Ottoman Empire

600 years and spanned three continents hugging the eastern Mediterranean. But it was not only their military campaigns that made the Ottomans a force to be reckoned with for centuries. In an era when neighboring states, persecuted, exiled, or massacred their minorities. The Islamic Ottoman state was willing to tolerate difference. Its subjects included not only Muslims, but large numbers of Christians and Jews. But as Ottoman power eventually ebbed, the diversity that had been a strength in one era became a weakness in another. Changing political forces within and without the empire created a toxic stew of ethnic and religious hatred. That hatred would finally boil over amid the carnage of World War I and contribute to the Ottoman Empire's own death rattle. In the beginning, the Ottomans were just one of many nomadic warrior tribes, sweeping across the plains of what is now central turkey. In the late 1200s, it had long been territory of the Byzantine Empire. The successor to imperial Rome. But Christian Byzantium was collapsing and chaos was everywhere. The eye of the gathering storm was a charismatic tribal chieftain named Osman. Osman would probably because the force of personality became the head of a group of warriors. The strength of his enterprise was based on his willingness to reach out to whomever might be useful to this new state that was in the making. To outsiders, Osman sounded like Ottoman, and the name stuck. Vital allies during the Ottomans early frontier decades, included Byzantine Serbian Christians. Together, they began conquering their way to an empire. War is what men did. War is the normal state of affairs and pre modern period. Certainly in the early modern period throughout Europe throughout Asia, in fact. So the Ottomans are no different in that regard. The Ottoman role is that in lots of ways there are a lot more successful than everybody else. Location played a role in early Ottoman success. They straddled important trade routes, willingness to set up vassal states that paid tribute also helped. But probably most important was their early leadership structure, which rewarded the most capable and battle seasoned. The Ottomans would eventually control the Middle East, much of northern Africa. And southeastern Europe. One of their first and longest lasting conquests was a mountainous corner of Europe, where large numbers of Christians lived. The Ottomans called their new territory, the Balkans, which meant forested mountains. Most subjects were actually better off under the Ottomans than they had been under their previous rulers. Now what was different in the situation is that the Ottomans are Muslims and the previous rulers were largely Christian. Since the crusades and even earlier, Muslims and Christians had fought ferociously over faith and territory. But the Ottomans, instead of mowing down their new Christian subjects, largely let them be. There could have been other things that happened to that population. They survived not because the Ottomans couldn't do something about them, but because they wouldn't do something about them. To the pragmatic Ottomans, ruling with a light touch made sense. Peace in newly conquered lands freed them to conquer more. And coming from frontier regions where faiths and traditions intermingled, they saw no need to impose a uniform culture. The formal official standards were of toleration. Because the Ottomans adopted Islam is the official religion of the empire. They were bound to Islamic precepts. The sonic precept said that Christians and Jews had received part of God's revelation, and because they had received that revelation, they were entitled to the respect of Muslims and to the protection of their religion by the Islamic State under whose rule they had fallen. To fill government positions without relying on power hungry aristocrats. For about three centuries, they practiced a policy in the Balkans, they called dev shermet. The gathering. They really weren't supposed to go into these villages and select Christian boys on the basis of strength and intelligence and take them off to the imperial capital for training. They really weren't supposed to do that, but the brilliance of the system was that it did allow them to tap into a population pool, so compared to a European system at the time, where you had to be from aristocratic blood to become an aristocrat to become a leader. The Ottoman system was far more flexible and was really quite remarkable in its dynamism and its willingness to open up recruitment channels and military and bureaucratic service to anybody. So many of these young men, in fact, although they have a completely Muslim kind of identity by the time they rise in the Ottoman hierarchy, they don't really forget the fact that they are from such and such a place in Serbia such and such a place in Croatia such as such a place in Bosnia. For the Ottomans, ethnic identity and family background didn't matter. What mattered was being Muslim, speaking Turkish, devotion to the empire, and ability. The smartest dev shermet recruits could and did rise to the Pinnacle of power, grand vizier, the number two man after the sultan. And the strongest recruits formed the core unit of the mighty Ottoman army, the janissary. Modern Europe's first standing army their record of early victories sent shivers of fear and admiration down the spines of enemy forces. For a long time, they were the elite unit of the Ottoman army, loyal to the sultan directly and to him only in mainly. With time because history doesn't know finality. They became like a corporate guild or corporate body with their own interests. Ultimately, the Ottomans would eliminate both dev shermet and the janissaries, their usefulness gone. But during the empire's first few centuries, the sultan and his soldiers were on a roll together. And the proof came in 1453 at Istanbul. Known then, as Constantinople, the largest city in the Middle East or Europe. Constantinople was the second role. It was the city of the Caesars. It had been built by the Roman Empire, and it had been under Byzantine domination for literally more than a thousand years. The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottomans truly transformed the Ottoman state. It changed it transformed it from a powerful dynamic political system into a world empire. There's no question about it. Most people did think that if Constantinople becomes Muslim, then can the whole world be far behind. So it's an enormous kind of conquest that resonates throughout the Muslim world and certainly resonates in a fearsome kind of way in Europe. At that time, Europe was a collection of fragmented warring states with weak armies and often weaker rulers. For them, the Ottoman victory signaled the triumph of strange and terrifying Barbarians.