Islam Empire of Faith Part 3 The Ottomans full; PBS Documentary

the ottoman Turks began as a nomadic people from the Step Beyond the Aral Sea for centuries they had wandered present-day turkey looking for New Pasture lands Muslim Sultans had enlisted them as mercenaries to fight off the Mongol hordes but in the upheaval following the Mongol invasion the Turks began to stake out their own territorial claims from their ranks emerged a warlord of legendary ambition his name was Osman Bay it's said that Osman had a miraculous dream of a magical tree whose many branches foretold his siring a powerful lineage one wonders how much of it is truth how much of it is Legend it makes a lovely story and miracles are always more easy to digest than reality I don't think he realized that he was setting up such a fantastic Dynasty a dynasty that was to rule the crucial link between three continents the followers of Osman became known as Ottomans they considered themselves Warriors for the faith or gazis whose Destiny was to bring Islam to the world gazis were somewhat like Freelancers who moved the Empire forward either for ideology theology or for the sake of pure Conquest they were probably very brave never uh thought about uh themselves or any harm that could come to the group by going into dangerous conditions but it made the Ottoman Empire almost Fearless going into regions that nobody had been there before for the early Ottomans the direction of expansion would always be to the West for good reason they could not expand to the east or to the South because those were controlled by their brothers the turkman Amir the Muslims and a Muslim should not be fighting against a Muslim so they said at the time so the only place he could expand was towards the Christian territories Westward osman's Warriors moved to the north and west across the Anatolian Plateau into territory control Tred by the traditional Christian power in the area the Aging Byzantine Empire by osman's time the thousand-year-old Byzantine Empire was reaching the end of its age dwindling to an isolated stronghold in Eurasia the crusaders had already red Havoc across the region on their way to Jerusalem sacking the capital city and helping to reduce the once proud Byzantine Empire to a few small Waring States the Ottomans quickly overran these splintered Byzantine factions uniting Northwestern Anatolia into a single domain in 1326 the Ottomans took the powerful Byzantine city of Bersa a victory that would change the character of the Ottoman Turks forever the most important part of Versa was that it enabled Osman and his uh descendants to establish a seat of the government the Restless Nomads of the step step would settle down to build an Empire what we're witnessing is this huge demographic event the movement of a whole civilization from a nomadic way of life to a settled way of life now when the Ottomans took Busa and set it up as their capital they were very concerned to establish themselves as the rightful standard bearers of Muslim civilization civilization meant organization and the Ottomans set out to manage the vast regions they now controlled leaving the bantine clerks in place they began to organize the new Empire first and foremost Taxation and recordkeeping the word bureaucracy has since lost its Noble connotations yet this was a great Innovation as ambitious as any Triumph in battle the ottomans are known for including and synthesizing the cultural elements through the lands that they passed there are known for creating structures by which the peoples who lived there before could carry on their lives and their beliefs in the way that they chose in fact the Ottomans had fewer conflicts with their Christian subjects than those of their own faith Muslim adversaries intent on challenging ottoman rule one of the bureaucratic or let us say management problems facing the Ottomans was that there were still rival Muslim sort of protok Kingdoms around them I mean they were conquered by the Ottomans but they had old grudges to bear and they had certain claims to dynastic Glory of their own and they were constantly worried about these old Muslim families rising up and creating a rebellion and so the story goes that they felt it would be imprudent to have the Army made up of these sorts of people and so they wanted to recruit children who were not connected with any rival Muslim family and so they went into the Balkans and they recruited primarily Christian children this practice was called Dev Shar the Young boys were technically slaves of the sultan but they weren't treated like slaves first they were brought into the Muslim faith taught rituals of washing and prayer and the Arabic and ottoman languages this served a political as well as a religious purpose through the dev Sher system the Ottomans could create a cast without any conflicting loyalties to tribe or family the children had such great future that a lot of the times Turks or even Muslims pretended that their children were Christian born and would register them with the de sh officials the system was so beautiful in that they only had one allegiance to the sultan no family no region no other ties these children were then given the best possible education available in the World perhaps at the time and they were then able to move into the highest positions of power in the Empire those who were brainy went to the Palace schools and graduated into different levels of viers and governors they even became uh Grand viers those who were broadly went to the janary Corp the joury series were the Sultan's Elite infantry it was an Army that would set the standard for centuries to come they were the strongest trained as military machines no fear of dying totally fearless and their only love was to serve the sultan they were trained with all the Precision and discipline Pomp and Circumstance of a modern Army for the first time an army wore uniforms and went into battle to the accompaniment of a military band The Janis series were the most feared troops in the Western World a force that was worthy of this new Islamic empire and its Restless visions of Conquest by the middle of the 15th century the Ottoman empire spread from present day Turkey known as Anatolia deep into the Balkans with one critical exception it must have Gall the ottoman Sultan that with his domains now stretching all the way into Asia and far far into Europe in the west they remained right in the center of his domains The Greatest Prize of all the capital city of Constantinople the most powerful the richest the most magnetic City in the entire world still in the hands of the dying but not yet dead Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans constantinople's strategic and economic importance was considerable its symbolic significance was even greater it was the city there was no other city if you were going to rule that area obviously would rule it from that City it's said that the goal of laying claim to Constantinople was decreed by Muhammad himself every ottoman ruler since Osman had wanted to seize the city but it had always remained firmly in Christian hands then a sultan came to power whose dreams of Conquest would not be denied history would honor him as meet the Conqueror when he assumed the sultanate he was only 12 years old but he was already well-versed in ottoman politics to remove any threat of competition for power he had his half brother strangled the Empire always meant everything more so than the family in order to stop the Empire from splitting as had happened to other Turkish uh dynasties ruling the Islamic world when a young man became Sultan upon the death of his father all the other brothers had to be eliminated this prevented segmentation of the Empire it may have been cruel but it worked for the Ottomans when on the death of his father he finally then took over it meant an enormous change in the policy in direction of the Ottoman Empire in the direction of a much greater energy mamt immediately set his sights on the one prize as Grand as his Ambitions Mt had to conquer Constantinople there was no other choice Constantinople was sitting like a perfect gem or a perfect fruit waiting to be picked by the mid midd of the 15th century the city was a shadow of its former self the population had plummeted from 400,000 to a mere 50,000 but a besieging army would still be at a tremendous disadvantage Constantinople was surrounded on three sides by water and massively fortified it was encircled by a Triple Ring of War walls nearly 100 ft high and 30 ft thick and they had already stood for a thousand years but meet had an answer for these walls and part of the military superiority of the Ottomans came from their sophisticated and diverse use of the possibilities of gunpowder the siege of Constantin noo in 1453 under mahed the Conqueror saw the first dramatic application of this in the form of huge cannons that had not been seen before which mmed had specially commissioned for the occasion earlier cannons had been assembled with strips of forged metal bound with Hoops they fired stone projectiles with little more power than a catapult a new breed of cannons could be cast of solid bronze and packed with enough gunpowder to propel metal cannonballs with staggering Force but memet was not staking his hopes on Cannon alone the mile wide channel of the bosphorous strait was all that connected the city to the Black Sea if he could cut it off Constantinople would be at his Mercy Mt needed to construct a strategically positioned Fortress to close the straight he built it right in the shadow of the great City walls it took less than four months to build a massive seven towered Citadel called rum Hisar memt himself is said to have carried Stones during its construction no sooner was it completed than he tightened his noose around the neck of the Bosphorus the first ship to defy his orders to stop was sunk its crew decapitated and its Captain impaled on the castle walls to stop mt's ships from approaching the Byzantine strung a massive chain across the straight on April 22nd 1453 the besieged City watched in horror as mt's troops hoisted 70 of his ships ashore sliding them over land on greased planks past the barrier chain more than 100,000 ottoman soldiers now stood before the walls of Constantinople braced for the greatest bombardment the history of warfare had ever known under Relentless fire the city's 7,000 Christian Defenders held out for nearly a month in desperation The byzantines Who occupied the city appealed to their fellow Christians across the continent for help but of course Europe in the 15th century was completely incapable of mounting any kind of a concerted opposition to the rising Turkish threat in the east at that time the kings of Europe had military and political problems of their own Constantinople would have to fend for itself shortly before Dawn on May 29th 1453 the Turkish Army breached the walls of the city within hours Constantinople was in the the hands of the Ottomans memt rode into the City and went straight to its most celebrated prize the Magnificent Church of haa Sophia built by the emperor Justinian in the 6th Century its name meant the church of Holy wisdom it was the largest enclosed space in the world surely other groups of Muslims and the Ottomans themselves had come across many many churches they had seen churches before but they had never seen anything nobody had ever seen anything like AOS Sophia the Haas Sophia or ayasophia as it's called in Turkish was one of the marvels of architecture marvels of the world it had the largest and highest dome in history and it was beautifully uh embellished with gold mosaics and uh the space is incredible for mmed it was a great uh booty inside the church a Turkish voice Rose proclaiming in Arabic the first pillar of Islam there is no God but God Muhammad is his messenger the single greatest Church in Christendom was now a mosque the higher sopia became the inspiration for all ottoman doed mosques to come but none would ever match its size and scope and it belonged to memt the Conqueror news of his Triumph send shock waves around the world for Europeans it was a concomittant disaster Constantinople was after all the new Rome it was Constantine's Capital City it was the symbol of Christian dominance in the East the ottoman rulers had long stacked up titles for themselves KH which is Turkish for Emperor shaha Persian for king of kings and Sultan the Arabic word for ruler but now with all the former Byzantine empire under their command meet and his successors claimed yet another title Holy Roman Emperor the Ottomans had reached the gates of the West and were poised to push on towards what they now claimed as their ultimate Destiny the conquest of Europe that Quest would fall to the most legendary Sultan of all he was born at the beginning of the 10th Century by the Muslim calendar and he was the 10th Sultan descended from Osman he was a child of Destiny whose greatness was expected in the parlament of the day he was the sahib kurran the universal ruler the master of an auspicious conjunction whose coming has been foretold whose identity is confirmed astrologically his name was sulon after Solomon the wise King of the Old Testament the Ottoman Empire would reach its apex under suleman's Reign sulan was extremely well educated he was trained to the sultanate uh from the day he was born as a a young prince he formed a relationship that would have a tremendous impact on his life and on the Empire as well and when he was still a crown PR he also developed a great friendship with uh a convert a Greek convert who took the name ibraim the two were very close in age and apparently very close in other ways personally intellectually uh educated together to uh to a certain extent and as was common practice when sulan exceeded to the throne on the death of his father he took his faithful ibraim with him to Istanbul Solon was 26 when he took the throne determined to make his mark on the world as soon as his ministers would let him in his ear years suan had to contend for example with Grand visards and Generals who simply refused to obey him feeling apparently that here was a 26-year-old kid uh who had never seen very much in the way of action and hadn't done very much to show that people ought to in fact obey him the way to prove his metal was on the battlefield every new Sultan was expected to begin his reign by expanding the Empire Ottomans now controlled Kurdistan Egypt and the holiest cities of Islam Mecca and Medina sullon set his sights on Belgrade in Hungary the stepping stone to Europe he was the head of the otoman Dynasty and he had certain duties to perform one was Conquest and the first task suan took upon himself a year after he ascended the ottoman Throne was to head towards Belgrade and capture it Belgrade was very important strategically because it was from there the Army could move further on West A year later he turned his Ambitions on the island of Roads the tiny land was a Troublesome Outpost of Christianity in an otherwise ottoman sea it was also a Haven for pirates praying on Muslim trade ships the 50,000 Defenders of Roads manned one of the strongest forts in the world suon decided on a tactic other than relying on gunfire from his huge cannon a new tactic seldom used until that time the ottomans are the first Major Force to actually develop new ways of harnessing gunpowder to the cause of military expansion in creative ways ottoman sappers dug out a series of 50 tunnels near the base of the fort so they could mine its foundations performing this dangerous work Were Expendable Christian conscripts from the Balkans the resulting explosion signaled a furious 6our ottoman assault but the Turks were beaten back then after 145 days of Siege the exhausted Christian Defenders finally negotiated a truce the Ottomans had won Victory did more than deliver roads to the Empire Suleman was now a sultan to be taken seriously his March of Conquest had begun Europe grew to fear the name of sullon but within his own borders he had another reputation Islamic history remembers him as kunan the lawgiver Ottomans were really uh bureaucrats in full sense of the word they kept every single record and in order to control the different peoples who participated in the world of the Ottomans they had to have very carefully sorted out legal systems under sullon a single legal system was defined for the sprawling Empire his laws would later become the basis of constitutions for several other nations well suan was the Supreme Monarch of the area he was the center of the world he inaugurated a classical age in ottoman architecture commissioning some of the most spectacular buildings the world has ever seen sulan was in a unique position of wealth and and of consolidation and he focused his attention on developing Monumental architecture to commemorate his great Dynasty and himself great religious architecture can really give people a sense of what is at the heart of the faith grander and Majesty are the things that come to mind when Muslims think about God a building that is Grand and Maj Majestic can immediately remind people of the glory of God so soloman's Chief Architect sonon was a man whose Vision perfectly complemented the Empire Builder sonon perfected the signature structure of Islam the domed mosque his career spanned half a century and produced well over 300 buildings including the refurbishment of one of the most important monuments in Islam the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem but for the Sultan of course he built his Masterpiece the Sania mosque in Istanbul it is truly befitting sinan who is called the Great Master these buildings were horrendously expensive huge things that took many many years to build and a great deal of architectural talent and Engineering skill and Engineering experience when they built a mosque like the sulimania they were doing it to say yeah I've Got The Power I've got the money I am the sultan I'm the king of kings but at the same time there was also tremendous spiritual value in these things the symbolism is not only that of Empire but of faith in the spirit of Muhammad's teaching the great mosque was a center of Social Services complete with a hospital school and Library at its inauguration it said sulan gazed at it with awe and exclaimed oh Solomon I have surpassed thee no less impressive was solon's Palace Top Cop was both the seat of government and his private dwelling suan was also a great patron of the Arts and since the empire was very rich the best Artisans were there so everything started flourishing the architecture uh or the Arts of his period uh show the first golden age of the Ottoman world everything that came out of his Palace was Exquisite suan himself was Goldsmith Ottomans believed that every Sultan had to have a tangible trade being a sultan was not considered a practical or a tangible trade and he was a very demanding Patron insist on checking the work even commissioned few things and I think each Artisan group or each core uh working for the palace tried to outdo one another to please the sultan because to please him had wonderful rewards and the Ottomans of course exercised quite a lot of influence and the European imagination and the Royal and the political if you will ceremony and pump of the Ottomans was such that it would have humbled um any citizen of the known world then uh this was arguably one of the greatest uh World Empires and European observers could not walk away without feeling of respect for the sheer power of the Ottomans in public suon required that all those around him remain completely silent while he made his wishes known with the slightest nod or gesture it must have been a tremendously impressive site to see the courtyard of the palace filled with some six or 7,000 janissaries and other functionaries no one saying a word what was going on here was the the creation of a sovereignty so mysterious and yet so far-reaching as to be seen as nearly Divine as suleman's power grew his lifelong friend Ibrahim Rose in the court structure and ibraim Pasha who became a Pasha later on became his devoted Grand Vier in fact ibraim married his sister so they were not only good friends they were also a related Ibrahim campaigned with his own Army growing in influence and ambition till his power was second only to suleman's but for power and ambition The Secret World Of The Sultans harim had no equal contrary to the Western stereotype it was not the Sultan's playpen but lay at the center of dynastic power the heram was the private quarters of the sultan we tend to think of the Haram as where the women live but what it means is the place where you're not on display home is what it means Islam allowed the sultan four wives and many concubines it was a system designed to produce heirs is what it was when you look into the actual details of how these things were carried out it was hardly anything terribly erotic I mean the sulan did not have much choice in his selection of female companions the sultan was not in a position to look around and say I want her you know because his mother would have a lot to say about it with his first wife sullon had a son and Heir Mustafa but while he was in his mid-30s the sultan fell deeply in love with a Slavic slave girl named harm in the west we know her by a different name Rox salana Rox salana would bear him a rival Heir and become suleman's most trusted Confidant the sultan was supposed to be protected from any undue influences he was supposed to be protected from any Rivals and in a way this creates a vacuum around his person into which the Haram life can enter and so the fact that he was so protected Works in a funny way to expose him to the influence of his female companions with whom he spent so much time and they were tremendously intelligent and ambitious women around him roxalana being the most famous of all sulaman is a complex character a man that we know from his own life was capable of the tenderest emotions both toward his male friends and especially toward his uh his the great love of his life his wife huram Sultan and toward his family as well he had a number of extremely talented Sons uh on whom he lavished a great deal of affection Solon groomed his firstborn son Mustafa for power in the ottoman tradition the Young Prince entered the military and quickly won recognition as a talented General Mustafa was clearly The Heir Apparent for Suleman the future of his Empire seemed Limitless I am God's slave and Sultan of this world solemon would carve on a conquered Fortress I am sullon in whose name the Friday sermon is read in Mecca and Medina in Baghdad I am the Sha in the Byzantine Realms I am the cesa and in Egypt the sultan he of course at the height of his powers clearly saw himself as dwarfing all his Rivals uh perhaps rightly so one of suleman's greatest Rivals was to the east the empire of the Persian safavids this was a Muslim enemy whose rival Creed made them Fierce antagonists of the Ottomans for centuries the safavids were also turkic in their ethnic Origins and indeed spoke Turkish as a language of daily life but they were moving into the Muslim World unlike the Ottomans who were moving into the West so for the Ottoman Empire they formed sort of the boundaries uh the easternmost boundaries of the Ottoman raay the safavid dynasty was Shiite Muslims bitter Rivals to the Sunni Ottomans according to the Shiites a leader had to be designated by his predecessor and had to be of the family of Muhammad according to the sunny view it was not designation that was necessary and a person could be a leader of the community without being a direct descendant of Muhammad this challenge to legitimacy is the basis of the Shiite Sunni split a bitter division that still separates the Muslim world to this day and I would say the Ottomans never really thought of themselves so much as Sunni until the safavids came forth as this rival shei so the safes developed a rival ideology to the Ottomans which then became an occasion for war over of course what wars are usually fought over Wars are fought over land over wealth over territory over Prestige and the sa of e waged a war of ideology in eastern Anatolia which was always for the Ottomans the most worrisome part the terrain is difficult to conquer difficult to control the safavid military was formidable but there were cultural Rivals to the Ottomans as well they were great patrons of the Arts I think we know them more for their artistic patronage than of their great conquests and laws and systems and administration when you look at Isfahan it is the most beautiful city in the world and that is the safit city it's the safit capital but it doesn't give you the same sense of power that the ottoman uh Empire had or the ottoman Capital had it's a a different sense of power it's more eloquent perhaps more precious in its decoration and its ceremonial spaces it's a totally different aspect uh of Islam safvi art and architecture is is on a finer scale it's known it's known for its filigree it's known for its intricate Rush work you know uh rather than for its stunning scale in The Soaring palaces of the safavid Shar murderous intrigues against Solan and his dynasty were hatched that would reach into his very household but suloman's eyes were on the west where a fragmented and vulnerable Europe awaited his Conquest the Ottoman Empire encompassed everything from Egypt to Kurdistan and he now had Hungary as well but he had Ambitions of going beyond that and actually bringing the larger portions of the world known to him if not all of it uh under his control Solomon's Next Step would be Vienna its Conquest would drive a dagger Into the Heart of the European hapsburg Empire and open the way to the west but as the heavily armed Ottomans set out for Vienna the weather turned against them the heavy cannon that had swept the Ottomans to Victory after Victory bogged down in the mud suon had to move on without them with only light artillery the Ottomans relentlessly shelled the city but the smallest breach was ferociously defended after a lengthy Siege with winter fast approaching suan withdrew his forces he was not concerned he was sure he would return soon enough he never did suan failure to take Vienna was pivotal for Europe it was the first major defeat after a long time the Europeans had been losing and losing and losing and this was the dawn of a new day for Europe but Solomon had little to fear from Europe rival Muslim safavids and his own family would bring the cruelest of Sorrows to the sultan and ultimately to his Empire as well suon in some ways serves as a sort of epitome of the 16th century idea of the wise and just ruler who was at the same time a very tragic figure in the power Laden world of the Sultan's household the intrigues never ceased the TOA Palace as it was originally conceived had no quarters for the ladies the women lived in what was called the old Palace but ham always complained about her husband as most wives would a spending too many days and months campaigning outside the capital she kept saying she feels very lonely and the children miss him well surprisingly there was a fire in the old Palace fire in her R's quarters so she had to be moved to the topa Palace temporarily while her old quarters were being renovated well she moved in and never moved out now hm was at the center of power promoting her own son as air apparent and immersing herself in a web of deadly gossip and suspicion she was incredibly devoted to her husband and any threat to sulan was a threat to her and she had to get rid of it the first uh threat came from ibraim Pasha who assumed titles that were only given to Sultans so Iram knew something was going to happen eventually and uh to protect the Empire and the dynasty IR bash had to go on March 15th 1536 sullon and IB Pasha dined together as was their custom in the morning ib's body was found strangled but suleman's desolation and loss had only begun a few years after Abraham's death hurm claimed to have uncovered a plot to overthrow sulan devised with safavid help by his beloved firstborn son and air Mustafa this is a continuous problem in ottoman history Sons trying to eventually replace their father this happens in one monarchy's succession could become a problem and it was an acute problem and suan had his share of it and perhaps did not always play his hands right without hesitation Solomon ordered mustafa's execution then sat by the young man's body for days refusing to allow anyone to touch him the best hope for the Empire's future was dead when hurm herself died the following year Solomon fell deeper into despair finding solace in his poetry most of the Poetry I think was written after he lost his wife since he talks about the loneliness of being in office that he has nobody left anymore and he's dying to uh join her even if your Reign on the Imperial Throne seems Everlasting don't be taken in one day a hostile wind will blow and bring to your land of beauty Heaven's Misfortune and deepest suffering in all his loneliness there was only one refuge for the sultan whose power like his sorrow seemed Limitless he returned to the field of battle to the work of Conquest he personally LED 13 campaigns the last one was uh at zetar uh which is in Hungary now I think he knew that this was going to be his last campaign he personally LED it knowing that he would not come back alive in 1561 the man who had ruled the Empire longer than any other died in his Grand War Pavilion surrounded by his generals he was 67 no ottoman Sultan would ever achieve his greatness again the Nexus of world power would move from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and the new world slowly leaving the Ottomans behind in Istanbul today the Sufi dervishes still turn with the same prayerful pirouettes they danced in suleman's day it is a meditation in motion whose Mystic Origins go back even further to the time of the Prophet Muhammad you have become the best community Ever Raised up in mankind the Quran assures all believers enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong and having faith in God Islamic and Western Civilization have the same roots their Dawning in the fertile Cresent the monotheism of the Jews and Christians the classical intellectual culture of the ancient Greeks the two Traditions are Kindred Spirits alike yet very different Islam's Legacy is intertwined with the wests and to the billions of Muslims who make it the second largest religion in the world it is a living Legacy an elemental part of the Great human Venture that is World Civilization Islam Empire of Faith continues at PBS online click through our interactive timeline to learn more about the history and culture of Islam or take a virtual tour of the Dome of the Rock and other extraordinary sites it's all online at pbs.org or America Online keyword PBS

Channel: Noorun Mubeen

Views: 58,492

Keywords: Islam, Empire, of, Faith, Part, 3, The, Ottomans, full;, PBS, Documentary

Id: ggd53dbOSEQ

Length: 52min 58sec (3178 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2011