Ottoman History

Ottoman History

The founder and the first sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Osman, was born in 1258 AD in Sogut, near Bursa. He was one of the three sons of Ertugrul Gazi, and his mother was Halime Hatun. Osman Gazi was only 23 years old when he took the control of Kayi Clan in Sogut and than ascended the throne after the death of his father, ruling for 27 years until his death in 1326.
After his ascension to throne, he gathered several Turcoman groups around himself and fought against Byzantines, collaborating with Alaaddin Keykubat of the Seljuks. When the Seljuk Empire remained rulerless after the exile of Alaaddin, Osman Gazi reunited them under his rule in 1299 marking the history as the foundation of theOttoman Empire.

History records few instances of a government's altering the language of its people as drastically and imposing that language as forcefully (and, on balance, as successfully) as in the Turkish case. Atatürk considered language reform to be an essential ingredient in the creation of a new Turkey and of new, modernized Turks, and he viewed the revised Turkish language as one of the ways to create a new national identity.

The fascinating history of the Ottoman Empire is the subject of a new BBC series fronted by Rageh Omaar. The title of the series tries to sneak in a rather contentious point as a given – Europe’s Muslim Emperors. Some mistake, surely? While large swathes of Europe did fall under Ottoman rule, for centuries this rule was deeply resented, and the powers of Europe, or at least most of them, did their best to expel the invader. Even if the Ottoman Turks may have ruled parts of Europe, their civilisation was not European, but Asiatic. As someone once said: “Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe.” It would make sense to describe the Turkish Sultans not as European, but anti-European.

The history of the Turkish nation, molded and developed together with political and military order as of its foundations, dates back to five thousand years. This history deeply rooted in Central Asia spread all over the continents owing to the tribal migrations. Turkish nation made her début into the world history with the foundations of the Hun, Göktürk, Uighur states in the east, and with the foundation of the first Oghuz Turkish State, the Seljuk State, in 1040, in the west.

The Ottoman Empire emerged circa 1300 with the establishment by the first Ottoman ruler, Osman, of a small principality bordering on Byzantine territory in western Anatolia. It reached its greatest extent in 1590, when the empire comprised central Hungary, the Balkan Peninsula, Anatolia, Mespotamia, Syria and Palestine, western Arabia, Egypt, and lands in the Caucasus and western Iran. In Europe, Transylvania, Walachia, Moldavia, and the Crimea were tributary principalities, while in North Africa, Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers were semiautonomous provinces. Between 1603 and 1606, the Ottomans lost the lands in Iran and the Caucasus that had been ceded to them in 1590. In 1669, however, they took control of Crete.

Islam in the Ottoman Empire; Islam was the official religion of the Ottoman Empire and became more important after two seminal events: the conquest of Constantinople and the conquest of Arab regions of the Middle East. The highest position in Islam, caliphate, was claimed by the sultan, after the defeat of the Mamluks which was established as Ottoman Caliphate. The Sultan was to be a devout Muslim and was given the literal authority of the Caliph. Additionally, Sunni clerics had tremendous influence over government and their authority was central to the regulation of the economy. Despite all this, the Sultan also had a right to decree, enforcing a code called Kanun (law) in Turkish. Additionally, there was a supreme clerical position called the Sheykhulislam ("Sheykh of Islam" in Arabic). Minorities, particularly Christians and Jews but also some others, were mandated to pay the jizya, the poll tax as mandated by traditional Islam.

Ottoman law

Murad I (Ottoman Turkish: مراد اول‎) (Turkish: I. Murat Hüdavendigâr) (nicknamed Hüdavendigâr, from Persian خداوندگار Khodāvandgār, "the devotee of God" – but meaning "sovereign" in this context) (29 June 1326,Amasya – 15 June 1389, Kosovo Field) was the Ottoman Sultan from 1362 to 1389. He was a son of Orhan and the Valide Nilüfer Hatun.

For women who ruled, it seemed as if power and enduring happiness could not often coexist. While they lived, these women proved they could be as competent, decisive, and cruel when necessary, similar to their male counterparts.



In the seventeenth century, Sultan Mehmed III fathered a son, Ahmet I, who became ruler of the Ottoman Empire in 1603, at the age of thirteen. Until then, Ahmet had spent several years in isolation within Topkapi Palace's Golden Cage, an apartment reserved for princes younger than the reigning sovereign. Two years later, a fifteen year-old Greek girl born in 1590 entered his harem, a slave re-named Kosem. Daughter of a priest, Kosem entered the harem and in 1612, bore him their first son, Murad. She later became the mother of the princes Ibrahim and Bajezit.

German–Turkish relations have their beginnings in the times of the Ottoman Empire and have culminated in the development of strong bonds with many facets that include economic, military, cultural and social relations. With the possible accession of Turkey to the European Union, of which Germany is the biggest member, and the existence of a huge Turkish diaspora in Germany, these relations have become more and more intertwined over the decades.
World War II

The Romanian campaign was part of the Balkan theatre of World War I, with Romania and Russia allied against the armies of the Central Powers. Fighting took place from August 1916 to December 1917 across most of present-day Romania, including Transylvania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time, as well as southern Dobruja, which is currently part of Bulgaria.

The mission of Redhouse Publications is to promote the distribution of books published in Turkey, about Turkey and its culture. We at Redhouse Publications aim, in a small way, to continue the work of “removing the barriers to mutual comprehension” that motivated the work of Sir James Redhouse. Redhouse spent a lifetime writing dictionaries that helped remove the barriers to communication between the Turkish and English speaking worlds. By making books about Turkey available to a wider audience, we hope to promote mutual understanding and dialog between the Turkish and English speaking communities.

Our map illustrates the battlefield sectors of the 1914-1918 Western Front. The line of battlefields ran through a wide variety of landscapes from its northern end in the dunes of the West Flanders Belgian coast to the frontier crossing at the village of Pfetterhouse on the Swiss-German (Alsace) border. The Franco-German border east of Belfort and St. Dié is shown on this map as it was in 1914 when war broke out.
Click on a shaded area for the location of the battle sector and a brief comment. Some of the battle sectors are expanded with detailed information pages about the battles fought there, listings of cemeteries, memorials, museums, battle sites, events and visitors’ information.

 Liège (Province of Liège, Wallonia, Belgium)
The Battle and Siege of Liège was the first battle action on the Western Front from 4 August 1914. The city was captured by the Imperial German Army on 16 August 1914.
 Namur (Province of Namur, Wallonia, Belgium)

In the decline of the Ottoman Empire, Selim II (1566-1574) was the son ofSüleyman I. It's clear that Selim was the first disinterested sultan among theOttomans. Addicted to sexual and alcoholic pleasures, passing most of his time in the harem, Selim, known in the history as "Selim the Drunk", retired almost completely from the decision- making and administrative apparatus of theOttoman state.

Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha ("Ibrahim Pasha of Parga"; c. 1495 – 15 March 1536), also known as Frenk Ibrahim Pasha ("the Westerner"), Makbul Ibrahim Pasha ("the Favorite"), which later changed to Maktul Ibrahim Pasha ("the Executed") after his execution in the Topkapı Palace, was the first Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire appointed by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
Ibrahim, born a Christian, was enslaved during his youth. He and Suleiman became close friends as children. In 1523, Suleiman appointed Ibrahim as Grand Vizier to replace Piri Mehmed Pasha, who had been appointed in 1518 by Suleiman's father, the preceding sultan Selim I. Ibrahim remained in office for the next 13 years. He attained a level of authority and influence rivaled by only a handful of other grand viziers of the Empire, but in 1536, he was executed on Suleiman's orders and his property was confiscated by the state.

Origin

Ottoman miniature or Turkish miniature was an art form in the Ottoman Empire, which can be linked to the Persian miniature tradition,[1] as well as strong Chinese artistic influences. It was a part of the Ottoman book arts, together with illumination (tezhip), calligraphy (hat), marbling paper (ebru), and bookbinding (cilt). The words taswir or nakish were used to define the art of miniature painting in Ottoman Turkish. The studios the artists worked in were called Nakkashanes.