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175-779: In 1920, after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I , the United Kingdom took over the former Ottoman vilayets of Basra , Baghdad and Mosul which had together formed the historical region of Irak Arabi or Irak Babeli , and called it the British Mandate of Mesopotamia . The mandate was succeeded by the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932. The Shiite population suffered long and hard under Saddam's rule. The city of Basra had suffered considerably during

350-699: A calamitous end in 1683 when Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha led a huge army to attempt a second Ottoman siege of Vienna in the Great Turkish War of 1683–1699. The final assault being fatally delayed, the Ottoman forces were swept away by allied Habsburg, German, and Polish forces spearheaded by the Polish king John III Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna . The alliance of the Holy League pressed home

525-591: A constitutional monarchy. However, following the disastrous Balkan Wars , the CUP became increasingly radicalized and nationalistic, leading a coup d'état in 1913 that established a one-party regime. The CUP allied with the German Empire hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation that had contributed to its recent territorial losses; it thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers . While

700-500: A coup, but he did see the need for military mobilization. In 1883, a German military mission under General Baron Colmar von der Goltz arrived to train the Ottoman Army, leading to the so-called "Goltz generation" of German-trained officers, who played a notable role in the politics of the empire's last years. From 1894 to 1896, between 100,000 and 300,000 Armenians living throughout the empire were killed in what became known as

875-544: A delayed tribute of 10,000 ducats and 500 recruits into the Ottoman forces. Vlad III Dracula refused and had the Ottoman envoys killed by nailing their turbans to their heads, on the pretext that they had refused to raise their "hats" to him, as they only removed their headgear before Allah. Meanwhile, the Sultan sent the Bey of Nicopolis, Hamza Pasha , to make peace and, if necessary, eliminate Vlad III. Vlad III set an ambush;

1050-496: A fairly modern conscripted army , banking system reforms, the decriminalization of homosexuality, the replacement of religious law with secular law, and guilds with modern factories. The Ottoman Ministry of Post was established in Istanbul in 1840. American inventor Samuel Morse received an Ottoman patent for the telegraph in 1847, issued by Sultan Abdülmecid , who personally tested the invention. The reformist period peaked with

1225-549: A figure that vastly exceeded the number of Muslim children in school at the time, who were further hindered by the amount of time spent learning Arabic and Islamic theology. Author Norman Stone suggests that the Arabic alphabet, in which Turkish was written until 1928 , was ill-suited to reflect the sounds of Turkish (which is a Turkic as opposed to Semitic language), which imposed further difficulty on Turkish children. In turn, Christians' higher educational levels allowed them to play

1400-455: A great impact in molding Mehmed's mindset and reinforcing his Muslim beliefs. He was influenced in his practice of Islamic epistemology by practitioners of science, particularly by his mentor, Molla Gürâni , and he followed their approach. The influence of Akshamsaddin in Mehmed's life became predominant from a young age, especially in the imperative of fulfilling his Islamic duty to overthrow

1575-508: A larger role in the economy, with the rise in prominence of groups such as the Sursock family indicative of this. In 1911, of the 654 wholesale companies in Istanbul, 528 were owned by ethnic Greeks. In many cases, Christians and Jews gained protection from European consuls and citizenship, meaning they were protected from Ottoman law and not subject to the same economic regulations as their Muslim counterparts. The Crimean War (1853–1856)

1750-570: A letter to Corvinus dated 2 February, he wrote: I have killed peasants men and women, old and young, who lived at Oblucitza and Novoselo, where the Danube flows into the sea, up to Rahova , which is located near Chilia, from the lower Danube up to such places as Samovit and Ghighen. We killed 23,884 Turks without counting those whom we burned in homes or the Turks whose heads were cut by our soldiers.... Thus, your highness, you must know that I have broken

1925-687: A major center for its trade, contributing to its continued prosperity throughout the seventeenth and much of the eighteenth century. Under Ivan IV (1533–1584), the Tsardom of Russia expanded into the Volga and Caspian regions at the expense of the Tatar khanates. In 1571, the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray , commanded by the Ottomans, burned Moscow . The next year, the invasion was repeated but repelled at

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2100-465: A month before the emperor David surrendered on 15 August 1461. The Ottomans since the early 15th century tried to bring Wallachia ( Ottoman Turkish : والاچیا ) under their control by putting their own candidate on the throne, but each attempt ended in failure. The Ottomans regarded Wallachia as a buffer zone between them and the Kingdom of Hungary and for a yearly tribute did not meddle in their internal affairs. The two primary Balkan powers, Hungary and

2275-456: A month later, on the 16th of November, the Ottomans avenged their earlier defeat at Kruševac by defeating Skobaljić's army near Tripolje, where the Serbian voivode was captured and executed via impalement. Following this a temporary treaty was signed with the Serbian despot, where Đurađ would formally recognize the recently captured Serbian forts as Ottoman land, send thirty thousand florins to

2450-458: A morale boost amongst the Ottoman troops, which allowed them to go on the offensive again and push the Christian forces out of the Ottoman camp. The actions of the Sultan had prevented a complete rout of the Ottoman army, however, the army had been far too weakened to attempt to take the city again, causing the Ottoman war council to decide on ending the siege. The Sultan and his army began

2625-642: A pretext in November 1462, the Ottoman commander in central Greece, Turahanoğlu Ömer Bey , attacked and nearly succeeded in taking the strategically important Venetian fortress of Lepanto ( Nafpaktos ). On 3 April 1463, however, the governor of the Morea, Isa Beg, took the Venetian-held town of Argos by treason. The new alliance launched a two-pronged offensive against the Ottomans: a Venetian army, under

2800-453: A retreat to Edirne during the night, without the Christian forces being able to pursue them. Hunyadi died shortly after the siege, meanwhile Đurađ Branković regained possession of some parts of Serbia. Shortly before the end of the year 1456, roughly 5 months after the Siege of Belgrade , the 79-year-old Branković died. Serbian independence survived after him for only around three years, when

2975-521: A sense of Turkish nationalism. In this period, the Ottoman Empire spent only small amounts of public funds on education; for example, in 1860–1861 only 0.2% of the total budget was invested in education. As the Ottoman state attempted to modernize its infrastructure and army in response to outside threats, it opened itself up to a different kind of threat: that of creditors. As the historian Eugene Rogan has written, "the single greatest threat to

3150-512: A shortage of manpower and money meant that the Venetians remained largely confined to their fortified bases, while Ömer Bey's army roamed the countryside. In the Aegean , the Venetians tried to take Lesbos in the spring of 1464, and besieged the capital Mytilene for six weeks, until the arrival of an Ottoman fleet under Mahmud Pasha on 18 May forced them to withdraw. Another attempt to capture

3325-572: A staunch antagonist of the West, as the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople with all the ceremonial elements, ethnarch (or milletbashi ) status, and rights of property that made him the second largest landlord in the empire after the sultan himself in 1454, and in turn, Gennadius II recognized Mehmed the Conqueror as the successor to the throne. Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos died without producing an heir, and had Constantinople not fallen to

3500-459: A victory over the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), off southwestern Greece; Catholic forces killed over 30,000 Turks and destroyed 200 of their ships. It was a startling, if mostly symbolic, blow to the image of Ottoman invincibility, an image which the victory of the Knights of Malta over the Ottoman invaders in the 1565 siege of Malta had recently set about eroding. The battle

3675-532: A war council with his commanders to determine the army's next actions. Karaca Pasha recommended that a part of the army should cross the Danube to counter the approaching relief army. This plan was rejected by the council, particularly due to the opposition by the Rumelian Begs. Instead, the decision was made to prioritize capturing the fortress, a move seen as a tactical blunder by modern historians. This allowed Hunyadi to set up camp with his army across

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3850-559: Is curtain-bearer in the palace of Chosroes, The owl sounds the relief in the castle of Afrasiyab. Some Muslim scholars claimed that a hadith in Musnad Ahmad referred specifically to Mehmed's conquest of Constantinople, seeing it as the fulfillment of a prophecy and a sign of the approaching apocalypse. After the conquest of Constantinople, Mehmed claimed the title of caesar of the Roman Empire ( Qayser-i Rûm ), based on

4025-639: The Anatolian Beyliks . One of these, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I ( d. 1323/4), a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, with many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along

4200-583: The Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II , which marked the Ottomans' emergence as a major regional power. Under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566), the empire reached the peak of its power, prosperity, and political development. By

4375-465: The Battle of Molodi . The Ottoman Empire continued to invade Eastern Europe in a series of slave raids , and remained a significant power in Eastern Europe until the end of the 17th century. The Ottomans decided to conquer Venetian Cyprus and on 22 July 1570, Nicosia was besieged; 50,000 Christians died, and 180,000 were enslaved. On 15 September 1570, the Ottoman cavalry appeared before

4550-728: The Bosporus Strait made it difficult to conquer. In 1402, the Byzantines were temporarily relieved when the Turco-Mongol leader Timur , founder of the Timurid Empire , invaded Ottoman Anatolia from the east. In the Battle of Ankara in 1402, Timur defeated Ottoman forces and took Sultan Bayezid I as prisoner, throwing the empire into disorder. The ensuing civil war lasted from 1402 to 1413 as Bayezid's sons fought over succession. It ended when Mehmed I emerged as

4725-613: The Bulgarian Tsardom of Vidin in 1396, regarded as the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Ages , failed to stop the advance of the victorious Ottomans. As the Turks expanded into the Balkans, the conquest of Constantinople became a crucial objective. The Ottomans had already wrested control of nearly all former Byzantine lands surrounding the city, but the strong defense of Constantinople's strategic position on

4900-599: The Cape of Good Hope in 1488 initiated a series of Ottoman-Portuguese naval wars in the Indian Ocean throughout the 16th century. Despite the growing European presence in the Indian Ocean, Ottoman trade with the east continued to flourish. Cairo, in particular, benefitted from the rise of Yemeni coffee as a popular consumer commodity. As coffeehouses appeared in cities and towns across the empire, Cairo developed into

5075-545: The Constitution of the Ottoman Empire and brought in multi-party politics with a two-stage electoral system ( electoral law ) under the Ottoman parliament . The constitution offered hope by freeing the empire's citizens to modernise the state's institutions, rejuvenate its strength, and enable it to hold its own against outside powers. Its guarantee of liberties promised to dissolve inter-communal tensions and transform

5250-540: The Dănești clan, to the throne. Vlad III Dracula fled to Moldavia, where he lived under the protection of his uncle, Bogdan II . In October 1451, Bogdan was assassinated and Vlad fled to Hungary. Impressed by Vlad's vast knowledge of the mindset and inner workings of the Ottoman Empire, as well as his hatred towards the Turks and new Sultan Mehmed II, Hunyadi reconciled with his former enemy and tried to make Vlad III his own advisor, but Vlad refused. In 1456, three years after

5425-644: The Golden Horn was blocked by a boom chain and defended by twenty-eight warships . On 22 April, Mehmed transported his lighter warships overland, around the Genoese colony of Galata , and into the Golden Horn's northern shore; eighty galleys were transported from the Bosphorus after paving a route, little over one mile, with wood. Thus, the Byzantines stretched their troops over a longer portion of

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5600-856: The Great Northern War of 1700–1721). Charles XII persuaded the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III to declare war on Russia, which resulted in an Ottoman victory in the Pruth River Campaign of 1710–1711, in Moldavia. After the Austro-Turkish War , the Treaty of Passarowitz confirmed the loss of the Banat, Serbia, and "Little Walachia" (Oltenia) to Austria. The Treaty also revealed that the Ottoman Empire

5775-545: The Greek revolt (1821–1829) that ultimately ended with the formal independence of Greece in 1830. It was a costly enterprise for Muhammad Ali, who had lost his fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. Thus began the first Egyptian–Ottoman War (1831–1833) , during which the French-trained army of Muhammad Ali, under the command of his son Ibrahim Pasha , defeated the Ottoman Army as it marched into Anatolia , reaching

5950-742: The Greeks declared war on the Sultan. A rebellion that originated in Moldavia as a diversion was followed by the main revolution in the Peloponnese , which, along with the northern part of the Gulf of Corinth , became the first parts of the Ottoman Empire to achieve independence (in 1829). In 1830, the French invaded the Deylik of Algiers . The campaign that took 21 days, resulted in over 5,000 Algerian military casualties, and about 2,600 French ones. Before

6125-576: The Habsburg and Russian empires. The Ottomans consequently suffered severe military defeats in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, culminating in the loss of both territory and global prestige . This prompted a comprehensive process of reform and modernization known as the Tanzimat ; over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organized internally, despite suffering further territorial losses, especially in

6300-506: The Hamidian massacres . In 1897 the population was 19   million, of whom 14   million (74%) were Muslim. An additional 20   million lived in provinces that remained under the sultan's nominal suzerainty but were entirely outside his actual power. One by one the Porte lost nominal authority. They included Egypt, Tunisia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Lebanon. As

6475-612: The Iberian Union . The Ottomans were holders of the Caliph title, meaning they were the leaders of Muslims worldwide. The Iberians were leaders of the Christian crusaders, and so the two fought in a worldwide conflict. There were zones of operations in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean , where Iberians circumnavigated Africa to reach India and, on their way, wage war upon the Ottomans and their local Muslim allies. Likewise,

6650-570: The Isthmus of Corinth , restoring the Hexamilion wall and equipping it with many cannons. They then proceeded to besiege the fortress of the Acrocorinth , which controlled the northwestern Peloponnese. The Venetians engaged in repeated clashes with the defenders and with Ömer Bey's forces, until they suffered a major defeat on 20 October and were then forced to lift the siege and retreat to

6825-708: The Köprülü era (1656–1703), effective control of the Empire was exercised by a sequence of grand viziers from the Köprülü family. The Köprülü Vizierate saw renewed military success with authority restored in Transylvania, the conquest of Crete completed in 1669, and expansion into Polish southern Ukraine , with the strongholds of Khotyn , and Kamianets-Podilskyi and the territory of Podolia ceding to Ottoman control in 1676. This period of renewed assertiveness came to

7000-641: The Oriental Crisis of 1840 . Muhammad Ali had close relations with France , and the prospect of him becoming the Sultan of Egypt was widely viewed as putting the entire Levant into the French sphere of influence. As the Sublime Porte had proved itself incapable of defeating Muhammad Ali, the British Empire and Austrian Empire provided military assistance, and the second Egyptian–Ottoman War (1839–1841) ended with Ottoman victory and

7175-405: The Ottoman state . His father was Sultan Murad II (1404–1451) and his mother Hüma Hatun , a slave of uncertain origin. When Mehmed II was eleven years old he was sent to Amasya with his two lalas (advisors) to govern and thus gain experience, per the custom of Ottoman rulers before his time. Sultan Murad II also sent a number of teachers for him to study under. This Islamic education had

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7350-453: The Porte as yearly tribute and provide troops for Ottoman campaigns. The 1454 campaign had resulted in the capture of fifty thousand prisoners from Serbia, four thousand of whom were settled in various villages near Constantinople . The following year, Mehmed received reports from one of his frontier commanders about Serbian weakness against a possible invasion, the reports in combination with

7525-534: The Sakarya River . A Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Bapheus in 1302 contributed to Osman's rise. It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbors, due to the lack of sources surviving. The Ghaza thesis popular during the 20th century credited their success to rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam , but it is no longer generally accepted. No other hypothesis has attracted broad acceptance. In

7700-466: The Saronic Gulf . On 12 July, Cappello landed at Piraeus and marched against Athens , the Ottomans' major regional base. He failed to take the Acropolis and was forced to retreat to Patras , the capital of Peloponnese and the seat of the Ottoman bey , which was being besieged by a joint force of Venetians and Greeks . Before Cappello could arrive, and as the city seemed on the verge of falling, Ömer Bey suddenly appeared with 12,000 cavalry and drove

7875-477: The Spanish garrison of Castelnuovo on the Adriatic coast ; the successful siege cost the Ottomans 8,000 casualties, but Venice agreed to terms in 1540, surrendering most of its empire in the Aegean and the Morea . France and the Ottoman Empire, united by mutual opposition to Habsburg rule, became allies. The French conquests of Nice (1543) and Corsica (1553) occurred as a joint venture between French king Francis I and Suleiman, and were commanded by

8050-454: The Treaty of Nasuh Pasha , which ceded the entire Caucasus, except westernmost Georgia, back into the possession of Safavid Iran . The treaty ending the Cretan War cost Venice much of Dalmatia , its Aegean island possessions, and Crete . (Losses from the war totalled 30,985 Venetian soldiers and 118,754 Turkish soldiers.) During his brief majority reign, Murad IV (1623–1640) reasserted central authority and recaptured Iraq (1639) from

8225-421: The 13th of June. After the necessary preparations were finished, Ottoman cannons started bombarding the city walls and Ottoman troops started filling the ditches in front of the walls with earth to advance forward. As despair started to set in amongst the defenders, news started arriving of a relief force assembling across the Danube under the command of John Hunyadi. Upon learning of this development, Mehmed held

8400-486: The 18th of April. Mehmed's forces quickly succeeded in capturing Sivricehisar (sometimes identified with the Ostrvica Fortress ) and Omolhisar, and repulsed a Serbian cavalry force of 9,000 cavalry sent against them by the despot. Following these actions, the Serbian capital of Smederevo was put under siege by the Ottoman forces. Before the city could be taken, intelligence was received about an approaching Hungarian relief force led by Hunyadi, which caused Mehmed to lift

8575-423: The Allied army at the time was occupied despite the 24th Infantry Division stationed only several miles from the city. The city of Basra did not completely succumb to the rebels; a counterattack by some 6,000 loyalists from the Republican Guard held out against 5,000 defectors of the Iraqi army. After about three days, the Republican Guard began to gain control, destroying "everything in front of them", killing many of

8750-406: The Arabic name ʿUthmān ( عثمان ). In Ottoman Turkish , the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿO s mānīye ( دولت عليه عثمانیه ), lit.   ' Sublime Ottoman State ' , or simply Devlet-i ʿO s mānīye ( دولت عثمانيه‎ ), lit.   ' Ottoman State ' . The Turkish word for "Ottoman" ( Osmanlı ) originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in

8925-486: The Balkan Peninsula during the Congress of Berlin , and in return, Britain assumed the administration of Cyprus in 1878. Britain later sent troops to Egypt in 1882 to put down the Urabi Revolt (Sultan Abdul Hamid II was too paranoid to mobilize his own army, fearing this would result in a coup d'état), effectively gaining control in both territories. Abdul Hamid II was so fearful of a coup that he did not allow his army to conduct war games, lest this serve as cover for

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9100-445: The Balkans . Osman's son, Orhan , captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326, making it the new capital and supplanting Byzantine control in the region. The important port of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387 and sacked. The Ottoman victory in Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. The Battle of Nicopolis for

9275-402: The Balkans, where a number of new states emerged. Beginning in the late 19th century, various Ottoman intellectuals sought to further liberalize society and politics along European lines, culminating in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which established the Second Constitutional Era and introduced competitive multi-party elections under

9450-454: The Byzantine Empire by conquering Constantinople. After Murad II made peace with Hungary on 12 June 1444, he abdicated the throne in favour of his 12-year-old son Mehmed II in July /August 1444. During Mehmed II's first reign, he defeated the crusade led by John Hunyadi after the Hungarian incursions into his country broke the conditions of the truce per the Treaties of Edirne and Szeged in September 1444. Cardinal Julian Cesarini ,

9625-400: The Captain General of the Sea Alvise Loredan , landed in the Morea, while Matthias Corvinus invaded Bosnia. At the same time, Pius II began assembling an army at Ancona , hoping to lead it in person. Negotiations were also begun with other rivals of the Ottomans, such as Karamanids , Uzun Hassan and the Crimean Khanate . In early August, the Venetians retook Argos and refortified

9800-426: The Conqueror (Ottoman Turkish: ابو الفتح , romanized:  Ebū'l-fetḥ , lit.   'the Father of Conquest'; Turkish: Fâtih Sultan Mehmed ), was twice the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from August 1444 to September 1446 and then later from February 1451 to May 1481. In Mehmed II's first reign, he defeated the crusade led by John Hunyadi after the Hungarian incursions into his country broke

9975-446: The Conqueror , reorganized both state and military, and on 29 May 1453 conquered Constantinople , ending the Byzantine Empire. Mehmed allowed the Eastern Orthodox Church to maintain its autonomy and land in exchange for accepting Ottoman authority. Due to tension between the states of western Europe and the later Byzantine Empire, most of the Orthodox population accepted Ottoman rule, as preferable to Venetian rule. Albanian resistance

10150-444: The Constitution, called the Kanûn-u Esâsî . The empire's First Constitutional era was short-lived. The parliament survived for only two years before the sultan suspended it. The empire's Christian population, owing to their higher educational levels, started to pull ahead of the Muslim majority, leading to much resentment. In 1861, there were 571 primary and 94 secondary schools for Ottoman Christians, with 140,000 pupils in total,

10325-433: The Danube uncontested. Shortly after, the Ottoman navy was defeated in a five hour long battle by the newly arrived Christian Danubian navy. Following this, Hunyadi's troops started entering the city to reinforce the besieged, which increased the morale of the defending forces. Infuriated by the unfolding events, Mehmed ordered a final attack to capture the city on the 21st of July, after continuous cannon fire building up to

10500-482: The French invasion the total population of Algeria was most likely between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000. By 1873, the population of Algeria (excluding several hundred thousand newly arrived French settlers) had decreased to 2,172,000. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt revolted against Sultan Mahmud II due to the latter's refusal to grant him the governorships of Greater Syria and Crete , which the Sultan had promised him in exchange for sending military assistance to put down

10675-410: The Greeks. A few holdouts remained for a time. The island of Monemvasia refused to surrender, and it was ruled for a brief time by a Catalan corsair. When the population drove him out they obtained the consent of Thomas to submit to the Pope's protection before the end of 1460. The Mani Peninsula , on the Morea's south end, resisted under a loose coalition of local clans, and the area then came under

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10850-406: The Hexamilion and to Nauplia ( Nafplion ). In Bosnia, Matthias Corvinus seized over sixty fortified places and succeeded in taking its capital, Jajce , after a 3-month siege , on 16 December. Ottoman reaction was swift and decisive: Mehmed II dispatched his Grand Vizier , Mahmud Pasha Angelović , with an army against the Venetians. To confront the Venetian fleet, which had taken station outside

11025-579: The Hungarians and asked Pope Pius II for help in the face of an impending Ottoman invasion. In 1463, after a dispute over the tribute paid annually by the Bosnian Kingdom to the Ottomans, he sent for help from the Venetians . However, none ever reached Bosnia. In 1463, Sultan Mehmed II led an army into the country. The royal city of Bobovac soon fell, leaving Stephen Tomašević to retreat to Jajce and later to Ključ . Mehmed invaded Bosnia and conquered it very quickly, executing Stephen Tomašević and his uncle Radivoj . Bosnia officially fell in 1463 and became

11200-405: The Iberians passed through newly-Christianized Latin America and had sent expeditions that traversed the Pacific to Christianize the formerly Muslim Philippines and use it as a base to attack the Muslims in the Far East . In this case, the Ottomans sent armies to aid its easternmost vassal and territory, the Sultanate of Aceh in Southeast Asia. During the 1600s, the world conflict between

11375-664: The Islamic clergy successfully objected under the grounds of theodicy . In 1754 the artillery school was reopened on a semi-secret basis. In 1726, Ibrahim Muteferrika convinced the Grand Vizier Nevşehirli Damat Ibrahim Pasha , the Grand Mufti , and the clergy on the efficiency of the printing press, and Muteferrika was later granted by Sultan Ahmed III permission to publish non-religious books (despite opposition from some calligraphers and religious leaders). Muteferrika's press published its first book in 1729 and, by 1743, issued 17 works in 23 volumes, each having between 500 and 1,000 copies. In North Africa, Spain conquered Oran from

11550-413: The Janissary revolted . Selim's efforts cost him his throne and his life, but were resolved in spectacular and bloody fashion by his successor, the dynamic Mahmud II , who eliminated the Janissary corps in 1826. The Serbian revolution (1804–1815) marked the beginning of an era of national awakening in the Balkans during the Eastern Question . In 1811, the fundamentalist Wahhabis of Arabia, led by

11725-402: The Magnificent (1520–1566) captured Belgrade in 1521, conquered the southern and central parts of the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Ottoman–Hungarian Wars , and, after his historic victory in the Battle of Mohács in 1526, he established Ottoman rule in the territory of present-day Hungary and other Central European territories. He then laid siege to Vienna in 1529, but failed to take

11900-413: The Ottoman Caliphate and Iberian Union was a stalemate since both were at similar population , technology and economic levels. Nevertheless, the success of the Ottoman political and military establishment was compared to the Roman Empire , despite the difference in size, by the likes of contemporary Italian scholar Francesco Sansovino and French political philosopher Jean Bodin . In the second half of

12075-440: The Ottoman Empire formally annexed Serbian lands following dissension among his widow and three remaining sons. Lazar, the youngest, poisoned his mother and exiled his brothers, but he died soon afterwards. In the continuing turmoil the oldest brother Stefan Branković gained the throne. Observing the chaotic situation in Serbia, the Ottoman government decided to definitively conclude the Serbian issue. The Grand Vizier Mahmud Pasha

12250-467: The Ottoman Empire gradually shrank, 7–9   million Muslims from its former territories in the Caucasus, Crimea , Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands migrated to Anatolia and Eastern Thrace . After the Empire lost the First Balkan War (1912–1913), it lost all its Balkan territories except East Thrace (European Turkey). This resulted in around 400,000 Muslims fleeing with the retreating Ottoman armies (with many dying from cholera brought by

12425-406: The Ottoman Empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline after the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, modern academic consensus posits that the empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society and military into much of the 18th century. However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind those of its chief European rivals,

12600-573: The Ottoman admirals Hayreddin Barbarossa and Dragut . France supported the Ottomans with an artillery unit during the 1543 Ottoman conquest of Esztergom in northern Hungary. After further advances by the Turks, the Habsburg ruler Ferdinand officially recognized Ottoman ascendancy in Hungary in 1547. Suleiman died of natural causes during the siege of Szigetvár in 1566. Following his death,

12775-417: The Ottoman army and won the Battle of Varna on 10 November 1444. Halil Inalcik states that Mehmed II did not ask for his father. Instead, it was Çandarlı Halil Pasha 's effort to bring Murad II back to the throne. In 1446, while Murad II returned to the throne, Mehmed retained the title of sultan but only acted as a governor of Manisa. Following the death of Murad II in 1451, Mehmed II became sultan for

12950-541: The Ottoman economy, and used its position to ensure that European capital continued to penetrate the empire, often to the detriment of local Ottoman interests. The Ottoman bashi-bazouks suppressed the Bulgarian uprising of 1876, massacring up to 100,000 people in the process. The Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) ended with a decisive victory for Russia. As a result, Ottoman holdings in Europe declined sharply: Bulgaria

13125-454: The Ottomans had conquered Constantinople, they threatened Hungary by besieging Belgrade . Hunyadi began a concerted counterattack in Serbia : While he himself moved into Serbia and relieved the siege (before dying of the plague), Vlad III Dracula led his own contingent into Wallachia, reconquered his native land, and killed Vladislav II. In 1459, Mehmed II sent envoys to Vlad to urge him to pay

13300-510: The Ottomans having reached the outskirts of Venice . Based on the terms of the treaty, the Venetians were allowed to keep Ulcinj , Antivan, and Durrës . However, they ceded Shkodra , which had been under Ottoman siege for many months, as well as other territories on the Dalmatian coastline, and they relinquished control of the Greek islands of Negroponte ( Euboea ) and Lemnos . Moreover,

13475-555: The Ottomans were said to be declining, although this has been rejected by many scholars. By the end of Suleiman's reign, the Empire spanned approximately 877,888 sq mi (2,273,720 km ), extending over three continents. The Empire became a dominant naval force, controlling much of the Mediterranean Sea . The Empire was now a major part of European politics. The Ottomans became involved in multi-continental religious wars when Spain and Portugal were united under

13650-547: The Ottomans were surrounded and almost all of them caught and impaled, with Hamza Pasha impaled on the highest stake, as befit his rank. In the winter of 1462, Vlad III crossed the Danube and scorched the entire Bulgarian land in the area between Serbia and the Black Sea . Allegedly disguising himself as a Turkish Sipahi and utilizing his command of the Turkish language and customs, Vlad III infiltrated Ottoman camps, ambushed, massacred or captured several Ottoman forces. In

13825-559: The Ottomans, he likely would have been succeeded by the sons of his deceased elder brother. Those children were taken into the palace service of Mehmed after the fall of Constantinople. The oldest boy, renamed Has Murad, became a personal favorite of Mehmed and served as beylerbey of the Balkans . The younger son, renamed Mesih Pasha , became admiral of the Ottoman fleet and sanjak-bey of the Gallipoli . He eventually served twice as Grand Vizier under Mehmed's son, Bayezid II . After

14000-482: The Ottomans, maintained an enduring struggle to make Wallachia their own vassal. To prevent Wallachia from falling into the Hungarian fold, the Ottomans freed young Vlad III (Dracula), who had spent four years as a prisoner of Murad, together with his brother Radu , so that Vlad could claim the throne of Wallachia. His rule was short-lived, however, as Hunyadi invaded Wallachia and restored his ally Vladislav II , of

14175-519: The Ottomans, speaking of wild schemes that included the conquest of Jerusalem . Mehmed II eventually heard of these intrigues and was further provoked to action by David's demand that Mehmed remit the tribute imposed on his brother. Mehmed the Conqueror's response came in the summer of 1461. He led a sizable army from Bursa by land and the Ottoman navy by sea, first to Sinope , joining forces with Ismail's brother Ahmed (the Red). He captured Sinope and ended

14350-787: The Russian Empire (2 November 1914) and its allies France (5 November 1914) and the British Empire (5 November 1914) declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Also on 5 November 1914, the British government changed the status of the Khedivate of Egypt and Cyprus , which were de jure Ottoman territories prior to the war, to British protectorates . Mehmed II Mehmed II ( Ottoman Turkish : محمد ثانى , romanized :  Meḥmed-i s̱ānī ; Turkish : II. Mehmed , pronounced [icinˈdʒi ˈmehmet] ; 30 March 1432 – 3 May 1481), commonly known as Mehmed

14525-600: The Russian intervention, Sultan Mahmud II could have faced the risk of being overthrown and Muhammad Ali could have even become the new Sultan. These events marked the beginning of a recurring pattern where the Sublime Porte needed the help of foreign powers to protect itself. In 1839, the Sublime Porte attempted to take back what it lost to the de facto autonomous, but de jure still Ottoman Eyalet of Egypt , but its forces were initially defeated, which led to

14700-563: The Russians. After this treaty the Ottoman Empire was able to enjoy a generation of peace in Europe, as Austria and Russia were forced to deal with the rise of Prussia . Educational and technological reforms came about, including the establishment of higher education institutions such as the Istanbul Technical University . In 1734 an artillery school was established to impart Western-style artillery methods, but

14875-682: The Safavids. The resulting Treaty of Zuhab of that same year decisively divided the Caucasus and adjacent regions between the two neighbouring empires as it had already been defined in the 1555 Peace of Amasya. The Sultanate of Women (1533–1656) was a period in which the mothers of young sultans exercised power on behalf of their sons. The most prominent women of this period were Kösem Sultan and her daughter-in-law Turhan Hatice , whose political rivalry culminated in Kösem's murder in 1651. During

15050-506: The Sultan for the conquest of the city, including the casting of 22 large cannons alongside many smaller ones and the establishment of a navy which would sail up the Danube to aid the army during the siege. The exact number of troops Mehmed commanded varies between sources, but the rumours of its size were significant enough to cause panic in Italy. Ottoman troops began arriving at Belgrade on

15225-521: The Turks, but was again defeated at the Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448. According to modern historiography, there is a direct connection between the rapid Ottoman military advance and the consequences of the Black Death from the mid-fourteenth century onwards. Byzantine territories, where the initial Ottoman conquests were carried out, were exhausted demographically and militarily due to

15400-575: The Venetians were forced to pay 100,000 ducat indemnity and agreed to a tribute of around 10,000 ducats per year in order to acquire trading privileges in the Black Sea . As a result of this treaty, Venice acquired a weakened position in the Levant . During the post- Seljuks era in the second half of the Middle Ages , numerous Turkmen principalities collectively known as Anatolian beyliks emerged in Anatolia. Karamanids initially centred around

15575-537: The advantage of the defeat at Vienna, culminating in the Treaty of Karlowitz (26 January 1699), which ended the Great Turkish War. The Ottomans surrendered control of significant territories, many permanently. Mustafa II (1695–1703) led the counterattack of 1695–1696 against the Habsburgs in Hungary, but was undone at the disastrous defeat at Zenta (in modern Serbia), 11 September 1697. Aside from

15750-578: The al-Saud family, revolted against the Ottomans. Unable to defeat the Wahhabi rebels, the Sublime Porte had Muhammad Ali Pasha of Kavala , the vali (governor) of the Eyalet of Egypt , tasked with retaking Arabia, which ended with the destruction of the Emirate of Diriyah in 1818. The suzerainty of Serbia as a hereditary monarchy under its own dynasty was acknowledged de jure in 1830. In 1821,

15925-468: The arts and sciences, and by the end of his reign, his rebuilding program had changed Constantinople into a thriving imperial capital. He is considered a hero in modern-day Turkey and parts of the wider Muslim world . Among other things, Istanbul's Fatih district, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge and Fatih Mosque are named after him. Mehmed II was born on 30 March 1432, in Edirne , then the capital city of

16100-629: The assertion that Constantinople had been the seat and capital of the Roman Empire since 330 AD and whoever possessed the Imperial capital was the ruler of the empire. The contemporary scholar George of Trebizond supported his claim. The claim was not recognized by the Catholic Church and most of, if not all, Western Europe, but was recognized by the Eastern Orthodox Church . Mehmed had installed Gennadius Scholarius ,

16275-489: The autonomous Deylik of Algiers . The Bey of Oran received an army from Algiers, but it failed to recapture Oran ; the siege caused the deaths of 1,500 Spaniards, and even more Algerians. The Spanish also massacred many Muslim soldiers. In 1792, Spain abandoned Oran, selling it to the Deylik of Algiers. In 1768 Russian-backed Ukrainian Haidamakas , pursuing Polish confederates, entered Balta , an Ottoman-controlled town on

16450-600: The border of Bessarabia in Ukraine, massacred its citizens, and burned the town to the ground. This action provoked the Ottoman Empire into the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 . The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 ended the war and provided freedom of worship for the Christian citizens of the Ottoman-controlled provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. By the late 18th century, after a number of defeats in

16625-405: The camp for his safety, which he refused to do so on the grounds that it would be a “sign of cowardice”. After this, Mehmed personally joined the fighting, accompanied by two of his begs . The Sultan managed to personally kill three enemy soldiers before being injured, forcing him to abandon the battlefield. The news of their Sultan fighting alongside them and the arrival of reinforcements caused

16800-423: The capital by sea in 1442, but bad weather made the landings difficult and the attempt was repulsed. While Mehmed II was away laying siege to Belgrade in 1456, the Ottoman governor of Amasya attacked Trebizond, and although he was defeated, he took many prisoners and extracted a heavy tribute. After John's death in 1459, his brother David came to power and intrigued with various European powers for help against

16975-586: The century after Osman I, Ottoman rule had begun to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans . The earliest conflicts began during the Byzantine–Ottoman wars , waged in Anatolia in the late 13th century before entering Europe in the mid-14th century, followed by the Bulgarian–Ottoman wars and the Serbian–Ottoman wars in the mid-14th century. Much of this period was characterised by Ottoman expansion into

17150-527: The chance and instead attacked him trying to take back the Fortress of Chilia . Vlad III had to retreat to the mountains. After this, the Ottomans captured the Wallachian capital Târgoviște and Mehmed II withdrew, having left Radu as ruler of Wallachia. Turahanoğlu Ömer Bey , who served with distinction and wiped out a force of 6,000 Wallachians and deposited 2,000 of their heads at the feet of Mehmed II,

17325-448: The city of Kütahya within 320 km (200 mi) of the capital, Constantinople. In desperation, Sultan Mahmud II appealed to the empire's traditional arch-rival Russia for help, asking Emperor Nicholas I to send an expeditionary force to assist him. In return for signing the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi , the Russians sent the expeditionary force which deterred Ibrahim Pasha from marching any further towards Constantinople. Under

17500-634: The city. In 1532, he made another attack on Vienna, but was repulsed in the siege of Güns . Transylvania , Wallachia and, intermittently, Moldavia , became tributary principalities of the Empire. In the east, the Ottoman Turks took Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, gaining control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf . In 1555, the Caucasus became partitioned for

17675-689: The civil strife, Austria-Hungary officially annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. The last of the Ottoman censuses was performed in 1914 . Despite military reforms which reconstituted the Ottoman Modern Army , the Empire lost its North African territories and the Dodecanese in the Italo-Turkish War (1911) and almost all of its European territories in the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). The Empire faced continuous unrest in

17850-554: The conditions of the truce per the Treaties of Edirne and Szeged . When Mehmed II ascended the throne again in 1451, he strengthened the Ottoman Navy and made preparations to attack Constantinople. At the age of 21, he conquered Constantinople and brought an end to the Byzantine Empire . After the conquest, Mehmed claimed the title caesar of Rome (Ottoman Turkish: قیصر‎ روم , romanized:  qayṣar-i Rūm ), based on

18025-599: The conquest of Constantinople, Mehmed II visited the site of Troy and boasted that he had avenged the Trojans by conquering the Greeks (Byzantines). Mehmed II's first campaigns after Constantinople were in the direction of Serbia, which had been an Ottoman vassal state intermittently since the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. The Ottoman ruler had a connection with the Serbian Despotate – one of Murad II 's wives

18200-518: The conquest of the city, Mehmed captured various other Serbian settlements in the surrounding area, after which he started his march back towards Edirne, visiting his ancestor Murad I 's grave in Kosovo on the way. In 1456, Mehmed decided to continue his momentum towards the northwest and capture the city of Belgrade , which had been ceded to the Kingdom of Hungary by the Serbian despot Đurađ Branković in 1427. Significant preparations were made by

18375-414: The day of the attack. Ottoman troops were initially successful in breaching the defences and entering the city, however were eventually repulsed by the defenders. The Christians pressed their advantage by launching a counter attack, which started pushing back the Ottoman forces, managing to advance as far as the Ottoman camp. At this crucial point of the battle, one of the viziers advised Mehmed to abandon

18550-478: The despots, their failure to pay their annual tribute to the Sultan, and finally their own revolt against Ottoman rule, Mehmed entered the Morea in May 1460. The capital Mistra fell exactly seven years after Constantinople, on 29 May 1460. Demetrios ended up a prisoner of the Ottomans and his younger brother Thomas fled. By the end of the summer, the Ottomans had achieved the submission of virtually all cities possessed by

18725-488: The dissatisfactory results of the 1454 campaign convinced Mehmed to initiate another campaign against Serbia. The Ottoman army marched on the important mining town of Novo Brdo , which Mehmed put under siege . The Serbians couldn't resist the Ottoman army out in the open, thus resorted to fortifying their various settlements and having their peasants flee to either various fortresses or forests. After forty days of siege and intense cannon fire, Novo Brdo surrendered. Following

18900-655: The eastern and southern frontiers by defeating Shah Ismail of Safavid Iran , in the Battle of Chaldiran . Selim I established Ottoman rule in Egypt by defeating and annexing the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and created a naval presence on the Red Sea . After this Ottoman expansion, competition began between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottomans to become the dominant power in the region. Suleiman

19075-717: The eight-year war with Iran and Allied bombardment and in 1991 during the Gulf War , the governorate ventured into an uprising after the United States promised them aid. It was started in Basra by angry soldiers, according to popular legend after they fired at a giant public portrait of Saddam Hussein. Mass support on the streets followed, shouting slogans, executing Ba'ath party members, leaders and secret police, and destroying pictures and monuments of Saddam Hussein . The participants had expected support from American troops. but

19250-514: The empire into a more harmonious place. Instead, this period became the story of the twilight struggle of the Empire. Members of Young Turks movement who had once gone underground now established their parties. Among them " Committee of Union and Progress ", and " Freedom and Accord Party " were major parties. On the other end of the spectrum were ethnic parties, which included Poale Zion , Al-Fatat , and Armenian national movement organised under Armenian Revolutionary Federation . Profiting from

19425-574: The empire was able to largely hold its own during the conflict, it struggled with internal dissent, especially the Arab Revolt . During this period, the Ottoman government engaged in genocide against Armenians , Assyrians , and Greeks . In the aftermath of World War I , the victorious Allied Powers occupied and partitioned the Ottoman Empire, which lost its southern territories to the United Kingdom and France . The successful Turkish War of Independence , led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk against

19600-544: The end of the Caucasian Wars , 90% of the Circassians were ethnically cleansed and exiled from their homelands in the Caucasus, fleeing to the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the settlement of 500,000 to 700,000 Circassians in the Ottoman Empire. Crimean Tatar refugees in the late 19th century played an especially notable role in seeking to modernise Ottoman education and in first promoting both Pan-Turkism and

19775-471: The end of the seventeenth century, and instead the word increasingly became associated with the Greek population of the empire, a meaning that it still bears in Turkey today. In Western Europe, the names Ottoman Empire, Turkish Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–1923, when

19950-705: The entrance of the Dardanelles Straits, the Sultan further ordered the creation of the new shipyard of Kadirga Limani in the Golden Horn (named after the "kadirga" type of galley ), and of two forts to guard the Straits, Kilidulbahr and Sultaniye . The Morean campaign was swiftly victorious for the Ottomans; they razed the Hexamilion, and advanced into the Morea. Argos fell, and several forts and localities that had recognized Venetian authority reverted to their Ottoman allegiance. Sultan Mehmed II, who

20125-636: The fact that Constantinople had been the seat and capital of the surviving Eastern Roman Empire since its consecration in 330 AD by Emperor Constantine I . The claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople , albeit not by most European monarchs. Mehmed continued his conquests in Anatolia with its reunification and in Southeast Europe as far west as Bosnia . At home, he made many political and social reforms. He encouraged

20300-536: The fall of Constantinople, Mehmed would also go on to conquer the Despotate of Morea in the Peloponnese in two campaigns in 1458 and 1460 and the Empire of Trebizond in northeastern Anatolia in 1461. The last two vestiges of Byzantine rule were thus absorbed by the Ottoman Empire. The conquest of Constantinople bestowed immense glory and prestige on the country. There is some historical evidence that, 10 years after

20475-484: The first time between the Safavids and the Ottomans, a status quo that remained until the end of the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) . By this partitioning as signed in the Peace of Amasya , Western Armenia , western Kurdistan , and Western Georgia fell into Ottoman hands, while southern Dagestan , Eastern Armenia , Eastern Georgia , and Azerbaijan remained Persian. In 1539, a 60,000-strong Ottoman army besieged

20650-538: The following months, ending the existence of the Serbian Despotate . The Despotate of the Morea bordered the southern Ottoman Balkans. The Ottomans had already invaded the region under Murad II , destroying the Byzantine defenses – the Hexamilion wall  – at the Isthmus of Corinth in 1446. Before the final siege of Constantinople , Mehmed ordered Ottoman troops to attack the Morea. The despots, Demetrios Palaiologos and Thomas Palaiologos , brothers of

20825-520: The following year. Stefan Branković was ousted from power in March 1459. After that the Serbian throne was offered to Stephen Tomašević , the future king of Bosnia, which infuriated Sultan Mehmed. After Mahmud Pasha suppressed an uprising near Pizren , Mehmed personally led an army against the Serbian capital, capturing Smederevo on the 20th of June 1459. After the surrender of the capital, other Serbian castles which continued to resist were captured in

21000-461: The fourteenth century. The word subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" ( Türk ) was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population and was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period , an educated, urban-dwelling Turkish speaker who was not a member of

21175-603: The heaviest combat in the war took place in the province in subsequent weeks. Several outbreaks of violence between secular Iraqis and Shiite Muslims broke out in summer 2006, and in September 2007, British troops were withdrawn to Basra Airport, and withdrew entirely from the city in December 2007. Following the example of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region in northern Iraq, Basra has proposed uniting with

21350-648: The independence of the Middle East" in the 19th century "was not the armies of Europe but its banks". The Ottoman state, which had begun taking on debt with the Crimean War, was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1875. By 1881, the Ottoman Empire agreed to have its debt controlled by the Ottoman Public Debt Administration , a council of European men with presidency alternating between France and Britain. The body controlled swaths of

21525-474: The inner citadel, Mahmud lifted the siege diverted his army elsewhere, conquering Rudnik and its environs before attacking and capturing the fortress of Golubac. Subsequently, Mehmed who had returned from his campaign in Morea met up with Mahmud Pasha in Skopje . During this meeting, reports were received that a Hungarian army was assembling near the Danube to launch an offensive against the Ottoman positions in

21700-655: The island shortly after also failed. The Venetian navy spent the remainder of the year in ultimately fruitless demonstrations of force before the Dardanelles. In early 1465, Mehmed II sent peace feelers to the Venetian Senate; distrusting the Sultan's motives, these were rejected. In April 1466, the Venetian war effort was reinvigorated under Vettore Cappello : the fleet took the northern Aegean islands of Imbros , Thasos , and Samothrace , and then sailed into

21875-402: The king of Bosnia, tried to bring Serbia under his control, but Ottoman expeditions forced him to give up his plan and Stephen fled to Bosnia, seeking refuge at the court of his father. After some battles, Bosnia became tributary kingdom to the Ottomans. On 10 July 1461, Stephen Thomas died, and Stephen Tomašević succeeded him as King of Bosnia. In 1461, Stephen Tomašević made an alliance with

22050-515: The last Venetian stronghold in Cyprus, Famagusta. The Venetian defenders held out for 11 months against a force that at its peak numbered 200,000 men with 145 cannons; 163,000 cannonballs struck the walls of Famagusta before it fell to the Ottomans in August 1571. The Siege of Famagusta claimed 50,000 Ottoman casualties. Meanwhile, the Holy League consisting of mostly Spanish and Venetian fleets won

22225-422: The last emperor, failed to send any aid. The chronic instability and the tribute payment to the Turks, after the peace treaty of 1446 with Mehmed II, resulted in an Albanian-Greek revolt against them, during which the brothers invited Ottoman troops to help put down the revolt. At this time, a number of influential Moreote Greeks and Albanians made private peace with Mehmed. After more years of incompetent rule by

22400-545: The late 16th and early 17th centuries. With the Empire's population reaching 30 million people by 1600, the shortage of land placed further pressure on the government. In spite of these problems, the Ottoman state remained strong, and its army did not collapse or suffer crushing defeats. The only exceptions were campaigns against the Safavid dynasty of Persia, where many of the Ottoman eastern provinces were lost, some permanently. This 1603–1618 war eventually resulted in

22575-474: The loss of the Banat and the temporary loss of Belgrade (1717–1739), the Ottoman border on the Danube and Sava remained stable during the eighteenth century. Russian expansion , however, presented a large and growing threat. Accordingly, King Charles XII of Sweden was welcomed as an ally in the Ottoman Empire following his defeat by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava of 1709 in central Ukraine (part of

22750-459: The military-administrative class typically referred to themselves neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk , but rather as a Rūmī ( رومى ), or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia. The term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. As applied to Ottoman Turkish speakers, this term began to fall out of use at

22925-400: The most significant. Mehmed II sent his armies to take Shkodra in 1474 but failed. Then he went personally to lead the siege of Shkodra of 1478–79. The Venetians and Shkodrans resisted the assaults and continued to hold the fortress until Venice ceded Shkodra to the Ottoman Empire in the Treaty of Constantinople as a condition of ending the war. The agreement was established as a result of

23100-529: The narrow Bosphorus Straits , the fortress Anadoluhisarı had been built by his great-grandfather Bayezid I on the Asian side; Mehmed erected an even stronger fortress called Rumelihisarı on the European side, and thus gained complete control of the strait. Having completed his fortresses, Mehmed proceeded to levy a toll on ships passing within reach of their cannon. A Venetian vessel ignoring signals to stop

23275-439: The need for greater numbers of Ottoman infantry equipped with firearms, resulting in a relaxation of recruitment policy. This contributed to problems of indiscipline and outright rebelliousness within the corps, which were never fully solved. Irregular sharpshooters ( Sekban ) were also recruited, and on demobilisation turned to brigandage in the Celali rebellions (1590–1610), which engendered widespread anarchy in Anatolia in

23450-421: The new conditions of the seventeenth century and remain powerful, both militarily and economically. Historians of the mid-twentieth century once characterised this period as one of stagnation and decline, but this view is now rejected by the majority of academics. The discovery of new maritime trade routes by Western European states allowed them to avoid the Ottoman trade monopoly. The Portuguese discovery of

23625-404: The newly established Ankara -based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. At present, most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", and "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character. As the Rum Sultanate declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as

23800-408: The occupying Allies, led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in the Anatolian heartland and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy in 1922, formally ending the Ottoman Empire. The word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I , the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman (also known as the Ottoman dynasty). Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of

23975-466: The official reign of the Jandarid dynasty, although he appointed Ahmed as the governor of Kastamonu and Sinope, only to revoke the appointment the same year. Various other members of the Jandarid dynasty were offered important functions throughout the history of the Ottoman Empire. During the march to Trebizond, Uzun Hasan sent his mother Sara Khatun as an ambassador; while they were climbing the steep heights of Zigana on foot, she asked Sultan Mehmed why he

24150-406: The other provinces of Dhi Qar and Maysan as an autonomous region. On October 15, 2005, 691,024 people, some 96.02%, voted for the new constitution. During the Gulf War, part of Kuwait became a part of the Basra Governorate and was given the name, Saddamiyat al-Mitla' District . Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire ( / ˈ ɒ t ə m ə n / ), also called the Turkish Empire ,

24325-459: The outnumbered besiegers off. Six hundred Venetians and a hundred Greeks were taken prisoner out of a force of 2,000, while Barbarigo himself was killed. Cappello, who arrived some days later, attacked the Ottomans but was heavily defeated. Demoralized, he returned to Negroponte with the remains of his army. There Cappello fell ill and died on 13 March 1467. In 1470 Mehmed personally led an Ottoman army to besiege Negroponte . The Venetian relief navy

24500-586: The peace with him [Mehmed II]. Mehmed II abandoned his siege of Corinth to launch a punitive attack against Vlad III in Wallachia but suffered many casualties in a surprise night attack led by Vlad III Dracula, who was apparently bent on personally killing the Sultan. However, Vlad's policy of staunch resistance against the Ottomans was not a popular one, and he was betrayed by the boyars's (local aristocracy) appeasing faction, most of them also pro-Dăneşti (a rival princely branch). His best friend and ally Stephen III of Moldavia , who had promised to help him, seized

24675-406: The plague, which facilitated Ottoman expansion. In addition, slave hunting was the main economic driving force behind Ottoman conquest. Some 21st-century authors re-periodize conquest of the Balkans into the akıncı phase , which spanned 8 to 13 decades, characterized by continuous slave hunting and destruction, followed by administrative integration into the Empire. The son of Murad II, Mehmed

24850-436: The rebels in the streets and conducting mass executions on the public squares. From 2003 the governorate was one of the centres of warfare during the invasion of the British and Americans during the Iraq War . The Battle of Basra took place between March 23 and April 7 between the British 1st Armoured Division forces under Major General Robin Brims , and Iraqi forces under General Ali Hassan al-Majid (Chemical Ali). Much of

25025-411: The region. The Hungarians crossed the Danube near Belgrade, after which they marched south towards Užice . While the Hungarian troops were engaged in plunder near Užice, they got ambushed by the Ottoman forces in the region, forcing them to retreat. Despite this victory, for Serbia to be fully annexed into the empire, Smederevo still had to be taken. The opportunity for its capture presented itself

25200-414: The representative of the Pope, had convinced the king of Hungary that breaking the truce with Muslims was not a betrayal. At this time Mehmed II asked his father Murad II to reclaim the throne, but Murad II refused. According to the 17th-century chronicles, Mehmed II wrote, "If you are the sultan, come and lead your armies. If I am the sultan I hereby order you to come and lead my armies." Then, Murad II led

25375-411: The restoration of Ottoman suzerainty over Egypt Eyalet and the Levant . By the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire was called the " sick man of Europe ". Three suzerain states – the Principality of Serbia , Wallachia and Moldavia – moved towards de jure independence during the 1860s and 1870s. During the Tanzimat period (1839–1876), the government's series of constitutional reforms led to

25550-530: The rule of Venice . The last holdout was Salmeniko , in the Morea's northwest. Graitzas Palaiologos was the military commander there, stationed at Salmeniko Castle (also known as Castle Orgia). While the town eventually surrendered, Graitzas and his garrison and some town residents held out in the castle until July 1461, when they escaped and reached Venetian territory. Emperors of Trebizond formed alliances through royal marriages with various Muslim rulers. Emperor John IV of Trebizond married his daughter to

25725-409: The second time. Ibrahim II of Karaman invaded the disputed area and instigated various revolts against Ottoman rule. Mehmed II conducted his first campaign against İbrahim of Karaman; Byzantines threatened to release Ottoman claimant Orhan . When Mehmed II ascended the throne again in 1451, he devoted himself to strengthening the Ottoman navy and made preparations for an attack on Constantinople. In

25900-497: The siege and start marching back to his domains. By August the campaign was effectively over, Mehmed left a part of his force under the command of Firuz Bey in Serbia in anticipation of a possible offensive on Ottoman territories by Hunyadi. This force was defeated by a combined Hungarian-Serbian army led by Hunyadi and Nikola Skobaljić on the 2nd of October near Kruševac , after which Hunyadi went on to raid Ottoman controlled Nish and Pirot before returning back to Belgrade. Roughly

26075-467: The sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire came under increasing strain from inflation and the rapidly rising costs of warfare that were impacting both Europe and the Middle East. These pressures led to a series of crises around the year 1600, placing great strain upon the Ottoman system of government. The empire underwent a series of transformations of its political and military institutions in response to these challenges, enabling it to successfully adapt to

26250-427: The soldiers), and 400,000 non-Muslims fled territory still under Ottoman rule. Justin McCarthy estimates that from 1821 to 1922, 5.5   million Muslims died in southeastern Europe, with the expulsion of 5   million. The defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908—1922) began with the Second Constitutional Era , a moment of hope and promise established with the Young Turk Revolution . It restored

26425-422: The son of his brother-in-law, Uzun Hasan , sultan of the Aq Qoyunlu (also known as White Sheep Turkomans), in return for his promise to defend Trebizond. He also secured promises of support from the Turkish beys of Sinope and Karamania , and from the king and princes of Georgia . The Ottomans were motivated to capture Trebizond or to get an annual tribute. In the time of Murad II, they first attempted to take

26600-443: The start of the 17th century, the Ottomans presided over 32 provinces and numerous vassal states , which over time were either absorbed into the Empire or granted various degrees of autonomy. With its capital at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin , the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Middle East and Europe for six centuries. While

26775-399: The strength of the local resistance. Skanderbeg himself died of malaria in the Venetian stronghold of Lissus ( Lezhë ), ending the ability of Venice to use the Albanian lords for its own advantage. After Skanderbeg died, some Venetian-controlled northern Albanian garrisons continued to hold territories coveted by the Ottomans, such as Žabljak Crnojevića , Drisht , Lezhë, and Shkodra  –

26950-562: The sultan and restored Ottoman power. The Balkan territories lost by the Ottomans after 1402, including Thessaloniki, Macedonia, and Kosovo, were later recovered by Murad II between the 1430s and 1450s. On 10 November 1444, Murad repelled the Crusade of Varna by defeating the Hungarian, Polish, and Wallachian armies under Władysław III of Poland and John Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna , although Albanians under Skanderbeg continued to resist. Four years later, John Hunyadi prepared another army of Hungarian and Wallachian forces to attack

27125-403: The terms of the Convention of Kütahya , signed on 5 May 1833, Muhammad Ali agreed to abandon his campaign against the Sultan, in exchange for which he was made the vali (governor) of the vilayets (provinces) of Crete , Aleppo , Tripoli , Damascus and Sidon (the latter four comprising modern Syria and Lebanon ), and given the right to collect taxes in Adana . Had it not been for

27300-439: The tomb of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari. After the conquest, Mehmed built Eyüp Sultan Mosque at the site to emphasize the importance of the conquest to the Islamic world and highlight his role as ghazi . In 1453, Mehmed commenced the siege of Constantinople with an army between 80,000 and 200,000 troops, an artillery train of over seventy large field pieces, and a navy of 320 vessels, the bulk of them transports and storeships. The city

27475-443: The walls. About a month later, Constantinople fell, on 29 May, following a fifty-seven-day siege. After this conquest, Mehmed moved the Ottoman capital from Adrianople to Constantinople. When Sultan Mehmed II stepped into the ruins of the Boukoleon , known to the Ottomans and Persians as the Palace of the Caesars, probably built over a thousand years before by Theodosius II , he uttered the famous lines of Saadi : The spider

27650-466: The wars with Russia, some people in the Ottoman Empire began to conclude that the reforms of Peter the Great had given the Russians an edge, and the Ottomans would have to keep up with Western technology in order to avoid further defeats. Selim III (1789–1807) made the first major attempts to modernise the army , but his reforms were hampered by the religious leadership and the Janissary corps. Jealous of their privileges and firmly opposed to change,

27825-435: The westernmost province of the Ottoman Empire. According to the Byzantine historian Michael Critobulus , hostilities broke out after an Albanian slave of the Ottoman commander of Athens fled to the Venetian fortress of Coron ( Koroni ) with 100,000 silver aspers from his master's treasure. The fugitive then converted to Christianity, so Ottoman demands for his rendition were refused by the Venetian authorities. Using this as

28000-410: The years leading up to World War I , including the 31 March Incident and two further coups in 1912 and 1913 . The Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. The Ottoman participation in the war began with the combined German-Ottoman surprise attack on the Black Sea coast of the Russian Empire on 29 October 1914. Following the attack,

28175-465: Was Mara Branković – and he used that fact to claim Serbian lands. Đurađ Branković 's recently made alliance with the Hungarians, and his irregular payments of tribute, further served as justifications for the invasion. The Ottomans sent an ultimatum demanding the keys to some Serbian castles which formerly belonged to the Ottomans. When Serbia refused these demands, the Ottoman army led by Mehmed set out from Edirne towards Serbia in 1454, sometime after

28350-400: Was a major obstacle to Ottoman expansion on the Italian peninsula. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Ottoman Empire entered a period of expansion . The Empire prospered under the rule of a line of committed and effective Sultans . It flourished economically due to its control of the major overland trade routes between Europe and Asia. Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) dramatically expanded

28525-402: Was also reinstated, as a reward, in his old gubernatorial post in Thessaly. Vlad eventually escaped to Hungary, where he was imprisoned on a false accusation of treason against his overlord, Matthias Corvinus . The despot of Serbia, Lazar Branković , died in 1458, and a civil war broke out among his heirs that resulted in the Ottoman conquest of Serbia in 1459/1460. Stephen Tomašević , son of

28700-473: Was an imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe , West Asia , and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe , between the early 16th and early 18th centuries. The empire emerged from a beylik , or principality , founded in northwestern Anatolia in c.  1299 by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I . His successors conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into

28875-399: Was defeated, and Negroponte was captured. In spring 1466, Sultan Mehmed marched with a large army against the Albanians. Under their leader, Skanderbeg , they had long resisted the Ottomans, and had repeatedly sought assistance from Italy. Mehmed II responded by marching again against Albania but was unsuccessful . The winter brought an outbreak of plague, which would recur annually and sap

29050-443: Was dispatched with an army to the region in 1458, where he initially conquered Resava and a number of other settlements before moving towards Smederevo. After a battle outside the city walls, the defenders were forced to retreat inside the fortress. In the ensuing siege, the outer walls were breached by Ottoman forces, however the Serbians continued to resist inside the inner walls of the fortress. Not wanting to waste time capturing

29225-414: Was established as an independent principality inside the Ottoman Empire; Romania achieved full independence; and Serbia and Montenegro finally gained complete independence, but with smaller territories. In 1878, Austria-Hungary unilaterally occupied the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Novi Pazar . British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli advocated restoring the Ottoman territories on

29400-484: Was far more damaging to the Ottoman navy in sapping experienced manpower than the loss of ships, which were rapidly replaced. The Ottoman navy recovered quickly, persuading Venice to sign a peace treaty in 1573, allowing the Ottomans to expand and consolidate their position in North Africa. By contrast, the Habsburg frontier had settled somewhat, a stalemate caused by a stiffening of the Habsburg defenses. The Long Turkish War against Habsburg Austria (1593–1606) created

29575-437: Was following Mahmud Pasha with another army to reinforce him, had reached Zeitounion ( Lamia ) before being apprised of his Vizier's success. Immediately, he turned his men north, towards Bosnia. However, the Sultan's attempt to retake Jajce in July and August 1464 failed, with the Ottomans retreating hastily in the face of Corvinus' approaching army. A new Ottoman army under Mahmud Pasha then forced Corvinus to withdraw, but Jajce

29750-433: Was not retaken for many years after. However, the death of Pope Pius II on 15 August in Ancona spelled the end of the Crusade. In the meantime, the Venetian Republic had appointed Sigismondo Malatesta for the upcoming campaign of 1464. He launched attacks against Ottoman forts and engaged in a failed siege of Mistra in August through October. Small-scale warfare continued on both sides, with raids and counter-raids, but

29925-409: Was on the defensive and unlikely to present any further aggression in Europe. The Austro-Russian–Turkish War (1735–1739), which was ended by the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739, resulted in the Ottoman recovery of northern Bosnia , Habsburg Serbia (including Belgrade), Oltenia and the southern parts of the Banat of Temeswar ; but the Empire lost the port of Azov , north of the Crimean Peninsula, to

30100-423: Was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining Ottoman Empire. The financial burden of the war led the Ottoman state to issue foreign loans amounting to 5   million pounds sterling on 4 August 1854. The war caused an exodus of the Crimean Tatars , about 200,000 of whom moved to the Ottoman Empire in continuing waves of emigration. Toward

30275-434: Was sunk with a single shot and all the surviving sailors beheaded, except for the captain, who was impaled and mounted like a human scarecrow as a warning to other sailors on the strait. Abu Ayyub al-Ansari , the companion and standard bearer of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, had died during the first Siege of Constantinople (674–678) . As Mehmed II's army approached Constantinople, Mehmed's sheikh Akshamsaddin discovered

30450-435: Was surrounded by sea and land; the fleet at the entrance of the Bosphorus stretched from shore to shore in the form of a crescent, to intercept or repel any assistance for Constantinople from the sea. In early April, the Siege of Constantinople began. At first, the city's walls held off the Turks, even though Mehmed's army used the new bombard designed by Orban , a giant cannon similar to the Dardanelles Gun . The harbor of

30625-420: Was undergoing such hardship for the sake of Trebizond. Mehmed replied: Mother, in my hand is the sword of Islam, without this hardship I should not deserve the name of ghazi , and today and tomorrow I should have to cover my face in shame before Allah . Having isolated Trebizond, Mehmed quickly swept down upon it before the inhabitants knew he was coming, and he placed it under siege . The city held out for

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