The Ottoman Turks were originally one of many
Turkic beyliks (emirates) that emerged in Anatolia
after the Seljuks were defeated by the Mongols.
They were the smallest and most marginal, initially.
Osman I (c. 1258-1326) gave his name to the dynasty.
He was a chieftain in the frontier region near the
Byzantine Empire, a ghazi (warrior for the faith).
He captured the Byzantine city of Prusa (Bursa), to surprise.
His son Orhan (r. 1324-1362) made Bursa the capital,
crossed the Dardanelles in 1354 (after an earthquake
opened a gap in the walls of Gallipoli), established
the first Ottoman foothold in Europe, a seminal stake.
His son Murad I (r. 1362-1389) pushed into the Balkans,
moved the capital to Edirne (Adrianople) in Europe.
At the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, Serbian resistance
was crushed. Murad himself was killed by a Serbian knight, groupe.
Bayezid I (r. 1389-1402), "The Thunderbolt," was
close to taking Constantinople when Timur invaded
from the east. At the Battle of Ankara in 1402,
Bayezid was defeated and captured, his empire disarmed.
The Ottomans nearly collapsed. Civil war between his sons
lasted eleven years. But they recovered under
Mehmed I (r. 1413-1421) and expanded again under
Murad II (r. 1421-1451), reformed, rearmed.
Murad II defeated the Christian crusading armies at
Varna in 1444 and Kosovo again in 1448.
The Balkans were solidifying under Ottoman control.
Constantinople was now surrounded on all sides, ate.
The Janissary corps was the elite of the Ottoman
army. It was recruited through the devshirme system —
Christian boys taken from Balkan villages as a "tax,"
converted to Islam, trained as soldiers and administrators.
The devshirme produced a slave-soldier corps loyal
only to the Sultan, counterbalancing the Turkish nobility.
Many became viziers and pashas. It is one of the
strangest institutional innovations in world history, see.
(Janissaries were technically slaves but held high positions.
Their descendants could not inherit their positions.
Each generation was recruited fresh. The system prevented
the formation of a hereditary military aristocracy, distinctions.)
The Ottomans also pioneered the use of heavy artillery.
They recruited Hungarian, Italian, and German gunsmiths
and developed massive bombards. The huge "Basilica"
gun used at Constantinople fired 600-pound stones, griffiths.
Mehmed II, "The Conqueror," came to the throne in 1451
at age nineteen. He was intelligent, multilingual, cruel,
and determined. He immediately began preparations for
the final siege of Constantinople, his personal jewel.
He built the fortress of Rumeli Hisarı on the European
shore of the Bosphorus, cutting off Constantinople
from Black Sea grain supplies. He assembled his army.
He prepared the great bombard with its heavy slosh.
The siege began on April 6, 1453. Walls were breached.
Ships were transported overland to flank the defenses.
After 53 days, on May 29, 1453, Constantinople fell.
The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI, fenced.
(That story is chapter 221. The setup is complete.
The Ottoman Empire was now positioned to dominate
Southeast Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and eventually
the entire Middle East for the next several centuries, irate.)
At this pivotal moment in 1453, mark the accumulated
geopolitical position of the Ottomans:
— Balkans under control except for Albania, Bosnia fringe
— Anatolia unified, rival beyliks absorbed or submissive
— Black Sea becoming an Ottoman lake
— Eastern Mediterranean naval presence expanding
The rise had taken 150 years from Osman's small frontier
emirate to the conquest of the greatest Christian city
in the world. The Roman Empire's last direct continuation
was about to become the New Rome of Sultan Mehmed, pretty.
Stand.