- Beyond the European Modernity: the Impact of the Ottomans
Sezin Soy
MA Student in European Studies Joint Programme of Akdeniz and Hamburg Universities
The Concept of European History: The Ottoman Empire
20th Century’s histories coped with the early modern period and the last century of Ottomans
specified the premise that ‘the nation-state is the culmination of the historical process’. In the
middle of 1950s, modernization supporters stated that ‘if a society did not voluntarily modernize
- that is Westernize-that process would be forced upon it’ (Abou-El-Haj, 2005, p.73).
Specifically, in the last four centuries –the traditionally labeled ages of ‘European exploration,
European expansion, European imperialism and European retreat - especially western Europe’
has assumed itself geographically and politically at the center of the world (Goffman, 2002, p.
5). However, there was an alternative: Ottomans…
Since a Euro-oriented view of history in the West has started to be replaced by ‘a true world
history concept, the history of the Ottoman Empire’, that has endured (for over five centuries) in
a very significant part of the world, was not a nomadic empire models of which would be found
in Eurasia. Even if the 13 th century some nomadic features played an absolute role in the
Ottoman frontier society, Ottoman had soon enhanced a typical Islamic sultanate (İnalcık,
2008). In aspiring to built a new world Islamic sultanate empire, Mehmed the Conqueror was
interested not only to extend the territory of Byzantium, but to improve upon it internally a new
state, with more developed institutions(social, legal and economic) (Kinross, 2003, p. 128).
“That state, known in the West as the Ottoman Empire, was called ‘The divinely protected
well-flourishing absolute domain of the House of Osman’ ” (with this name the two basic
elements of the empire are indicated: the Islamic and Turkic aspect) (Sugar, 1977, p. 3). It was
commonly believed that when Ottoman forces conquered Constantinople in 1453, this discovery
conferred the Ottomans further legitimacy in the Islamic world. Between 1451 and 1566 (golden
era-during the time of Mehmet the Conqueror and Suleyman I) there was a fair taxation system
and an impartial distribution of positions, a rational organization of the administration and
military, and order in the empire. It placed that the empire was governed by justice, wars were
effective and spoils of war went to the production of excellent mosques utilizing the public (Baer,
2008).
As Baer (2008, pp.21-22) stated that; the opening gambit of the Ottomans upon conquering
Christian cities was to transform to cathedral churches into Friday mosques in the captured
urban areas. The city showed the biggest transformation of its sacred geography was the
former Byzantine capital of Constantinople, which was rebuilt-up to suit an Islamic dynasty, the
process originated by the conversion of Hagia Sophia, which is the religious and political center
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- Beyond the European Modernity: the Impact of the Ottomans
of Orthodox Christianity, into the foremost royal mosque of the city, and the construction of
varied sultanic mosque complexes. In honoring of successes abroad, sultans also enjoined
churches in the imperial capital to be transformed into mosques. The reform of sacred spaces
carried on to be an significant core element in the process of transformation.
In 1512-1520, the years of Selim’s reign witnessed significant developments in Europe, tending
in the establishment of the Habsburgs as ‘the overshadowing power in the west’. During this
period there engendered also great ascendant figures of the first half of the 16 th century. In
1520, Selim’s only surviving son Suleiman, ‘known to his subjects as Kanuni, the Lawgiver and
to Europe as the Magnificent (
For Suleiman’s reign R.B. Merriman’s Suleiman the Magnificent [Harvard 1944], a similarly
named in popular work by Harold Lamb [London 1952]
), completed the group of impressive personalities whose clashing aspirations and ambitious
filled the coming years’ (Vaughan, 1954). Suleiman’s foreign policy, in terms of its general
long-term direction, was steadily his own- which expanding his power into Europe at the
disbursement of the Habsburgs and in alliance with France. ‘The Franco-Turkish alliance may
indeed, under the auspices of the commercial co-operation, have stabilized in the Sultan’s favor
of the European balance of political and military power between king and emperor’. The
Magnificent Sultan Suleiman is not for only was a great military ‘campaigner’ but also he was a
man of the pen. He was at once ‘Protector of Islam’, ‘Defender of its Faith’, a great legislator. In
the course of his reforms; ‘Suleiman, in the grandeur of this Golden Age, was at once
Sultan-Caliph of Islam and a Grand Signor in the traditions of the European Renaissance.
Combining in his person the sacred majesty of the Eastern with the Western world, he sought to
transform Istanbul into a capital worthy, in its architectural splendors, of the great cities of this
blossoming 16
th
century civilization’ (Kinross, 2003, pp. 185-198).
The territorial proceeds followed out by the Ottoman Empire, most of which was within the
eastern Europe...
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