The history of the Ottoman Empire
This is an excerpt from the paper...
The history of the Ottoman Empire is marked by the pursuit of traditional Islamic ideals of conquest combined with the development of an efficient centralized state capable of supporting extensive conquest and managing the administration of the empire. The gazi ethos that drove the early conquest of Anatolia and, eventually, Constantinople reached a plateau following the so-called Golden Age of Snleyman I (r. 1520-66) and subsequently faded in importance as the consolidated imperial state faced new kinds of political and economic challenges. In the course of building their vast empire the Ottomans had also developed a unique variant of Islamic society in which the state was the dominant institution. The institutions of the Ottoman state were drawn from several models and served the needs of the centralized state extremely well. But, like the gazi ideology, these institutions were increasingly in need of modification as the decentralization of imperial governance proceeded throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Though this process of change is sometimes described as a precipitous decline resulting from these institutions' surrender to pervasive corruption, the changes resulted from the development of a new relationship between Ottoman elites and access to power and resources. Recent studies, such as those by Hathaway, Abou-El-Haj, and Kafadar indicate that Ottoman history, especially for the centuries after Snleyman I, is undergoing a radical reevaluation.
. . .
n the previous century. But he faced considerable opposition from those who believed in a return to the pre-Ottoman state "devoid of all imperial trappings" (Kafadar 18). Following the confusions of the Interregnum (1402-13) those gazi warlords who wished to continue independent careers of gaza (accompanied by plunder) coexisted with the expansion of the Ottoman state as directed by the sultans. But when Mehmed II was established in Istanbul he began to conceive of the empire as a single entity and himself as "holding in his hands the authority of the state in its entirety, and ruling the whole empire from his capital" and he proceeded to suppress independent pursuit of gaza (Inalcik, Rise 300).
Among the most important aspects of the state apparatus invented prior to the reign of Mehmed II were the military units created from slave troops and organized into cavalry or infantry (the janissaries). Volunteers and prisoners of war were the first source for troops, but in 1395 the devshirme system was developed "as a kind of 'tax' in manpower taken on the Christian population of the Balkans" (Lapidus 316). The theory behind the devshirme was that these slave recruits promised a lifetime of direct service to the sultan and were,
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Inalcik Ottoman, Inalcik Rise, Mehmed II, Age Snleyman, Tanzimat Heyd, Timur Seljuk's, Magnificent Kafadar, Abou-El-Haj Kafadar, Ottoman Empire, Oghuz Khan, ottoman empire, inalcik rise, nineteenth century, mehmed ii, decline paradigm, ottoman writers, ottoman history, cambridge cambridge, eighteenth centuries, holt ann lambton, golden age, lambton bernard lewis, ann lambton bernard, lewis vol 1, bernard lewis vol,
Approximate Word count = 3071
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)
More Essays on The history of the Ottoman Empire
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
