Fall of the Ottoman Empire
Adnan Khawaja
1EP-5
4/2/12
(Super Awesome Title)
The Ottoman empire; one of the greatest empires in history. The Empire, at its height, ruled most of the land around the Mediterranean. It contributed much to culture, science, religion, war, politics, and the world. Its monumental fall will be known throughout history. How can the swift decline of the Ottoman power be explained? Perhaps the best way to understand how important this event was, there needs to be a brief explanation of the history behind this epic collapse; showing the rise before the fall and the drastic change.
Like with many other empires in human history the Ottoman Empire seems to came out from nowhere. During the initial Ottoman expansion the Middle East and South Eastern Europe were an "old soil" exhausted of civilizational cultivation and barbaric wars. Greeks, Persians, Romans, and Arabs succeeded each other destroying and building great civilizations there as every new period of great achievements was preceded by intermediate periods of decline. The Ottomans, as many others before them, used the opportunity to expand.
The Turks, the future Ottomans, became leaders not only because of their extraordinary political and military organization, but because of the exhaustion of the older empires Byzantium and the Abbasids. Their influence was constantly growing and in the middle of the eleventh century they gradually formed a confederation in the region of modern Iran, called the Seljuk confederation.
The Turkish military power and energy were enough strong to dominate from north-western Iran to the Arab lands. Ottomans built a fleet that was competing with Venice and the Portuguese, they conquered the Mediterranean Sea and the coasts of North Africa. In 1517, Sultan Selim subdued the Mamluks in Syria and Egypt, and the Ottoman Sultan was recognized as a supreme ruler of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The character of the new empire was absolutist, militaristic, bureaucratic,
1EP-5
4/2/12
(Super Awesome Title)
The Ottoman empire; one of the greatest empires in history. The Empire, at its height, ruled most of the land around the Mediterranean. It contributed much to culture, science, religion, war, politics, and the world. Its monumental fall will be known throughout history. How can the swift decline of the Ottoman power be explained? Perhaps the best way to understand how important this event was, there needs to be a brief explanation of the history behind this epic collapse; showing the rise before the fall and the drastic change.
Like with many other empires in human history the Ottoman Empire seems to came out from nowhere. During the initial Ottoman expansion the Middle East and South Eastern Europe were an "old soil" exhausted of civilizational cultivation and barbaric wars. Greeks, Persians, Romans, and Arabs succeeded each other destroying and building great civilizations there as every new period of great achievements was preceded by intermediate periods of decline. The Ottomans, as many others before them, used the opportunity to expand.
The Turks, the future Ottomans, became leaders not only because of their extraordinary political and military organization, but because of the exhaustion of the older empires Byzantium and the Abbasids. Their influence was constantly growing and in the middle of the eleventh century they gradually formed a confederation in the region of modern Iran, called the Seljuk confederation.
The Turkish military power and energy were enough strong to dominate from north-western Iran to the Arab lands. Ottomans built a fleet that was competing with Venice and the Portuguese, they conquered the Mediterranean Sea and the coasts of North Africa. In 1517, Sultan Selim subdued the Mamluks in Syria and Egypt, and the Ottoman Sultan was recognized as a supreme ruler of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The character of the new empire was absolutist, militaristic, bureaucratic,