The Rise of the Ottoman Empire

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Introduction

Every growth involves strategies, while each tumble exhibits significant causes. Ottoman Empire’s account reveals the potential of a united community with strategic leaders, while its fall implies communities’ temporariness whenever people bite more than they can chew or forget old functional strategies. Being one of the supreme territories in history, the Ottoman Empire rose and excelled for a substantially long time but faced a murky and persistent end, like all the dynasties existing before it. The kingdom was instituted in 1299 and developed from Turkish clans in Anatolia. The Ottomans relished an impartial show of influence and supremacy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, reigning for over 600 eons. The community is considered one of the ancient kingdoms’ most extensive enduring reigns. The Ottomans’ supremacy was chiefly perceived as the authority of Islam, typically perceived as intimidation by the Western European communities. The rule is characterized by security, unity, regional stability, and general expansions. The Ottoman Empire’s triumph is attributable to the strict leadership and adaptation to fluctuating positions, while wrong decisions explain the empire’s ultimate failure.

Origin

The Ottoman Empire was initiated at the end of the 13^th century and flourished significantly until the twentieth century. However, the kingdom realized much of its success during the 5^th century through its stern and informed leaders. Like several other domains worldwide, solid systems and strong leadership influenced the Ottoman Empire’s establishment and success since its first days. During its ideal epoch, the Ottoman Empire was famed as an unlimited territory in the world, extending from the Balkans, North Africa, and Caucus (Anooshahr 2018). The territory adopted a feudalism legacy from the beginning, leading to the monarchical leadership system. Accordingly, the option for administration style came from the empire’s direct connection to the previous failed Sejuks dynasty and the closeness to the monarchical Byzantine political structure (Foss 2021). Therefore, partnering with the Sejuks prior to forming the Ottoman Empire influenced Osman I to adopt a governance system similar to the previous kingdom, leading to significantly varied effects on the resultant domain.

Osman, I was the initial political and military leader of the Ottomans, bearing the title of the sultan. He led the kingdom between 1299 and 1324 (Yildiz 2020), assuming the sultan and prince (bey) titles that implied someone with political power. The leader helped Ottomans to launch a consolidated polity involving a supreme leader (sultan) serving with numerous subsidiary officials interacting with people at various levels. The centralized management structure helped the Ottomans’ leadership to regulate the population and resources, such as lands, centralized coffers, a bureaucracy, and a scheming government via the sultan’s slaves. Notably, the Ottoman Empire resulted from two previous empires exhibiting widely diverse characters. The two dynasties are the Byzantine, in Europe, and the Seljukian realms, mainly in Anatolia (Foss 2021). The two territories initially involved unending conflicts featuring wars about Christianity and Islam, with the wars playing a major role in the domains’ decline and death. Thus, the Ottoman’s leadership, starting from Osman, acknowledges the dangers of a divisive strategy, using this knowledge appropriately to establish a multicultural system with strict leadership that allows parties to operate in unity.

The Ottoman Empire existed and survived by adopting varied ways to settle conflicts between the initial Christian and Islamic empires as the descendant states. Osman I, the territory’s first sultan, inherited several leadership traits from the Seljukians as the dominant Islamic World leader while also learning significantly from Byzantium’s overwhelming influence on all the Christian territories in Europe. Subsequently, the Ottoman Empire was a rare kingdom that brought together Muslims and Christians, all serving one ruler. The new domain intensified and extended the two contrasting communities’ policies during its foundational epoch to survive. On the one side, the domain’s management intended to intensify all Muslims’ unions while protecting the Orthodox Christians, on the other hand, from the influential European Catholic republics (Yildiz 2020). Therefore, the desire and substantial success of coexisting Christians and Muslims through policies influenced the association between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, with the former exhibiting Christian followers’ dominions.

The Ottoman Empire’s crafters mainly involved warriors opposed to the eclectic prevalent culture, unorthodox religious divisions, and intimidating rival princedoms. The territory’s primary role was to exist as a highly unified social system promoting justice and fairness and political, social, and economic stabilities. The devotion led to the excessive emphasis on eternal attentiveness against external opponents and the commitment to preserve law and order within the established state. A fundamental belief leading to this determination concerns the conviction that accord among humans existing in a community or society comes primarily through the state’s creation (Cagaptay 2020). Consequently, Osman I and all the subsequent leaders in the Ottoman Empire esteemed humans and functional systems more than wealth. The matter helped the kingdom long enough until the rulers shifted their attention to personal gains, leading to corruption and other dangerous vices.

The Gazi custom, mainly involving combat against non-Muslims to extend the territories of Islam, was a primary driving dynamism for the formation of the Ottoman Empire. The overriding spirit flowed from the kingdom’s top leadership to the tribe members, the chieftains, and the general citizens, leading to a substantially concerted focus on meeting the community’s objective surrounding initiation, growth, and persistence. The Gazi forces’ success in realizing victory in the war against past dynasties, such as the Christian Byzantium, followed the Turkhis rulers’ efforts to reproduce the crown court life of established Islamic empires. The military leaders and troops thus assumed the Islamic urban evolution style by practicing sponsorship, appointing sharia judges, and founding Islamic learning institutions. Therefore, the amalgamation between Gazi’s unrestricted spirit and the group leaders’ efforts to implement traditional Islamic practices formed the significant factors leading to the formation of the Ottoman Empire (Cagaptay 2020). The (Ottoman) kingdom occupied parts of Asia, North Africa, and Europe from the late fourteenth century. However, the Ottomans’ growth has significantly decelerated several centuries since its formation, leading to several present transformations.

Growth

The Ottoman Empire’s emergence at the end of the thirteenth century implied a new beginning in the world. Early signs concerning the domain inferred success but not to the level realized by the community. Accordingly, several factors pushed the Ottoman’s development over the years, allowing the domain to last until the twentieth century and the subsequent emergence of the Republic of Turkey, which survives the dynasty today. The following discussion provides some of the fundamental aspects leading to the Ottomans’ successful growth in various continents despite emerging in the significantly disconnected Anatolia region.

Powerful Warrior-Sultans

Having powerful leaders with military skills helped the Ottoman Empire to grow beyond the Anatolia boundaries. Starting from Osman I, the dynasty’s first founder and first ruler, all the kingdom’s leaders exhibited outstanding leadership, warfare, and strategic mentalities that were uncommon during the age. Osman, I led revolting groups from the previous Islamic empires in Anatolia to form the Ottoman Empire. The leader further helped establish a centralized system of governance, together with leading in the adoption of multicultural policies to help different clusters, especially the captured groups, continue observing their original culture (Yildiz 2020). Orhon inherited the sultanate position after the death of his father, Osman I. The fellow continued his father’s legacy of using military power to capture new territories while allowing various groups to coexist.

Orhon and his troops conquered Brusa in 1326 and made it the Ottomans’ capital despite initially belonging to the Byzantine dynasty. Moreover, the Ottoman Turks traversed Europe during the heir’s leadership, partnering with Emperor John V Paleologus and acquiring new territories for the Brusa-based Islamic group (Yildiz 2020). The Ottomans made numerous enslaved people from the Serbs and Bulgars after the European territories’ capture, converting them into soldiers for the Ottomans’ troops. Consequently, having powerful and wise warrior-sultans gave the Ottoman Empire an unmatched ability to conquer and develop the kingdom into an indomitable force, ruling the section of the world for centuries.

Mehmed and Suleiman 1 are the other magnificent Ottoman leaders responsible for the kingdom’s success. Sultan Mehmed II, commonly known as ‘Mehmed the Conqueror,’ helped the Ottoman Empire grow substantially in the 1450s by weakening Constantinople, the Byzantine capital. The leader directly influences the decline of the new region’s population for easy capture while adopting new war technologies to penetrate the impassable walls. Price (2021) provides the Ottomans as some of the first global populations to employ the cannon war system. The groups largely used weaponry in the 15^th century, forming a new combat era (Gibbons 2020). Mehmed conquered the Christian city by bombing the fortified Constantinople city walls for days before breaking through, making the previously inaccessible urban establishment the new Ottoman capital (Yildiz 2020). Accordingly, sultan Mehmed claimed his habitation in the majestic Roman tradition by dethroning the Byzantine Territory. The success over the initially powerful kingdom that threatened the Ottomans’ existence and expansion triggered fresh enthusiasm among the community members and the troops, leading to a rebirth of the empire’s fighting spirit.

Suleiman

The Ottoman Empire realized its territorial and political apex in the 16th century under Suleiman I’s rule, leading to the sultan’s common title as Suleiman the Magnificent. His primary ambition was to make the now large Mediterranean kingdom a superpower with influence reaching the European states. Suleiman directed an exclusive specialized combat group called the Janissaries (Yildiz 2020). The kingdom developed such powerful armies by forcefully acquiring individuals from Christian families, especially the youth in the freshly conquered regions. Suleiman then polished and trained the youngsters into soldiers and made them convert to Islam, the religion forming most of the military groups’ integrity-based policies (Gibbons 2020). Intrepid in contests, the Janissaries formed some of the world’s original martial crews.

Suleiman’s reign led to an age of inordinate wealth growth for the Ottoman Territory. Capturing Egypt allowed the Ottomans to realize highly productive fields for agricultural products production, with the produce mostly trafficked to Europe through the Mediterranean trade routes (Cagaptay 2020). Suleiman’s dominance and significant success come from multiple factors, including military power, money, and the promotion of justice. The sultan’s other name is ‘Kanuni,’ or the lawgiver, coming from the leader’s focus on justice in Islamic custom. Therefore, the Ottoman citizens easily took disputes to the local Islamic courts in larger municipalities across the territory during Suleiman’s era, making the empire highly stable socially, economically, and politically for continued growth.

Commercialized Endeavors

The Ottoman Empire’s socially stratified communities allowed the kingdom to undertake various commercially viable activities. The Ottomans generally fell into three categories: the rulers, fighters, and peasants. The two former groups’ undertakings allowed the kingdom to grow physically by reclaiming new territories. However, the territory’s lowest class mainly majored in feeding the community and producing commercially essential items. The class included farmers, merchants, herders, seafarers, and manufacturers. Though these individuals exhibited the smallest official power, the group powered the Ottomans’ engine. Farmers, merchants, and the rest of the class’s members produced items traded along the Mediterranean trade route, giving the kingdom financial gains through taxes and foreign exchange (Kenan et al. 2021). The team supported the bureaucracy, religious, and military establishments, thus forming the territory’s back. Gender, economic, and religious differences put persons into diverse groups, but all the populations remained generally wealthy. The Ottomans in the lower socioeconomic class included town workers, peasants, and nomadic pastoralists, all contributing directly to the territory’s growth and survival.

Social Fairness

Social fairness played a major role in the Ottoman Empire’s growth. People in the kingdom moved across social groups by gaining social power, regardless of one’s origin. The domain’s fair policies and governance openly awarded merit without considering social status or lineage. Yildiz (2020) notes that even the enslaved persons and the general public in the Ottoman bureaucracy or military, including the Janissaries, rose through the kingdom’s established ranks. The matter made some poor individuals with rigorous leadership capabilities end up in some of the premier places in society. Therefore, fostering social fairness allowed different groups to live together. The aspect further eliminated the common social rifts responsible for many communities’ deaths. Osman I, Mehmed, and Suleiman’s wisdom in leadership and community promotion thus helped the Ottomans to grow beyond imaginable limits. The leaders treated even the newly captured communities fairly equally as those originally belonging to the kingdom. The territory’s millet system equally allowed distinct communities within the kingdom to maintain original values, leading to a highly fair social establishment that lasted for centuries.

The Enlightenment

The Ottoman leaders became more associated with international ethnicity movements, especially the Enlightenment, giving the kingdom some rare social benefits. The option led to the Ottoman’s acquisition of the printing press, making translations more extensively obtainable. The resultant technological and military trends, together with cultural worldliness, triggered the Ottomans’ serial reforms in education, finance, and the military realm to unmatched levels worldwide during the era. Translations available through the print media streamlined the kingdom’s diverse linguistic groups to form a single powerful, highly coordinated society. Civil rights promotion granted genuine freedom to the minorities, including Jews, Syrian and Armenian Christians, and other millets, to exercise their faith without disruption. Accordingly, getting involved in the Enlightenment movement allowed the Ottomans to develop free social institutions, including secular education systems and other transformations essential to transforming Ottoman society.

Silk Road Trade Networks

Silk Road trade networks enriched the Ottomans for centuries, starting from the kingdom’s initiation to its declining time. The Ottoman trade dealers bought numerous products to sell worldwide in various parts of the world. The territory’s strategic position in Asia and Europe made this aspect possible. Foreign art, food, and luxury goods collections formed part of the Ottomans’ stock traded along the Silk Road trade routes passing via the region (Cagaptay 2020). The availability of different social classes made personal spending varied across populations, making essential foreign properties common in the region. Thus, the Ottoman Kingdom played a central role in the circulation of merchandise worldwide, realizing significant financial returns for growth. The farmers and manufacturers within the kingdom continued production and dissemination of products, making them busy and wealthy. The sultanate matched the available business opportunities by ensuring that all the citizens, state officials, and military employees easily had access to all they needed for empowered living.

Multiculturalism, Empire of Nations and the Millet System

Promoting peaceful coexistence among diverse groups allowed the Ottoman Empire to grow by assimilating independent groups that paid allegiance to the central leadership unit. The kingdom’s diverse units in Africa, Europe, and the Asian continents hardly lived together because of the sultan’s fierce ruler-ship but because of the ability to operate freely, even when belonging to a central governing rule. The matter explains the Ottoman Dynasty’s collaboration between Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists. The Ottomans became the overall caliphate without entirely removing Muslim subjects’ prevailing political configuration for conquests involving predominantly Muslim systems, such as Egypt. However, non-Muslim societies falling to the Ottomans all over the Mediterranean region administrated most of their undertakings (Esenbel 2021). The groups included Jews and Christians, considered protected groups under the Islamic administrative convention. Accordingly, the Ottomans effectively managed and preserved an extensive land empire by combining military strength, compromise, and cooperation. Each socially unique group under the Ottomans’ rule formed the so-called millet and was managed through the millet system, creating a significantly diverse and stable society.

Internal Reforms

Lastly, the implementation of perpetual reforms allowed the Ottomans to survive different external forces worth breaking the kingdom. Reforms equally granted the territory significant ability to expand its boundaries to become a mega kingdom in history. For example, the Ottoman Empire was forced to change tactics after initially facing repulsive force from other kingdoms during their expansion missions. Trials to capture Vienna and the intensive opposition coming from groups such as the Hapsburg Reign and the Holy Roman Territory reveal the Ottomans’ necessity to change tactics for survival. Avoided confrontations with powerful groups helped the Ottomans to continue existing during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, during which many oversees Ottoman groups affirmed independence or fell under neighboring supremacies, like Russia and the U.K. Sensing decline forced the Ottoman leadership to neglect aggressive growth, instead focusing on citizens’ lives to prevent further fallouts. The government enacted policies to gather more taxes from the remaining lesser communities for survival. Accordingly, reforms sustained the Ottomans’ economy and population growth during the latter centuries when the territory lacked enough military force for growth or survival.

The Decline of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman dynasty declined significantly after Suleiman’s leadership until its replacement by the present-day Republic of Turkey. Several aspects led to the kingdom’s fall, as discussed below:

Territorial Losses

The Ottoman territory started to break long before the kingdom shrank completely. Independence movements initially operating smoothly within the territory earlier flourished independently in the 19^th century, leading to the realm’s size reduction (Price 2021). Examples of such dynasties include Romania, Greece, and Serbia (Cagaptay 2020). Moreover, Egypt and several other territories realized noteworthy autonomy levels during the same age, thus affecting the Ottoman Empire adversely. The 20^th century exhibited even more movements from the centralized Ottomans, with most of those moving away influenced by the initial independence seekers within the group. Some of the most prominent groups leaving the Ottomans’ union during the twentieth century included the Turkish, Armenian, and Arab nationalisms, all of which played a primary role in the kingdom’s success.

Remaining Agrarian

The Ottoman Empire’s growth and size make it relative to the nineteenth-century industrial revolution in Europe. Unlike the latter economic territory, the Ottomans depended blindly on farming and other traditional practices for survival. For example, relying on the traditional, time-consuming trade routes passing via the region for economic growth automatically made the Ottomans poor with establishing sea and air trade ways (Anooshahr 2018). The Ottoman Empire lacked the factories and mills necessary to compete with Great Britain, Russia, and the French economic revolutions. Therefore, the territory’s economic progress weakened with time, with the generated agricultural surplus catering for loans accessed from the European financiers. Similarly, the Ottoman Empire lacked the industrial strength to manufacture heavy weaponry or the steel required for railroad construction during WWI, leading to its ultimate death. Additionally, the Ottoman economy dwindled when European economies started trading directly with East Asia and the Indies. The aspect reduced the Ottoman Kingdom’s finances to levels that could not support its oversized growth, thus contributing substantially to the realm’s expiration.

Declining Social Cohesion

During its optimum ages, the Ottoman Empire included various parties with meaningfully divergent values. Such groups included Egypt, Bulgaria, Greece, Jordan, Hungary, Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel (Anooshahr 2018). Macedonia, Syria, Romania, Arabia, and several Northern African states contributed equally to the group’s membership. Many opposed groups made it impossible for the Ottomans to remain connected as before. Variations in basic elements, such as language, economic potential, ethnicity, and geographic disconnectedness, inhibit the parties’ collaboration during the latter centuries. Rebellion among several groups forced the Ottoman Empire to permit some members to operate independently since the 1870s (Yildiz 2020). Equally, losses during the Balkan Wars saw the Ottomans give up their European members, substantially reducing the kingdom’s size.

Young Turk Revolution

Young Turks initially formed the Ottoman Empire’s lethal forces, conquering numerous alien forces. However, the decline in economic ability and the worsening domestic market forced the initial collaborative team to revolt. Fronted by college learners and dissatisfied army officers, the Young Turks rebelled against the emergent centralized authoritarian command of Sultan Abdülhamid II (Yildiz 2020). The group prospered in 1908, compelling Abdülhamid to reinstate a previously altered constitution before deposing him the following year. The Young Turks endorsed a different Turkish nationalism spirit after accessing power. Equally, Atatürk’s emergence forced the last Ottoman Empire’s ruler, Mehmed VI, from Turkey, leading to the complete abolition of the sultanate rule. The new ruler proclaimed Turkey as a republic in 1923, serving as the nation’s first president. The situation preceded the expulsion of all the Ottoman dynasty’s members from the state, marking the end of the over six centuries of government.

Conclusion

The Ottoman Empire is one of the greatest political kingdoms that lived on earth. The territory originated in Anatolia in 1299 before expanding to Africa, Europe, and other parts of Asia. Osman, I was the kingdom’s founder and first sultan. Poor governance, the absence of a powerful external force, and the Mediterranean trade routes were some of the factors that led to the dynasty’s emergence. Good governance, complimentary economic factors, and technological innovations then informed the Ottomans’ growth. However, social rifts, majoring in traditional systems, and the emergence of powerful modern societies led to the Ottomans’ death.

References

Anooshahr, Ali. 2018. Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires: A Study of Politics and Invented Traditions. Oxford University Press.

Cagaptay, Suna. 2020. The First Capital of the Ottoman Empire: The Religious, Architectural, and Social History of Bursa. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Esenbel, Selçuk. 2021. Reflections from home on secularism and the possibility of Muslim democracy-A secular age beyond the west: Religion, law and the state in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Journal of Law and Religion 36, no. 2: 308-317.

Foss, Clive. 2022. The Beginnings of the Ottoman Empire First ed. Oxford United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Gibbons, Herbert, Adams. 2020. Foundation of the Ottoman Empire. Outlook Verlag.

Kenan, Seyfi̇, Somel, Selçuk, Akşin, and Kunt, Metin. 2021. Dimensions of Transformation in the Ottoman Empire from the Late Medieval Age to Modernity: In memoriam of Metin Kunt. Leiden: Brill.

Price, Philips. 2021. A History of Turkey: From Empire to Republic. Routledge.

Yildiz, Busra. 2020. The Sultans of the Ottoman Empire. Rumuz Yayınlar.

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