How did the Ottomans become an empire powerful enough to supplant the Byzantine Empire?
The Ottoman stranglehold on the remnant of Byzantium tightened steadily, and by 1449 the Ottomans had reached the Danube River further west. After a protracted siege of Constantinople, the Ottomans captured the city in 1453, renaming the Byzantine capital Istanbul. They proceeded to continue their takeover of what remained of formerly Byzantine lands. A rapid expansion was in part due to their support among the conquered Byzantine people whom they treated well, including their protection of the Greek Orthodox Church. At its height the Ottoman realm was one of the largest in history, stretching from the gates of Vienna, across the Balkans, from the Caucasus to the Yemen, and from Alexandria to Algeria. The Empire gave way to the Turkish Republic under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the 1920s.
What was the general course of conversion under the Ottomans?
By the fifteenth century, an estimated 90 percent of the population in Anatolia was Muslim—a measure of success due not only to conversion, but also to continued Muslim migration to the newly conquered areas. Other factors were the weakening of Anatolian Christianity and the Greek Orthodox Church and concomitant growth of strong Muslim infrastructure of social and charitable institutions. In addition, many Christians regarded the Byzantine defeat at the hands of the Muslims as a divine punishment. By contrast, the Balkans remained mostly non-Muslim, with roughly 45 percent conversion, generally in urban areas. Muslim migration was far less important there than in Anatolia.
The Ottoman Empire at its height in 1683 was impressively extensive.
What happened to Christians under Saljuqid and Ottoman Rule from the eleventh to the sixteenth century?
Anatolia and the Balkans, among other regions ruled by the Saljuqids and Ottomans, employed tax tables to determine the number of Christians in a region, as well as the amount of taxes charged to Christians (particularly, if a jizya, or poll-tax, was in effect). The results of Muslim invasions, of what came to be known as Turkey, on Christian populations of the then-Byzantine realm are varied. In eleventh- to twelfth-century Anatolia, sixty-three Christian towns and villages were destroyed by invading Muslims, and the inhabitants were sold into slavery.
From the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, twenty-five different Muslim tribal polities led to chaos, wars, and demographic migrations. An area that had four hundred bishoprics and thirty-five metropolitanates in time only had three bishoprics and seventeen metropolitanates (about 97 percent and 50 percent destroyed, respectively)— this according to tax tables used to estimate Christian survival rates. In times when the empire’s central bureaucracy was in flux (new emperor, power struggle at the top), forced conversions were more prominent. The two empires (Saljuqid and Ottoman) developed a legal basis for making dhimmis second-class citizens, mainly by disenfranchising their testimony in court. Apostasy from Islam was punishable by death, while conversion to Islam was rewarded. Finally, mixed marriages were more prevalent, because only a husband needed to be Muslim; thus, many women converted. In these ways, a one-way street for conversion from Christianity to Islam was created.
How did the Christian area called Armenia manage to survive as a distinct Christian enclave in the region?
When the Arabs first invaded Persia in the centuries following Muhammad, conversion of inhabitants to Islam had four levels. First, the upper layer of Persian society converted and intermarried with Arab magnates so as to save their hereditary rights. Second, partisans and craftsmen converted because the creed of Islam, which made no distinction between social classes, greatly appealed to them. Third, Christians and Jews were not discriminated against and were attracted to the religion for that reason. Finally, many people rejected the predominant religion of Zoroastrianism for various reasons, such as dislike for clergy and problems with the truths of the religion. Arab forces overtook the Transcaucasus and the land of the Jewish Khazars. When Arab forces in the northeastern province of Khurasan attacked the eastern border of Persia, nobility and townspeople again accepted the religion, so as to maintain their old privileges. The Armenians, who did not readily convert, nevertheless were, in this situation, valuable auxiliary troops. Various Khurasan chieftains and preachers tried to convert the Armenians somewhat forcefully. It is reported that one thousand converted, many of whom were noblemen who feigned conversion so that their lives would be spared, and who rescinded the apostasy when they were released. Intermarriage also factored into the conversion. Mostly though, the Armenians maintained their Armeno-Gregorian faith and maintained good relations with the Arabs through trade; all this despite the fact that Armenia itself was being ravaged by warfare. Armenia as a region suffered massive erosion as a result of battles and invasions, resulting ultimately in the great emigration, or Sürgün, of Armenians from their homeland. Largely because the Armenian people preserved their vernacular language and culture, they ensured the survival of their distinctive Christian identity, despite their ultimate separation from their original ancestral home.
How did the Ottomans expand into a major threat to Eastern Europe?
Mehmed II the Conqueror (r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481)—so named because of his defeat of Constantinople—laid the foundation for the Ottoman Empire. He began a long tradition of Ottoman codification of legal codes that incorporated separate categories for Muslim and non-Muslim subjects. It may be convenient to think of the sixteenth century as a period of expansion, the seventeenth as maintenance, and the eighteenth as the beginning of reversals in Ottoman fortunes. Under Mehmed’s successors, especially Sulayman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566), the Ottomans experienced dramatic growth and conquest of the central middle east. In 1516, the Ottomans conquered the Mamluks of Cairo, and their holdings in Syria-Palestine and took over northwestern Arabia. As custodians of the “two sanctuaries” (Mecca and Medina), the Sultans could claim symbolic leadership of Islamdom. Fierce naval competition with the Portuguese marked Ottoman efforts to control the Mediterranean. And on their eastern frontier, Iran was a major competitor. In response, Ottoman rulers sought to limit hitherto enormous Persian cultural impact by cutting ties in favor of Arabic cultural influence. On the western front, the Ottomans set their sights on Europe. By 1504, the Ottomans had crossed the Danube River, and by 1520, Belgrade and Hungary accepted Ottoman rule. In 1529, the Ottomans laid siege to Vienna but failed to take the city. In 1606, the Treaty of Zsitva Torok proclaimed Ottoman rule over Romania, Hungary, and Transylvania, with the condition of accepting the Habsburgs as equals. This effectively marked the limit of Ottoman expansion westward.
A memorial statue to Mehmed II the Conqueror stands in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey.
Didn’t the Ottomans also become a Mediterranean power?
Ottoman naval strength was definitely a factor in late medieval and early modern European and North African history. Admiral Khayr ad-Din Barbarossa expanded the navy, took Algiers in 1529, and was given overall control of the fleet in 1533. Numerous battles ensued over control of the central Mediterranean, with Sicily and Tunisia major centers of struggle in 1534–1535. During the latter half of the sixteenth century, Ottoman naval forces seized Tripoli (1551), Malta (1565), and Cyprus (1570). An increasingly worried Catholic Europe successfully raised a naval coalition and defeated the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. In 1580, European powers and the Ottomans declared a truce, and the resulting actual and symbolic borders between “Christian West” and “Muslim East” held until recent times.
What is the importance now of the Turkic republics that belonged to the former Soviet Union?
Several of the former Soviet republics have significant Muslim populations: Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and Dagestan in the Caucasus; and Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan (the “-(i)stan” suffix indicating the “place of” the people to whose name it is attached). There is a great deal of diversity among these republics, both ethnically and linguistically. The one nearly common link is a thread of Turkic ancestry that runs through them all, with