The Ottoman term for their empire was devlet-ia’l-I ‘the domains and rule of The House of Osman’. The dynasty was the state throughout its 622 year career. It has been asserted Ottoman policy towards the Balkans was suppression and oppression. The empire’s origins lay with Osman Bey’s victory over a Byzantine army sent to suppress him in the fourteenth century. Turkmen chiefman and even some renegade Byzantine lords were under his leadership. Orhan Bey succeeded him. The knights Hospitaller defeated Aydin, the most powerful of the Turkmen maritime principalities at sea in 1344. Gaza at sea effectively ceased. This conflict occurred at a time when Orhan Bey was among half a dozen or so of west-Anatolian emirs each controlling a territory of a few thousand miles. A recurrent theme in Ottoman history is power and territorial aggrandizement at the expense of Muslim neighbours in order to expand in Christian Europe. Murad Bey succeeded Orhan Bey. Murad Bey was assassinated after the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 when his troops defeated Serbia. Gazi Turkmen emirates did not seem to suffer from the Black Death in the same way as Islamic West Africa, Constantinople and other Byzantine territories such as Syria and Eqypt. The lesser impact of the plague on the Oguz of Anatolia could explain the success of Murad Bey’s troops if this understanding is true. Another factor in the bolstering of the Ottomans is that the Gelibolu crossing from Anatolia to Thrace was a bridgehead easily controlled, ambitious soldiers had to become Ottoman to reap the riches beyond the Dardanelles. Timur or Tamerlane marched into Anatolia and captured Bayezid in 1402.
Ottoman Empire
28 Monday Mar 2016
Posted Uncategorized
in≈ Comments Off on Ottoman Empire