Rise of the Ottoman Empire
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This article details the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as its days of glory in the 16th century. For the decline and fall of the empire see the Fall of the Ottoman Empire.
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Rise
In the late 13th century the Seljuq empire had collapsed and Anatolia was divided into hundreds of small states. One of these states was Söğüt, a small tribe settled in river valley of Sakarya. The founder and bey (chief) of the tribe was Ertoğrül, the father of Osman I. When Ertoğrül died in 1281, Osman became the leader of the tribe.
Early expansion
In 1299 the Byzantine city Bilecik fell to Osman I. It was but the first of many cities and villages to fall into the hands of the Turks during the 1300s and 1310s. Osman also conquered some of the nearby Turkish emirates and tribes. During the late 1310s Osman I laid siege to several important Byzantine forts. Yenişehir was captured and with it as a base the Turks could lay siege to Prousas (Bursa) and Nicaea (Iznik), the largest Byzantine cities in Anatolia. Bursa fell in 1324, just before Osman's death.
The son of Osman, Orhan I, conquered Nicaea in 1331 and Nicomedia in 1337 and established the capital in Bursa. During Orhan's reign the empire was organized as a state with new currency, government and a modernized army. He married Theodora, the daughter of Byzantine prince John VI Cantacuzenus. In 1346 Orhan openly supported John VI in the overthrowing of the emperor John V Palaeologus. When John VI became co-emperor (1347-1354) he allowed Orhan to raid the peninsula of Gallipoli which gained the Ottomans their first stronghold in Europe.
Conquests of Murad I
Orhan died in 1360 and left a growing empire to his son and successor, Murad I. Murad advanced the reformation of the state and founded such entities as the divan (the government and advisors), the beylerbey (great chief), the kaziasker (military judge) and the defterdar (financial minister). He appointed a grand vizier like the Arabic rulers of the Middle East and he also founded the Janissary corps.
In the early 1360s the ottoman armies marched into Thrace through Gallipoli and captured Adrianople (Edirne) and Philippopolis (Plovdiv) and forcing the Byzantines to pay tribute. In 1366 the count Amadeus VI of Savoy (cousin to John V Cantacuzenus, the Byzantine emperor) initiated a minor crusade to aid the Byzantines. The count drove away the Turks from all of Europe except Gallipoli. The very next year Murad attacked anew and regained most of Thrace, including Adrianople.
During the early 1370s Murad launched his forces deeper into Europe. At the Battle of Maritsa, at the Maritsa River, Murad's second lieutenant Lalaşahin encountered a 70,000 man strong Serbian-Bulgarian army under the Serbian king Vukasin. The Ottoman army was smaller, but due to superior tactics the enemy was defeated and king Vukasin killed. Now that the Serbian coalition was weakened by such a blow, Murad was quick to advance further into Bulgaria and capture the cities of Dráma, Kavála and Seres (Serrái).
In 1383 Murad declared himself sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Shortly thereafter he began a new campaign in Europe. Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, fell in 1385 and the city of Niš the year after. The Ottoman Conquest halted in 1387 when the Serbs won the Battle of Plocnik but two years later Murad marched anew into the west. The Ottomans won a great victory over the Serbs in the Battle of Kosovo but the sultan himself was killed by the assassin Miloš Obilic.
Beyazid the Thunderbolt
Beyazid I succeeded to the sultanship upon the assassination of his father Murad. In a rage over the attack, he ordered all Serbian captives killed; Beyazid became known as Yildirim, the lightning bolt, for his temperament.
He conquered most of Bulgaria and northern Greece in 1389-1395 and laid siege on Constantinople in 1391-1398. On September 25, 1396 at the Battle of Nicopolis, his forces met the Venetian-Hungarian army led by king Sigismund of Hungary. The Ottomans won and signed a peace treaty with Hungary. Beyazid then turned his attention to the east, conquering the Turkish emirate of Karaman in 1397.
Around 1400 Timur Lenk entered the Middle East. Timur Lenk pillaged a few villages in eastern Anatolia and commenced the conflict with the Ottoman Empire. In August, 1400 Timur and his horde burned the town of Sivas to the ground and advanced into the mainland. The war culminated at the Battle of Ankara in July, 1402. Timur won, captured Beyazid, and was free to raid and pillage Anatolia. Beyazid died in captivity in 1403.
Interregnum and restoration
After the defeat at Ankara followed a time of total chaos in the Empire. Mongols roamed free in Anatolia and the political power of the sultan was broken. After Beyazid was captured, his remaining sons, Suleiman Çelebi, İsa Çelebi, Mehmed Çelebi, and Mûsa fought each other in what became known as the Ottoman Interregnum.
When Mehmed Çelebi stood as victor in 1413 he crowned himself in Edirne (Adrianople) as Mehmed I. His was the duty to restore the Ottoman Empire to its former glory. The Empire had suffered hard from the Interregnum; the Mongols were still at large in the east, even though Timur Lenk had died in 1405; many of the Christian kingdoms of the Balkans had broken free of Ottoman control; and the land, especially Anatolia, had suffered hard from the war.
During his reign, Mehmed moved the capital from Bursa to Adrianople (Edirne), reinforced control over Bulgaria and Serbia, drove the Mongols from Anatolia and assaulted Albania, Cilicia, the Turkish emirate of Candaroglu and Byzantine controlled areas in southern Greece.
The Wars of Murad II
When Mehmed died in 1421, one of his sons, Murad, became sultan. Murad spent his early years on the throne disposing off rivals and rebellions, most notably the revolts of the Serbs. In 1423 he paid a short visit to Constantinople, laid siege on it for a couple of months and forced the Byzantines to pay additional tribute.
In 1423 the first regular war against Venice began. During Murad's siege of Constantinople, the Byzantine Emperor's control over the Greek city-states weakened. On the request of its inhabitants, Venetian troops took control of the city of Salonika (Thessaloniki). The Ottoman army that laid siege to the city knew nothing of the transfer of power, and a number of Venetian soldiers were killed by Ottoman troops, believing them to be Greeks. Murad II had been on peaceful terms with Venice, so the Venetians deemed the act unacceptable and declared full war.
Murad acted swiftly, besieging Constantinople and sending his armies to Salonika. The Venetians had gained reinforcements by sea but when the Ottomans stormed the city the outcome was forgone and the Venetians fled to their ships. But when the Turks entered and began plundering the city the Venetian fleet started bombarding the city from the sea-side. The Ottomans fled and the fleet was able to hold off the Ottomans until new Venetian reinforcements arrived to recapture the city. The outcome of the Battle of Salonika was a setback for Murad and Serbia and Hungary allied themselves with Venice. Pope Martin V encouraged other Christian states to join the war against the Ottomans, though only Austria ever sent any troops to the Balkans.
The war in the Balkans began as the Ottoman army moved to recapture Wallachia, which the Ottomans had lost to Mircea cel Batran during the Interregnum and that now was an Hungarian vassal state. As the Ottoman army entered Wallachia, the Serbs started attacking Bulgaria and, at the same time, urged by the Pope, the Anatolian emirate Karamanid attacked the Empire from the back. Murad had to split his army. The main force went to defend Sofia and the reserves had to be called to Anatolia. The remaining troops in Wallachia were crushed by the Hungarian army that was now moving south into Bulgaria where the Serbian and Ottoman armies battled each other. The Serbs were defeated and the Ottomans turned to face the Hungarians who fled back into Wallachia when they realized they were unable to attack the Ottomans from the back. Murad fortified his borders against Serbia and Hungaria but did not try to retake Wallachia, instead he sent his armies to Anatolia where they defeated Karaman in 1428.
In 1430 a large Ottoman fleet attacked Salonika by surprise. The Venetians signed a peace treaty in 1432. The treaty gave the Ottomans the city of Salonika and the surrounding land. The war between Serbia and Hungaria and the Ottoman Empire had come to a standstill in 1441 when the Holy Roman Empire, Poland, Albania, and the emirates Candaroğlu and Karamanid (in violation of the peace treaty) intervened against the Ottomans. Niš and Sofia fell to the Christians in 1443 and the year after the Empire suffered a major defeat in the Battle of Jalowaz. July 12, 1444 Murad signed a treaty that officially gave Wallachia and the Bulgarian province of Varna to Hungary, western Bulgaria (including Sofia) to Serbia and forced Murad to abdicate in favor of his twelve-year-old son Mehmed. Later the same year the Christians violated the peace treaty and attacked anew. In November 11, 1444, Murad defeated the Polish-Hungarian army of Janos Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna.
Murad was reinstated with the help of the Janissaries in 1446. Another peace treaty was signed in 1448 giving the Empire Wallachia and Bulgaria and a part of Albania. After the Balkan front was secured, Murad turned east and defeated Timur Lenk's son, Shah Rokh, and the emirates of Candar and Karaman in Anatolia. He died in the winter 1450-1451 in Edirne. Some have it that he was wounded in a battle against Skanderbeg's Albanian guerillas.
Mehmed the Conqueror
Many doubted the young Mehmed II when he became sultan (again) following his father's death. But by conquering and annexing the emirate of Karamanid (May-June, 1451) and by renewing the peace treaties with Venice (September 10) and Hungary (November 20) he proved his skills both on the military and the political front and was soon accepted by the noble class of the Ottoman court.
One of his first goals as sultan was to annex Byzantine Constantinople. When in 1451 the bankrupt Byzantines asked Mehmed to double the tribute for holding an Ottoman competitor for the throne, he used the request as a pretext for nulling all treaties with the Empire. Although, when he in 1452 proposed to attack Constantinople most of the divan, and especially the Grand Vizier, Kandarli Halil, was against it and critized the sultan for being too rash and overconfident in his abilities.
On April 15 1452, Mehmed ordered the construction of a castle on the shore of the Bosphorus. It was completed on August 31 and was named the Rumeli Hiskari (the European Castle). In September, Mehmed began mobilizing his troops, setting up a large camp surrounding the city. On March 3, 1453, he presented the Byzantine emperor Constantine XI with an ultimatum, but the emperor declined to surrender the city. The Siege of Constantinople began on April 6 and lasted for almost three months. On May 29 the city was finally captured. Mehmed had the city rebuilt as his new capital, turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque and constructing the Topkapi Palace in 1462. Following the capture of Constantinople, Mehmed had himself titled "Kaiser-i-Rum", or "Roman Caesar", and modelled the state after the old Byzantine Empire, thinking of himself as the successor to the Roman throne. Later, when he invaded Otranto, his goal was to capture Rome and reunite the Roman Empire for the first time since 751.
When Constantinople was captured and the Byzantine Empire extinguished, Mehmed turned south to Morea (Pelleponessos) where a last Greek kingdom still remained in Christian hands, and west to the Balkans. In 1456 Mehmed laid siege to Belgrade. On August 13 the Janissaries advanced into the city but were ambushed by the forces of Janos Hunyadi and forced to flee. Mehmed never succeded in taking Belgrade. Mehmed entered Athens in 1460, until then ruled by emperor Constantine's two brothers, Thomas and Demetrios. The following year Mehmed launched a campaign into Anatolia defeating the Candaroglu Beylik in Sinope, and Armenia under Uzun Hasan before capturing the Empire of Trebizond on August 15, 1461.
In 1475 Mehmet conquered the Genoese colony on the Crimea, establishing the first Ottoman presence north of the Black Sea. Two years later he moved upon the Venetian east coast of the Adriatic, annexing the city of Piavas and some Adriatic islands in a peace treaty. In 1480, a vizier called Ahmed landed in Italy and captured the city Otranto, although the Ottomans- who had to deal with another Albanian rebellion at the time- met fierce resistance from Ferrante of Naples and the Pope and were forced to abandon Otranto. Mehmet died about a year later. Some have it that he was secretly poisoned by his Jewish doctor at the instigation of Pope Sixtus IV.
Apex
The apex of Ottoman power can be said to have been from the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 to the death of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566. There are also many other variants, including stretching the empire's days of glory to the failed Battle of Vienna in 1683, but by then the empire had suffered from internal degeneration and corruption for a century.
Beyazid the Just
When Beyazid II was enthroned upon his father's death, he first had to fight his younger brother Cem, who took Inegöl and Bursa and proclaimed himself Sultan of Anatolia. After a battle at Yenişehir, Cem was defeated and fled to Cairo. The very next year he returned, supported by the Mameluks, and took eastern Anatolia, Ankara and Konya but eventually he was beaten and forced to flee to Rhodes.
Sultan Beyazid attacked Venice in 1499. Peace was signed in 1503, and the Ottomans gained the last Venetian strongholds on the Peloponnesos and some towns along the Adriatic coast. In the 1500s Mameluks and Persians under Shah Ismail I allied against the Ottomans. The war ended 1511 in favor for the Turks.
Later that year, Beyazid's son Ahmet forced his father into making him regent. His brother Selim was forced to flee to Crimea. When Ahmet was about to be crowned the Janissaries intervened, killed the prince and forced Beyazid into calling Selim back and making him the sultan. Beyazid abdicated and was later executed.
[to be continued]