Lessons of the Ottoman Empire for Today’s Islamic Leaders
The Middle Ages were characterized by powerful societies based on military prowess, religious nationalism, and voluminous trade. The Roman and Byzantine Empires were among the most powerful empires until the Byzantine Empire and Eastern Rome fell to the Turks. In the early middle ages the wars against the Muslims would begin to wrack the Byzantine Empire, wars that would continue until it was eventually conquered finally by the Turks, “Muslims attacked the very heart of the empire; the Muslims besieged Constantinople in 673, and again in 717. The city was saved by Leo the Isaurian, and survived with territories diminished but more compact” (Bowle 106). However, the Turks were determined if nothing else. By the end of the 13th century, Turkish attacks on Christian Byzantine settlements in Anatolia were being attacked by a Sunni Muslim warrior called Osman. These attacks begun in 1299 would end with the creation of a new world power, the Ottoman Empire after its conquest of Constantinople, “Under Osman and his son Orhan (reigned 1326-1362), the Ottomans conquered parts of Anatolia and invaded Thrace in Europe. Murad I (reigned 1362-1389) directed the Ottoman advance into the Balkin Peninsula. For the next 130 years, under a series of sultans, the Ottomans expanded their empire, gaining ground in Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Anatolia, and elsewhere. In 1453 Muhammad II conquered Constantinople” (Encarta 1). The Ottomans renamed Constantinople Istanbul and continued their territorial expansion. They would become a world power and represent the greatest state in the Turkish and Islamic world and Europe, “During the period of Suleyman, the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire reached its territorial peak of 10,000,000 square kilometers in the sixteenth century” (Introduction 1). This analysis will discuss different aspects of society during this period of rise ...