Ottoman Empire Archive
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Beautiful Daughters and Rich Tournaments: Pleasures of the East in Correspondences between Ottoman Sultans and Christian Princes in the 14th and 15th century
Posted on November 17, 2013 | No CommentsWhen I was working on Anti-Turkish print products of the 15th century I came across a most curious little letter written by a certain Morbisanus to pope Pius II. -
The Dragon and the Storm The Saracen anti-knight in Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata
Posted on August 2, 2013 | No CommentsThe Dragon and the Storm The Saracen anti-knight in Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata Cam Lindley Cross University of Chicago, March 8 (2011) Abstract When Peter the Venerable commissioned Robert of Ketton... -
Glass Bridges: Cross-Cultural Exchange between Florence and the Ottoman Empire
Posted on July 24, 2013 | No CommentsDuring the medieval period, the main aim of the crusades was recovery of the Holy Land. However, this changed in the fifteenth century for various reasons. -
‘Defending the Christian Faith with Our Blood’. The Battle of Lepanto (1571) and the Venetian Eastern Adriatic: Impact of a Global Conflict on the Mediterranean Periphery
Posted on July 22, 2013 | No CommentsThe battle of Lepanto, which took place on the 7th of October 1571, was the greatest naval battle of oar driven vessels in the history of the Mediterranean1. It was then that the mighty Ottoman navy suffered its first and utter defeat in a direct confrontation with Christian forces, joined in the Holy League. Its purpose was to help Venice in the defence of Cyprus, stormed by the Ottoman troops in July of 1570, but to no avail, as on the 3rd of August 1571 the island was taken by the Ottomans. -
Negotiation and warfare: The Hospitallers of Rhodes around and after the Fall of Constantinople (1426–1480)
Posted on June 20, 2013 | No CommentsAt the beginning of the 14th century, the Order of the Hospital, unlike the Temple, had managed to safeguard its image as a religious military order still able to pursue its mission to fight against the enemies of the Christian faith. -
Comparing Harems: Abbasid and Ottoman Harem Organization
Posted on April 26, 2013 | No CommentsThe following research delves into the organizational structures of the luxurious harems of Medieval Abbasid and Ottoman Empires; comparing the two different empires' harems within the political, economic, and social spheres that the royal women lived in. -
Barbarians to the Balkans
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsIn the High Middle Ages, in a now clearly articulated opposition between the West and the East, Europe and the Balkans began to emerge and be fixed as distinct and hostile entities. In Crusading chronicles, the Balkan lands lay on the way from Europe to the Holy Land. In the late twelfth and in the thirteenth centuries, the conventional separation line between the civilized and barbarian world, identical with the river Danube, began to break down and the barbarians came to be located in the Balkans. -
The Effect of Killing the Christian Prisoners at the Battle of Nicopolis
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsThe Ottoman Turks acted against the customary laws of war, which bound both Christians and Muslims even when fighting one another: no prisoner of war was ever to be executed, especially if he was a noble! -
What was the British Perception of the Turk between the Fall of Constantinople and the Siege of Vienna?
Posted on October 17, 2012 | No CommentsIn assessing the British perception of the Turk during the halcyon centuries of the Ottoman Empire, it is hard not to drown in a cacophony of opinions. However, it would be simply too convenient to claim that the sources were too contradictory and fluid; the patterns too faint and far between, to construct a decent argument. -
In the Lion’s Den: Orthodox Christians under Ottoman Rule, 1400-1550
Posted on September 9, 2012 | No CommentsA glance at the Orthodox Christian church under the Ottoman Empire from the early fifteenth to mid sixteenth century gives a revealing glimpse at some of the changing relationships of conquered Christians to the state. -
A Spectacle of Great Beauty: The Changing Faces of Hagia Sophia
Posted on August 28, 2012 | No CommentsFor Constantine, Justinian, Sultan Mehmed II, and Atatürk, Hagia Sophia served as a model for the changing political and religious ideals of a nation. To use the useful phrase coined by Linda Young, Hagia Sophia is a building that is “in between heritage.” -
The Question of Trabzon’s Efrenciyan Population: 1486-1583
Posted on July 29, 2012 | No CommentsThe following article examines the 'fate' of the Efrenciyan or foreign residents of the city of Trabzon following the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1461. -
Economy of Ragusa, 1300 – 1800: The Tiger of Mediaeval Mediterranean
Posted on July 24, 2012 | No CommentsAn economist is indeed tempted to think of Ragusa as the “Adriatic Tiger “ of yesteryear, an early example of a small open economy with strong fundamentals, and to hypothesize further that, in analogy to the current consensus about what it takes to minimize the impact of external crises, these strengths also allowed Ragusa to mitigate the effects of the many external shocks and financial crises in Medieval Europe. -
Borderlands, Cross-Cultural Exchange and Revenge in the Medieval and Early Modern Balkans: Roots of Present Regional Conflicts or Merely a Historical Case-Study?
Posted on June 20, 2012 | No CommentsActs of revenge could be carried out across generations, forcing the relatives of a slain individual to escape humiliation and shame by embarking on a never-ending journey of vengeance and retaliation. -
Transylvania in Hungarian History: An Introduction
Posted on June 3, 2012 | No CommentsFrom their Balkan homeland the Vlachs began their migrations north in the thirteenth century, migrations that were accelerated no doubt by the beginning of Ottoman Turkish expansion into the Balkans. -
Braşov (Kronstadt) in the Defence against the Turks (1438–1479)
Posted on June 3, 2012 | No CommentsConfrontation with Ottoman expansion began for Braşov at the end of the 14th century with the treaty with Mircea the Elder in the year 1395 which was part of King Sigismund of Luxembourg’s anti-Ottoman policy and was signed in Braşov. -
The Great Siege of Malta
Posted on May 18, 2012 | No CommentsTony Rothman recalls one of the turning points of early modern history, when a heroic defence prevented the rampant Ottoman forces from gaining a strategic foothold in the central Mediterranean. -
A Sultan of Paradox: Mehmed the Conqueror as a Patron of the Arts
Posted on April 19, 2012 | No CommentsWas there not a paradox in a Muslim prince patronising an Italian medallist? -
Loaves and fishes: a stable isotope reconstruction of diet in medieval Greece
Posted on April 4, 2012 | No CommentsThe historical sources on medieval Greek diet provide extensive information on the identity of foods consumed, but are less informative regarding the proportions in which they were consumed. -
The Harsh Life on the 15th Century Croatia-Ottoman Empire Military Border: Analyzing and Identifying the Reasons for the Massacre in Cepin
Posted on April 4, 2012 | No CommentsTurkish intrusions into what is today the continental part of Croatia began in 1391 and continued throughout the 15th, and the beginning of the 16th century when a large part of continental Croatia was incorporated into the Turkish Empire. -
Conversion and Convergence in the Venetian-Ottoman Borderlands
Posted on March 19, 2012 | No CommentsIn this essay I seek to explain this surprisingly peaceful outcome to a potentially explosive situation, and more broadly to contribute to a new kind of history of early modern diplomacy that takes as its starting point practices of mediation in all their complexity. -
The Ottoman Conquest of Thrace: Aspects of Historical Geography
Posted on March 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe fourteenth century was of paramount importance for both the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Emirate. In Byzantine history it marks the end of a great medieval empire, especially relating to its administrative and economic decadence. For Ottoman history, it punctuates the transition of a frontier beglik into a world-dominant empire. -
Tamerlane’s Place of Abode and Activities after Ankara War in Kütahya
Posted on March 4, 2012 | No CommentsTamerlane who won the Ankara war against the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I in July 28, 1402 did not immediately left Anatolia and stayed there for approximately one year. He continued his pillage attacks and conquests in various cities of Anatoia during this period. -
Süleyman the Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the Context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-Papal Rivalry
Posted on February 27, 2012 | No CommentsThis article explores issues of cross-cultural communication raised by the Ottoman court's intense patronage of European artistic talent during the early part of Suleyman the Magnificent's reign (1520-1566). -
The Fall of Constantinople: Bishop Leonard and the Greek Accounts
Posted on October 23, 2011 | No CommentsThe Fall of Constantinople: Bishop Leonard and the Greek Accounts By Marios Philippides Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies v.22 (1981) Introduction: The work attributed to George Sphrantzes (1401-1477) has comes...
