Notes on the Ottoman Empire circa 1500
The following are notes from Mikhail's GOD'S SHADOW that I put up on the wall. They barely capture the many DNKT (did not know this) moments in this fiery book.
1320 Mikhail
Osman, leader of the Turks dies …
The Turks or Ottomans are at the doorstep of the Byzantine Empire.
It has been a 700 year migration from the steppes of today’s northern China.
The Ottomans speak a unique language whose roots are shared by Koreans.
By 1453, the Ottomans under Mehmet II capture Constantinople –
the shot heard round the world … end of the 1050 year Byzantine Empire …
The empire had served as a buffer between a comparatively much weaker
Europe and the vast and more powerful empires of the Middle and Near East …
1492 Mikhail
The “historical caesura” … the moment when the old gave way to the new.
The Ottoman Empire straddled and taxed the eastern trade for Europeans.
Columbus set off to find alternative trade routes … to end-run the Ottomans.
Columbus believed also that a Christian Khan awaited him in “India”.
An alliance with this mythic Khan would allow Europe to surround the Ottomans.
The Ottoman Empire and Islam as the trigger for the Age of Exploration.
1273 Mikhail
The Persian poet Rumi dies …
Rumi inspired and gave words to the Sufi religious cult of Islam.
Part of the splintering of Islam …
Later the Sufis would merge via the Safavids of Persia into
an imperial Shiite empire – the most dangerous rival to the Sunni Ottomans.
1492 Mikhail
Spain expels both the Moors and the Jews and lays the seeds for empire …
Spain embraced the religious extremes of the Inquisition to unify Iberia …
Spain expels the Moors who had dominated Iberia for over 700 years …
Moorish Iberia was Muslim but independent of the Ottoman Empire …
Moorish cities (Cordoba) were among the world’s most beautiful and sophisticated .
The Jews would form the great Sephardic diaspora and drain Spain of talent.
The Ottoman Empire in the 16th century had the largest concentrations
of Jews and Christians in the world … they thrived.
638 Mikhail
The emerging Muslim Empire occupies Jerusalem …
Would remain in almost entirely in Muslim hands for over 1200 years ...
Crusades in different forms were a part of that entire period …
1275 Mikhail
The Mongol emperor of China recognizes a Christian bishop in China …
The spark behind the Christian Khan myth …
Part of the mosaic behind Western expansion …
The hope to “surround” the Ottoman’s and occupy (finally) Jerusalem.
Reinforced when the new Ming dynasty (1368) sent envoys to Rome.
The stubborn myth of a Christian ally emerging from the East …
An irresistible part of the Northwest Passage fantasy …
1485 Mikhail
Henry VII ends the War of the Roses and the Tudor dynasty begins …
Arguably the beginning of the rise of England …
The Great Fire of 1212 and the Black Death beginning in 1348 were behind them.
London would boom … finally expand beyond her Roman center …
The city turned into a religious and commercial quilt with a diverse population:
Wood Street, Milk Street, Cheapside, Carmelite Street, White Friars Street …
1513 Mikhail
Spanish Crown promulgates the Requerimento …
Distributed to all soldiers and subjects … recited before any battle with “natives” …
It claims the Catholic Church as the only church and insists that natives convert
or be subject to slavery and “all the evil and damages” due to one who
does not obey the Lord.
1519 Mikhail
Charles V named Holy Roman Emperor …
The merging of the Spanish Empire with the Holy Roman Empire …
Creating the first partially unified Europe since Rome.
The Ottomans, meanwhile, with an arguably vaster empire, thought
of themselves as the next Rome …
The ROME phenomena:
Rome itself … Byzantine Empire (Second Rome) … Ottomans …
Holy Roman Empire … the Russian Empire (the Third Rome) …
the term “Reich” has Roman connotations … Pax Americana …
1514 Mikhail
Selim secures a fatwa to invade the Safavid Empire in Iraq/Iran ….
Required a fatwa in order for one Muslim to kill another …
The Shiites were a true existential threat to the Sunni Ottomans …
The two religions had coexisted uncomfortably for hundreds of years …
The Safavid Empire (Persia and later Iran) gave the Shiites a powerful platform.
Selim would slaughter Shiites (40,000+) on his way to defeating the Safavids.
Ironically the defeat opened the door the Straights of Hormuz to the Portuguese.
NOTE: the Sephardic Jews very much directed the modernization of Selim’s army.
1516 Mikhail
Selim defeats the vast but bankrupt Mamluk Empire centered in Cairo …
Selim occupies Syria on the way to Egypt … one of several great Syrian cities
including Damascus, the oldest city in the world, and beautiful Alleppo.
Selim will take Mecca & Medina from the Mamluk’s and will create
the Ottoman caliphate with him as “God’s shadow”.
1517 Mikhail
Selim occupies Yemen …
Yemen had been at the heart of the trading world for over 1500 years …
Yemen’s province, Mocha, controlled 90% of the emerging coffee trade …
The Ottomans would make coffee addiction widespread …
By 1750, the coffee trade was centered in Dutch controlled Java …
By 1850, it had shifted to Latin America where it remains …
Today, coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world
- behind oil.