Category Archives: Islam History F: the Ottomans

Vlad the Impaler, or “Dracula,” 1448-76

Posted on February 27, 2024 by Ruth

When the King of Hungary created the Order of the Dragon in 1408, one of the knights to receive this honor was the illegitimate son of the Voivode of Wallachia (modern Romania). When the legitimate son died, Sir Vlad of … Continue reading →

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Skanderbeg, Hero of Albania, 1443-68

Posted on February 27, 2024 by Ruth

The national hero of Albania has the improbable (to our eyes) name of Skanderbeg. He was born George Kastriotis to a family that owned/ruled somewhere between 3 and 20 villages with a castle (“Kastrioti” implies “owner of a kastro, Greek … Continue reading →

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Rebuilding Constantinople: the Topkapı Palace, 1459

Posted on February 10, 2024 by Ruth

Mehmet II wanted to become the legitimate Byzantine Emperor, in addition to being its Turkish conqueror. Now they pulled out a long-ago event forgotten by the Greeks: remember that one renegade son of an Emperor had converted to Islam and married a … Continue reading →

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Constantinople Falls to Ottomans, 1453

Posted on February 10, 2024 by Ruth

The last siege of Constantinople took 57 days. The old core city had been built at the point where the Bosphorus met the Mediterranean and some smaller rivers fed into it with a long inlet, shaping the city’s site into … Continue reading →

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Ottoman Gunpowder and Cannon, 1440-52

Posted on February 10, 2024 by Ruth

During the 1440s, the Ottoman Sultans continued to push back their frontier in Europe. Murad II made his 12 year old son Mehmet king, but he had to be called back in 1444 to confront the Hungarian-Wallachian army at Varna … Continue reading →

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Sheikh Bedreddin’s Rebellion, 1413-6

Posted on February 10, 2024 by Ruth

A threat to the young Ottoman state even more serious than Timur’s invasion came in the form of Bedreddin, a Turkish sheikh, judge, and mystic. It was important to the Ottomans to create a unified state by enforcing Sunni Islam … Continue reading →

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Samarkand’s Math Emperor, 1405

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Ruth

Timur’s grandson Mohammed, son of Shah Rukh, was a huge nerd. It’s hard to be born into a notorious warlord’s family when you really just want to sit up at night in an observatory measuring the stars, or calculate Pi … Continue reading →

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Showdown at Ankara: Bayezid v. Timur, 1402

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Ruth

Two empires were expanding during the late 1300s; inevitably, they collided. In 1400, Timur’s Turko-Mongolian army based in Samarkand invaded the region we know as Turkey, and we’re almost to the point where we can call it that, but not … Continue reading →

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The Crusade of Nicopolis, 1396

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Ruth

While Timur was taking over Central Asia and India, the Ottoman-ruled zone was also growing. In 1389, Sultan Murad died in the Battle of Kosovo, killed by Serbian knights, but his son Bayezid was on hand. Bayezid had his brother … Continue reading →

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Amir Timur (Tamerlane) 1370-1400

Posted on January 7, 2024 by Ruth

We know little about the early life of Timur, until he stepped into world history in 1370. That’s when he became the ruler of Balkh, in Afghanistan, and began to prosecute a new “Mongol” war of conquest. He wasn’t a … Continue reading →

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