Ottoman Empire Archive
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The Impalings of Vlad the Impaler
Posted on January 11, 2015 | No CommentsOne of the most infamous chararacters from the Middle Ages was Vlad III Dracula, the prince of Wallachia. Here is the story of how he gained the name of 'the Impaler'. -
War-Winning Weapons? On the Decisiveness of Ottoman Firearms from the Siege of Constantinople (1453) to the Battle of Mohács (1526)
Posted on December 22, 2014 | No CommentsHow important a role did gunpowder weapons play in these Ottoman victories? The following re-examination of selected sieges and battles attempts to answer this question. -
The Book of Felicity
Posted on November 17, 2014 | No CommentsThe Book of Felicity features descriptions of the twelve signs of the zodiac accompanied by splendid miniatures; a series of paintings showing how human circumstances are influenced by the planets; astrological and astronomical tables; and an enigmatic treatise on fortune telling. -
Banditry and the Clash of Powers in 14th-Century Thrace: Momcilo and his Fragmented Memory
Posted on September 7, 2014 | No CommentsIn the 14th century, a time of civil wars, religious and dynastic strifes, epidemics, natural disasters and miserable living conditions for the wider strata in the cities and the countryside that increased migratory movements, banditry, an indigenous phenomenon in the Balkan mountainous regions, intermingled with the intensified political struggles. -
Medieval Perspectives: Jean de Waurin and His Perception of the Turks in Anatolia in the Late Middle Ages
Posted on September 2, 2014 | No CommentsThis paper discusses the reasons Wavrin wrote his account of the crusade of Varna and Walerin de Wavrin’s expedition into the Balkans, which was later published within his history of Britain and how he perceived and accordingly presented the Turks to the renaissance readers. -
The Visit of King Sigismund to England, 1416
Posted on August 23, 2014 | No CommentsIn their chapter-length account of Sigismund's visit to England in 1416, James Hamilton Wylie and William Templeton Waugh remark that, though this was the first and only visit by a Holy Roman Emperor to England during the Middle Ages, aside from an immediate political gain, in the treaty signed by Sigismund and Henry V to defend each other against the French, the impact in terms of anecdote or literature is virtually nil; and they conclude somewhat ironically, "The most notable momento of Sigismund's stay in England is his sword, which is now one of the insignia of the corporation of York." -
Slaves, Money Lenders, and Prisoner Guards: The Jews and the Trade in Slaves and Captives in the Crimean Khanate
Posted on August 20, 2014 | No CommentsTrade in slaves and captives was one of the most important (if not the most important) sources of income of the Crimean Khanate in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. -
Espionage in the 16th century Mediterranean: Secret Diplomacy, Mediterranean Go-betweens and the Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry
Posted on March 15, 2014 | No CommentsThis dissertation compares both empires' secret services and explains the differences between the two systems of information gathering based on these empires' differing organizational structures. -
Struggle for East-European Empire 1400 – 1700 : The Crimean Khanate, Ottomans and the Rise of the Russian Empire
Posted on March 4, 2014 | No CommentsBy the middle of the 15th century, in Eastern Europe instead of one dominant imperial power there were newly rising states which eventually came to compete for supremacy over the whole region -
The Means of Destruction: How the Ottoman Empire Finally Ended the Byzantine Empire
Posted on February 8, 2014 | No CommentsNo European had any reason to believe that the Ottomans would capture Constantinople, since they had tried two times previously and had failed in both of those attempts. -
Manuel II Palaeologus in Paris (1400-1402): Theology, Diplomacy, and Politics
Posted on January 20, 2014 | No CommentsThe end of the fourteenth century found the Byzantine Empire in a critical state. -
Janos Hunyadi: Preventing the Ottomans from Conquering Western Europe in the Fifteenth Century
Posted on December 15, 2013 | No CommentsBy using his experiences gained in the condottiere wars in Italy and in the Hussite Wars in Bohemia, he was able to defend the Hungarian borders, and successfully attacked the Turks on their territory -
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 Cam Lindley Cross University of Chicago, March 8 (2011) Abstract When Peter the Venerable commissioned Robert of Ketton […]](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/gustave-dore-orlando-furioso-illustrated-by-gustave-dore-115x115.jpg "The Dragon and the Storm The Saracen anti-knight in Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata")
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.
