Definition of Ottoman Empire

Turkey is a country that unites the European and Asian continents and is currently a territory of the European Union. From the beginning of the 14th century to 1923 this nation It was the center of an Empire based on expansion and conquest and has gone down in history as the Ottoman Empire.

Origin and territorial expansion

The Ottoman Turks began the conquest of the Byzantine Empire and for two centuries they occupied the territories of Anatolia, Greece, Albania, Syria, Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean. In 1453 they conquered Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.

During the government Suleiman the Magnificent in the seventeenth century, the Empire reached its peak with the annexation of Hungary and territories in the North Africa, although the Ottoman army was defeated in 1571 at the Battle of Lepanto by Spanish, Venetian and Genoese. After the unsuccessful attempts to occupy Vienna in the 17th century, the Empire began a slow period of decline (the Viennese city was defended by a Christian army integrated into the Holy League, which was created for the defense of a Christian Europe against the

threat Muslim from the Ottoman Turks).

Sultans, Janissaries and Odalisques

The Ottoman state's main objective was to obtain funds for the war and the occupation of new territories.

The maximum authority of the Empire was the sultan and the various government departments were controlled by the grand viziers. The administration and the education they were run by Muslim officials. To protect the sultans, a military body was created, the Janissary infantry (Janissary soldiers reached a great power that threatened the sultans and therefore Sultan Mahmut ll ordered their dissolution).

In the sultan's palace there was an immense harem of women, the odalisques. The sultan's mother and his various wives were in charge of organizing the harem. The odalisques were servants, they enlivened the social life of the palace with their sensual dances and the most beautiful were candidates to sexually satisfy the sultan.

In its wide territorial domains the population it was very heterogeneous. There were Orthodox Christians in the European provinces, Muslims in Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Albania, and Christian minorities in Egypt and Syria.

The fall of the Empire

During the nineteenth century the autonomous provinces of the Empire were gaining their independence (Greece in 1829 and Serbia in 1830). Great Britain occupied its territories in Egypt and France annexed Algeria and Tunisia. The European powers viewed the Ottoman Empire as an obstacle to their geopolitical interests and the Balkan states viewed the Ottomans as a force oppressor.

After World War I the Ottomans lost the Arab territories and Anatolia was divided. These defeats caused deep social unrest that eventually led to the proclamation of a new nation in 1923. With the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey the Ottoman Empire ended.

Photos: Fotolia - YuI / Peter Hermes Furian

Themes in Ottoman Empire