Essays on Ottomans

Art, architecture, and design are very important clues for historians to figure out what exactly a civilization, culture and society valued. Architecture, in particular, is a very important part of a larger material culture which may be used by historians as clues to figure out what impact these decisions had on the larger culture and the way each society organizes itself. In this sense, it is almost nearly inescapable that each piece of art or building will not in some way or another influence our thinking regarding how each of these societies is organized. This is true everywhere around ...

Throughout the course of modern history, numerous events have revolved around the Middle East, affecting the cultural perspectives of the people living there. For instance, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent political maneuvering by Western/Arab nations spawned decades of bloodshed in the region, destroying both an entire generation of people and the viability of a nation. The creation of Israel in 1948 created a massive power shift in the region, as the Arab nations attempted to retake the territory but were soundly defeated, and again in 1967. The Second World War engulfed the North African Muslim countries, ...

Tanzimat is the name of modernizing reforms in the Ottoman Sultanate from 1839 to 1876, when the first Ottoman constitution was adopted. The basic principles of the reform were set out in Hatt-i-Sharif, issued by Sultan Abdul-Majid on the 3 of November in 1839 while his accession to the throne. Unlike previous reforms, the main place in the Tanzimat occupied not military but socio-economic issues. The initiative belonged to the group formed by the bureaucracy, headed by Mustafa Reşid Pasha, who became the author of Hatt-i-Sharif. For several years he was ambassador in England and France, and then ...

The thirteenth century to the seventeenth century can be considered a period of ascendancy as there are many examples of dominance and the fight for superiority between various groups and empires: most notably through the Mongol Empire, the destruction of the Abbasid Empire, and the consolidation of the Ottoman Empire. In the thirteenth century, Mongol invasions were rampant all over Asia, leading through the Middle East and into Europe. They were sent by the Mongol Empire to gain territorial expansion across Eurasia and the Middle East. Mongol armies led by Genghis Khan invaded Iraq and Iran beginning in the ...

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Nationalism is a significant transitional power in the annals of history. Though the concept of loyalty is generally believed to be of a more contemporary vintage, theories as to the actual origins and the development of nationalism as a concept abound. Allegiance in the Arab world and the Palestinians in particular, have remained unexamined not due to lack of significance, but due to deliberate omission. Those who hold that nationalism comes about as a natural sociological process cannot sufficiently expound the segregation of the United States and Britain or the union of the English and French quarters ...

Introduction

The Ottoman Empire was one of the world’s largest empires with history dates back to the Islamic medieval period from the 10th to 11th centuries. The main religion of the Ottoman Empire was Islam and most of their architecture and art was based on the religion as well. The beautiful buildings that exist today were the relics of the old Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was originally founded in 1299 by the tribe who distinguished themselves as Oghus Turks under the rule of King Osman I. Ottoman empire stretched from the mainland Turkey and controlled various countries in ...

The Ottoman and the Habsburg territories were the two major talked about empires that formed distinct categories in the Europe. The Mediterranean surrounded the two. Rooted in the Sunni Islam, the Ottoman Empire occupied the eastern and southern Mediterranean. On the other hand, with the Roman Catholic Christianity as their religion, the Habsburg Empire covered the western and northern Mediterranean. Though similar in some ways to the socio-economic ways, however, both the empires comprised of varying many different ethnic and religious groups. (Pál and Geza 47) Inalcik narrates that “Ottoman judiciary the judges were the administrators in the ...