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The Ottomans Build a Vast Empire
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The Ottomans Build a Vast Empire

Slide 1:

  1. In 1300 the byzantine empire was declining and
  2. The mongols destroyed the turkish Seljuk kingdom of Rum
  3. A small Turkish state occupied land between the Byzantine empire and of the Muslims.
  4. A strong leader will emerge to unite the Turks into a new empire.

Slide 2:

  1. Anatolian turks saw themselves as Ghazis: Warriors for islam
  2. Formed military societies under the leadership of an emir: chief commander
  3. Followed a strict islamic code of conduct
  4. Raided territories of infidels: people who don’t believe in Islam

Slide 3:

  1. Osman was the most successful Ghazi
  2. In the west he was called Othman and his followers Ottomans.
  3. He built a small muslim state in Anatolia around 1300-26.
  4. Later successors would expand the territory through buying land, forming alliances and conquests.

Slide 4:

  1. Ottomans success was mostly because they used gunpowder. Replacing archers with foot soldiers carrying muskets.
  2. First people to use cannons as weapons of attack.
  3. They would destroy walled cities.

Slide 5:

  1. Orkham I, Osman’s son declared himself Sultan (overlord) or “one with power:”
  2. He would capture Adrianople (Ay-dree-uh-NOH-puhl) second most important city in the Byzantine Empire
  3. Ottomans acted kindly toward the people they conquered
  4. Ruled through local official appointed by the sultan and often improved the lives of peasants
  5. Most muslims were required to serve in Turkish armies, but did not have to pay a personal tax to the state
  6. Non muslims did not have to service in the army, but had to pay the tax.

Slide 6:

  1. Rise of the Ottoman Empire was briefly interrupted in the early 1400s by a rebellious warrior from Samarkand in Central Asia.
  2. Had a permanent arrow injury and was known as Timur-i-Lang or Timur the Lame
  3. Europeans nicknamed him Tamerlane
  4. He burned the most powerful city of Baghdad to the ground and destroyed ottoman forces at the battle of Ankara in 1402
  5. Halted the expansion of the empire.

Slide 7:

  1. Timur then turned his attention to China.
  2. This led to a war between the four sons of the ottoman sultan. Mehmed I defeated his brothers and took the throne
  3. His son Murad II defeated the Venetians, invaded Hungary, and overcame an army of Italian crusaders in the Balkans.
  4. First of four powerful Sultans who led expansion of the Ottoman Empire

Slide 8:

  1. His son Mehmed II or Mehmed the Conqueror
  2. Wanted to conquer Constantinople to gain control of the Bosporus Strait
  3. This allowed him to choke off traffic between Ottoman territories in Asia and the Balkans
  4. Took the city on head on at the age of 21.

Slide 9:

  1. Fired on the city using cannons. one being a 26 ft gun that fired 1200 pound boulders
  2. A chain stretched across the Golden Horn between the Bosphorus Strait and the Sea of Marmara kept the Turkish fleet out of the city’s harbor.
  3. Mehmed’s army dragged 70 ships over a hill on greased runners from the Bosporus to the harbor.
  4. Then they attacked constantinople from two sides

Slide 10:

  1. City held out for several weeks, but Turks found a break in the wall and entered the city
  2. Mehmed the conqueror was an able ruler and skilled warrior.
  3. Opened constantinople to new citizens of many religions and backgrounds
  4. Jews, christians, and Muslims, turks and non Turks all came to the city
  5. Renamed it Istanbul

Slide 11: 

  1. Mehmed’s grandson, Selim the Grim, came to power in 1512. Effective as a Sultan and general.
  2. Defeated the Safavids (Suh-FAH-vihdz) of Persia at the Battle of Chaldiran.
  3. Then went through Syria, Palestine and North Africa.

Slide 12:

  1. Captured Mecca and Medina, two holiest cities of Islam
  2. Took Cairo: the intellectual center of the Muslim world

Slide 13:

  1. Ottoman empire reaches its peak under Selim’s son, Suleyman I (SOO-lay-mahn)
  2. Came to the throne in 1520 and ruled for 46 years
  3. Was known as Suleyman the Lawgiver and Suleyman the Magnificent.
  4. Title was a tribute to the splendor of his court and cultural achievements

Slide 14:

  1. Conquered European city of Belgrade in 1521,
  2. From there they continued conquering the people along the north african coastline.
  3.  Also managed to control trade routes into the interior of the continent
  4. 1526 Suleyman advanced into Hungary and Austria
  5. Pushed into the outskirts of Vienna, Austria as well.
  6. Suleyman waged war with central Europeans, north Africans, and central Asians.
  7. Became the most powerful monarch on earth
  8. Only charles V of the Habsburg empire came close.

Slide 15:

  1. His massive empire required an efficient government and social organization.
  2. Created a law code to handle both criminal and civil actions
  3. Simplified the system of taxation and reduced government bureaucracy
  4. These changes bettered the daily life of every citizen and earned him the lawgiver title

Slide 16:

  1. Sultan had 20,000 personal slaves that staffed the palace bureaucracy
  2. Slaves acquired as part of a policy called (dehv-SHEER-meh) devshirme.
  3. Sultan’s army drafted boys from peoples of conquered christian territories.
  4. Army educated them, converted them to islam and trained them as soldiers

Slide 17:

  1. Soldiers known as janissaries were trained to be loyal to the sultan only
  2. Christian families sometimes bribed officials to take their children into the sultan’s service,
  3. Because the brightest ones could rise to high government posts or military positions

Slide 18: 

  1. Muslims were required to follow islamic law.
  2. Ottomans granted freedom of worship to other religious communities particularly to christians and jews
  3. Treated these communities as millets (nations)

Slide 19:

  1. Allowed each millet to follow its own religious laws and practices
  2. Head of millets reported to the sultan and his staff
  3. System kept conflicts among people of various religions to a minimum

Slide 20: 

  1. Suleyman, when he wasn’t conquering nations, studied poetry, history, geography, astronomy, mathematics and architecture.
  2. Employed the worlds finest architects, Sinan, who was from Albania

Slide 21:

  1. Sinan’s masterpiece, the Mosque of Suleyman, is an immense complex topped with domes and half domes
  2. Includes four schools, a library, bath and hospital

Slide 22: 

  1. Art and literature also flourished
  2. They had a creative period similar to european renaissance
  3. Painters and poets looked to Persia and Arabia for models
  4. Works they produced used foreign influences to express original ottoman ideas and turkish styles.
  5. Examples of cultural blending

Slide 23:

  1. Despite all of these accomplishments the Ottoman empire was in decline
  2. Suleyman killed his ablest son and drove another into exile
  3. His most incompetent son inherited the throne, Selim II.

Slide 24:

  1. Suleyman set pattern for later sultans to hold power.
  2. Due to the civil wars against his brothers (which almost destroyed the empire) every time a new sultan took power he would have his brothers imprisoned
  3. After the sultan had his first male heir they would then strangle the brother to death with a silk cord.
  4. Mehmed III killed 19 of his brothers when he took power