Impressively, despite the empire’s more than 600-year long history,
the House of Osman stayed in charge as the ruling dynasty for its entire history,
with rivals only ever even trying to overthrow them two times…
unsuccessfully, obviously.
However, no king rules alone, no matter the stability of their dynasty,
and although the Sultan had essentially all the power,
he had numerous advisors and ministers working for him.
The House of Osman was effectively the central government,
comprising of the Sultan himself and staffers such as bookkeepers,
the House however was advised by the Divan, made up of the viziers (including the Grand
Vizier) and the Askeri, with the Supreme Commander (Ağa) of the Janissaries
also occasionally joining in as well.
Now in Turkish, “askeriye” means military, thus askeri means “of the military”,
although the Askeri was more a kind of ruling class,
made up of military officials, court officials, nobles, and the religious class the ulema.
All this being said though, they were kind of more of an advisory committee to the Sultan,
who ultimately didn’t *have* to listen to them.
Outside the capital Constantinople, the Empire was in a sense governed in a sense by two
parallel systems, with the military imperial government carrying
out all the executive functions of the Empire, and civil authorities carrying out more basic
administration and legal matters.
The Empire itself was divided into all kinds of different subdivisions, most of all vilayets,
ruled by an appointed governor, often a member of the House of Osman essentially training
for possible Sultanhood.
The Empire was extremely diverse in terms of demographics,
as one would naturally expect from an empire with territory in both Hungary and Saudi Arabia.
The Ottoman Empire was first and foremost an Islamic empire,
but it also had large Christian and Jewish populations.
Most of the Ottoman population were made up of a class known as rayah,
lower than the upper class Askeri but still higher than the enslaved Kul,
the rayah mostly consisted of farmers and townspeople,
though with the term often referring to the non-Muslim subjects, or zimmi.
Since these different religions practice different laws,
their respective communities were able to practice their own laws and rituals pertaining
to their communities, divided into different groups called millets,
(not to be confused with millet) in part allowing the Ottomans to maintain
relatively steady rule over these diverse regions.
The Ottomans’ power wouldn’t last forever however,
as by the mid-18th century the Empire would start to lag behind its old enemies the Habsburgs
and the Russian Empire.
Despite numerous reforms in an attempt to modernize the empire,
the Ottoman Empire would be given the not-so nice nickname “the sick man of Europe”.
If you want to know more about the fall of the Ottoman Empire,
you can check out the video I made in collaboration with KhAnubis on my channel Hikma History.
No seriously, go check out Hikma History if you haven’t seen his video already.
Thank you as always for watching, as always if you hated this video,
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