Catastrophe and Creativity (1350-1500) - Crises and Consolidations - The Rise of the Ottomans and the Fall of Byzantium
17 important questions on Catastrophe and Creativity (1350-1500) - Crises and Consolidations - The Rise of the Ottomans and the Fall of Byzantium
When did the Mongol Empire fall? Who took over?
- The Mongol Empire fell apart around 1340. Soon the Ming dynasty took control in China.
- To China's west, Tamerlane (Timur the Lame, 1336-1405), a central Assian warlord, conquered much of the rest of the Mongol Empire.
What happened to Tamerlane? How did this compare to the Ottomans?
- In China's west, Tamerlane (Timur the Lame, 1336-1405), a central Asian warlord, conquered much of the Mongol Empire. His state was his personal confection and disintegrated soon after his death.
- By contrast, the Ottomans, initially a small tribe located on the western fringe of Mongol power, ultimately created a large, powerful, and long-lived polity.
What were the Ottomans like before they became a large empire?
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Who did the Ottomans control before the plague?
What did historian Nükhet Varlik say about the Black Death?
- Historian Nükhet Varlik has suggested that nodamism may have been one source of the disease.
- After the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, it reappeared more frequently. The explanation seems to be that, as the Ottomans expanded, they requisitioned and forcibly moved food, people, and livestock, unwittingly bringing Yersinia pestis along for the ride.
How did Othman rise to power?
- At the beginning of the fourteenth century, Othman (d.1324/1326), after whom the Ottomans were named, began to carve out a small principality for himself in the interstices between Mongol-ruled Rum and the Byzantine Empire.
- Othman "feigned friendship" with some of the nearby leaders, while starting feuds with others. Soon he controlled a small state right in Byzantium's backyard.
When did the Ottomans get to power?
- Rival factions within the Byzantine Empire tried to make use of the Ottomans.
- Their troops arrived in Gallipoli in 1354 at the request of one claimant to the Byzantine throne. Then they moved into the Balkans, their way eased by indigenous religious and political rifts there.
- In the course of the fourteenth century, the western half of the Ottoman Empire came to embrace Thrace, Macedonia, and Bulgaria.
What is the capital of the Ottomans? What happened with Timur?
- For a moment, the Ottoman advance eastward was set back by a major defeat at the hands of Timur in 1402 at Ankara. But Timur's death soon thereafter allowed them to regroup and conquer.
- Meanwhile, they re-centered their power in Europe and established a capital at Edirne (the former Adrianople).
What did the Ottoman hegemony depend on?
- Ottoman hegemony depended not only on the disunity of their enemies but also the superiority of their military power.
- They adopted the new hardware of the west: cannons and harquebuses (heavy matchlock guns).
- And they deployed elite troops, the Janissaries.
What happened under Sultan Mehmed II?
What happened in Constantinople during the Ottoman's conquest and before that?
- The city was looted for days, whole neighborhoods were turned to rubble, numerous people were killed, and those who were not were enslaved.
- True, the crusade of 1204 had also destroyed Constantinople, but the Byzantine polity had lived on in its provinces and eventually recovered the capital city.
- That did not happen after the Ottoman conquest, and gradually it became clear to contemporaries (as well as historians today) that the fall of Constantinople was a historical turning point.
What did the sultan recognize to remain Byzantium?
- Byzantium had an afterlife after Constantinople fell.
- The sultan recognized the need for a Christian religious leader, and he re-established the patriarch, who still headed up a Church organization and served a flock of Orthodox believers, some of which were refugees invited back to the capital by Mehmed.
What remained of Byzantium after Constantinople fell? What movement came from it?
- Russia took up the mantle of the Third Rome, claming itself to be the heir of the "Second Rome," that is, of Byzantium.
- In the West, the Greeks who fled the Ottomans kept their customs, language, and religion.
- The fall of Byzantium made clear to many Italians the irrefutable end of the Roman Empire, an event of epochal proportions. Intensely saddened by this realization, some joined a movement already underway to resuscitate the ancient world by reading and absorbing the lessons of Greek and Roman writers - the movement that historians call the Renaissance.
How did the Ottomans see themselves? What happened to Constantinople?
- Although in popular speech Constantinople became Istanbul (meaning "the city"), its official name remained "Qustantiniyya" - the City of Constantine.
- The Ottoman sultans saw themselves as the successors of the Roman emperor - but better, true-believing successors.
What culture was there in the Ottoman court?
- Mehmed and his successors staffed their cities with men schooled in Islamic administration and culture and set up madrasas to teach the young.
- At workshops built by the sultan in Istanbul, artists and craftsmen produced books, ceramics, and textiles decorated in styles drawn from Mamluk and Timurid models.
- New buildings - both religious and secular - needed furnishings: tiles, lamps, candelabra, well hangings, ceramics, and carpets.
What did the Ottoman rulers spent their money on?
How did the Ottomans change Europe?
- The Ottoman state eventually changed Europe's orientation. Europeans could continue to trade in the Mediterranean.
- But, on the whole, they preferred to treat the Ottomans as a barrier to the Orient. Not long after the fall of Constantinople, the first transatlantic voyages began as a new route to the East.
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