Listening to the BetterAngels of Our Nature:Ethnicity, Self-Determination,and the American Empire

Chapter ThirteenThe Fate of the Caliphate

David Steven CohenChapel Hill, NC

Part 1 – Byzantium and the Ottomans

The city of Istanbul is located on the European side ofa waterway known as the Bosphorus that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. Where the Bosphorus joins the Seaof Marmara is an inlet known as the Golden Horn on either side of which is located the city of Instanbul, formerly known as Constantinople and Byzantium. Together the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles form the boundary between Europe Asia. Throughout history the straits have been an important link between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea for Russia, Persia, Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans.

Map of Istanbulhttp://www.allaboutturkey.com/ist_map.htm

In the part of the Instabul south of the Golden Horn isthe Topkapı Sarayı ("Palace of the Cannon Gate") or the seraglio,referring to the Ottoman sultan’s palace or harem consistingof hundreds of rooms inhabited by concubines, children, and servants. At the top of a hill overlooking the city is the Topkapi Palace, the seraglio of the sultan, containing barracks, kitchens, mosques, gardens, and the harem (Arabic for “forbidden’), where the sultan’s concubines lived guarded by eunuchs. These women were all foreigners (Russians, Circassians, Venetians, Greeks), because Muslim woman could not be enslaved.

The Hagia Sophiahttp://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Ajpbjy2k_cpNFn3ZKom.At.bvZx4?fr=yfp-t-660-s&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&p=hagia%20sophia%20church

Next door to the palace is the Hagia Sophia (in Greek) orAyasofya (in Turkish), built by the Emperor Justinian in 537 A.D. It has a wide flat dome, whose interior is covered by 30 million small mosaic tiles of gold. It is said that the Emperor Justinian said upon viewing the church for the firsttime: "Glory to God that I have been judged worthy of such awork. Oh Solomon! I have outdone thee!" When the Ottoman rule Mehmet II conquered the city in 1453 he transformed thechurch into a mosque. Orlando Figes describes the Hagia Sophia as one of the Muslim world’s “most holy mosques in chambers rebuilt by Western architects in the style of the original Byzantine cathedral from which it was converted following the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks. After1453 the Ottomans had taken down the bells, replaced the cross with four minarets, removed the altar and iconostasis,and over the course of the next two centuries plastered overthe Byzantine mosaics of the Orthodox basilica.” In the effort to restore the mosque by the Ottoman sultan in 1848 the hidden mosaics from the Byzantine period were uncovered.“The hidden Christian origins of the mosque had been revealed.”1

Over the subsequent centuries the four minarets were added to the mosque. After the fall of the Caliphate in twentieth century, the Turkish Republic under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ordered that it be turned into a museum. This part of the city encapsulates the transformation from Byzantine to Ottoman to Turkish identities.

The Black Sea is a great inland body of water bounded by Ukraine to the north, the Caucasus (Russia and Georgia) to the east, Anatolia (present-day Turkey) to the south, andEastern Europe (Bulgaria and Romania) to the west. A number of straits connect the Black Sea to other bodies of water.

The Strait of Kerch connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. The Crimean Peninsula in modern-day Ukraine (with its port cities of Yalta and Sevastopol) separates the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea. The Sea of Marmara is connected to the Aegean Sea by the Straits of Dardanelles on the Europeanside of which is the Gallipoli peninsular extending southwest from the mainland of Thrace.

Map of the Black Seahttp://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/blacksea.htm

The name Bosphorus comes from the Greek meaning “ox-ford,” a reference to female figure in Greek mythology Io, the daughter of the river god Ianchus. Io is seduced by the god Zeus, who turns her into a heifer to hide her from his wife Hera. Suspecting this subterfuge, Hera forces Io to wander the earth pursued by a gadfly (known in Latin as oestrus, meaning “frenzy”) to sting her into madness. In her flight, she crosses a body of water (the Ionian Sea that borders Greece on the west, also named for her) and fords the water passage between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara (hence, ox-ford). She eventually encounters Prometheus who has been chained to Mount Caucasus for teaching mankind to make fire. Prometheus tells Io that she will be restored to human form and become the ancestor of

the Greek/Roman hero Heracles or Hercules, who will set Prometheus free. The Dardanelles was originally known as Hellespont, named after the figure in Greek mythology of Helle, who fell to her death in these waters while fleeing with her brother from their step-mother on the back of a flying ram with a golden fleece.2 These place-names reflect the claim that ancient Greece had to the eastern Mediterranean.

“The Mediterranean,” writes the historian Fernand Braudel, “is not even a single sea, it is a complex of seas;and these seas are broken up by islands, interrupted by peninsulas, ringed by intricate coastlines.”3 It is comprised of peninsulas (the Iberian, the Italian, the Balkan, the Anatolian), seas (the Tyrrhenian, the Etruscan, the Adriatic, the Aegean, the Ionian, the Ligurian, the Balearic, and the Alboran, and the Sea of Crete) and islands(the Balearic, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Malta, Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus). The Strait of Gibraltar connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. The Mediterranean is ringed by mountains, and the mountains are interrupted byplains and plateaus in Italy, the Balkans, Asia Minor, NorthAfrica, and the Iberian Peninsula.4

http://tristanjourney.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/MediterraneanSea.gif

Anatolia, or Asia Minor as it is sometimes called, is mostly a high plateau with an elevation of 3,000 to 7,000 feet above sea level ringed by mountains, except in the westwhere the foothills descend gradually to the Aegean and Marmara seas. This coastal plain is wide and fertile. In thesoutheast mountains separate the plateau from the deserts ofIran, Iraq, and Syria. The steppe-like grasslands of the Anatolian plateau provide grazing for flocks and herds. The northern part of Anatolia is in the Black Sea drainage system, the southeastern part contains the headwaters of theEuphrates and Tigris rivers that drain into the Persian Gulf, and the southwestern part drains into the Mediterranean Sea. Along the Black Sea and the Mediterraneancoast there are mountains. The northern part of Anatolia is in the Black Sea drainage system, the southeastern part contains the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers that drain into the Persian Gulf, and the southwestern part drains into the Mediterranean Sea. The Tigris River has its source in the Armenian region of Anatolia and flows southeast past Mosul and Baghdad in present-day Iraq to merge with the Euphrates River northwest of Basra and then empties into the Persian Gulf. The Euphrates River originates further north in the Armenian region near the town of Erzerum, flows southwest into Syria and then southeast into present-day Iraq to merge with the Tigris River and empties into the Persian Gulf. Anatolia had a mixed population of Kurds, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews.

Map of Euphrates and Tigris Rivershttp://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum213/Maps/Maps2HistoryAncient.htm

The Aegean Sea, the part of the Mediterranean Sea that is bordered by Greece on the north and west, Turkey on the east, and Sea of Crete on the south with the island of Crete, the Dodecanese, and Rhodes. To the southwest of Greece is the Peloponnesian Peninsula with its ancient city of Sparta. The Aegean ties the history of Turkey to the history of Greece. The British historian H. D. F. Kitto described Greece as “a land of limestone mountains, narrow valleys, long gulfs, and many islands.”5 Like Latin, Sanskrit, Gaelic, and German, the Greek language is a memberof the Indo-European language family. There developed two main branches of Greek-speaking people: the Ionians and the Dorians. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus used the term“Hellenic” to refer to the Dorians. The term “barbarian” comes from the Greek word “barbarous,” which at first simplyreferred to non-Greek-speakers.6

The earliest civilization in Greece was the Mycenaean culture that originated on the island of Crete and spread tothe Peloponnese and Central Greece. An early form of Minoan writing was developed on Crete about 2000 B.C. The Cretans also built cities with great palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, and Malia, but these early palaces were destroyed circa 1700

B.C. From the third millennium to about 1400 B.C., Crete wasthe center of a civilization centered. Crete was ruled by a semi-legendary king named Minos, and according to Greek mythology his capital of Knossos was the home of the labyrinth in which lived the mythical monster, the Minotaur.Archaeologists have found that the royal was more an administrative complex than stronghold, which was the originof the term labyrinth.

About 1400 B.C. Knossos was destroyed by invaders, and the Cretan culture spread to southeastern shore of the Greekmainland at Mycenae. Unlike the Cretan royal house, the Mycenaean palace was a fortress. It is thought that the Mycenaeans were descendants of Greek tribes that migrated tothe region circa 2000 B.C. They were known for the beehive shaped tombs in which they buried their dead and guardian figure sculptures such as the Lion Gate of Mycenae constructed circa 1250 B.C. The royal dead were wrapped liked Egyptian mummies and their faces covered by golden masks. About 1200 B.C. the Mycenaeans conquered Asia Minor. The Mycenaean culture influenced Greek mythology in Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey in the mythical giants known as the Cyclopes.

Map of Ancient Greecehttp://kingproehl.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/map-of-ancient-greece.jpg

About 1100 B.C. Greek tribes from the north invaded Mycenaea, the Aegean islands, and Asia Minor. Two of these early Greek tribes were the Dorians, who settled on the mainland, and the Ionians, who settled on the Aegean island and coastal Asia Minor. The constituted the so-called Archaic Period of Greek culture, known for its decorated pottery, and stone statues, and temples. At the end of the twelfth century B.C. another group of conquerors known as the Dorians invaded from north-central Greece. They settled on hill-tops where they built the Acropolis (literally, high town). The polis was the Greek term for a community. The Dorians took possession of most of the Peloponnese, but the Spartans were able to retain one of the fertile valleys in the south. Spartan boys were brought up to become professional soldiers. Between 900 and 600 B.C. the Spartansdominated the Peloponnese.

In the northwestern corner of Anatolia south of where the Dardanelles empties into Aegean Sea and northwest of Mount Ida was the semi-legendary city of Troy. It consisted of nine superimposed cities. Troy VI was destroyed by fire about the time of the Trojan War (1194 B.C.-1184 B.C.). During this war, Agamemnon led the Achaeans, an Ionian people from a narrow plain along the southern coast of the Gulf of Corinth, in an invasion that resulted in the destruction of Troy. The poet Homer was an Ionian Greek, andhis epic poem The Iliad is about the Trojan War. In 560 B.C. Croesus became the king of Lydia, a kingdom in the western part of Asia Minor. He subdued the Greek cities of Ionia.

Map of the Assyrian Empirehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Assyria.png

During the second millennium B.C. Asia Minor was invaded by Indo-European speaking people from the east. The Indo-European languages include the Balto-Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slevenian, Checho-Moravian, Slovakian, Polish, Lithuanian), the Hellenic (Greek), Anatolic (Armenian), Thraco-Illyrian (Albanian). Armenian is the branch of the Indo-European family spoken in the eastern section of Turkey and the BlackSea area of eastern Russia. Other Indo-European branches include Kurdish (spoken on the frontier regions of Turkey, Iran and Iraq), Persian or Farsi (spoken in Iran). The Mitannians, who created a kingdom in Syria and northern Mesopotamia, including Assur. Another was the Hittites, who conquered the Anatolian plateau about 1360 B.C. The Mitannians were allied with the Egyptians. Assur regained its independence, which led to the rise of the Assyrian Empire between 1000 B.C. and 612 B.C. At its height in 671, Assyria extended from Lower Egypt through the Sinai Peninsula to Armenia. Like the Sumerians, the Assyrians built temples and ziggurats (terraced pyramids).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scythia-Parthia_100_BC.png

The Assyrian Empire ended with the conquest of Nineveh in 612 B.C. by a combined force of Medes (an ancient Persianpeople from Media) and Scythians (an ancient Iranian-speaking people from north and east of the Black Sea). Cyrusoverthrew Babylonia, which was ruled the son of Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus the Great assumed the title of King ofBabylon. In a second war the Persians took control of the Aegean Sea by 548 B. C. The Athenians initially turned back the Persian in a campaign in which the Greek writer Aeschylus fought along with his brother. In 480 B.C. the Persians launched a full-scale invasion. The Athenians were forced to abandon Attica to the Persians, who burned the temples on the Acropolis. But the Athenians and the Spartansunited to defeat the Persians, although Thebes sided with the Persians. Sparta was primarily a land power, whereas Athens was a sea power. Cyrus and his successors expanded the Persian Empire into Egypt, Asia Minor, and Greece.

Map of the Persian Empirehttp://theophilogue.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/persianempire03.jpg

In 390 B.C. Philip II became the king of Macedonia, which previously had not been considered part of Greece. TheMacedonians claimed to have a common ancestor with the Greeks in the person of Achilles. Philip set out to conquer Athens, and the orator Demosthenes convinced Athens and Thebes to put aside their quarrels and to join forces against Philip. Philip was murdered and his son, Alexander the Great. The latter secured the land north to the Danube River and completed the conquest of Thebes. In 334 B.C. Alexander crossed into Asia and conquered the Persian Empireas far east as the Punjab and as far south as Upper Egypt, where he founded the Greek city of Alexandria.7 After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B. C. the Greek Empire was divided. Greece continued to control Macedon, Babylonia and Assyria divided up Syria, Egypt controlled Phoenicia andthe Greek islands, and Pontus and Pergamum in Asia Minor andIndia became independent. “Over the whole of this world a culture was spread which goes by the name of Hellenistic,” writes the historian R. H. Barrow.8 There continued to be survivals of Greek culture. One example, according to Rutgers historian Traian Stroianovich maintains, was “Thracian fire dancing” which he argues was a survival of the Dionysiac ritual of “mountain dancing.”9

http://www.awesomestories.com/images/user/b223dfe54d.gif

In 167 B.C. Rome occupied Macedonia and in 146 B.C. Greece itself. Rome established protectorates in Asia Minor,Armenia, and the Euphrates River Valley. In 113 B.C. Germanic tribes began advancing into the Alps, and by 109 B.C. they pushed into southern Gaul that had been annexed byRome in 122 B.C. In 67 B.C. Pompey was appointed to command the Roman forces. He suppressed piracy first in Gibraltar, then he invaded Pontus and Armenia, and then Jerusalem. He created provinces in Pontus, Syria and Crete, but Armenia was left an independent kingdom. Between 58 B.C. and 49 B.C.Julius Caesar retook Gaul and extended Roman control into Belgium and Britain. In 48 B.C. Caesar returned from Gaul, crossing the Rubicon River in northern Italy, to challenge Pompey. During the next four years Caesar controlled Rome.

Egypt acknowledged Roman supremacy, but it was ruled bythe Greek Ptolemaic dynasty the descendants of Alexander theGreat. Cleopatra was considered the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. She was from Macedonia, but unlike other members of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she spoke Greek as well as Egyptian. She wanted to fuse the East and the West, using the Roman Army to achieve her aim, so she established a liaison with Julius Caesar. In 44 B.C. Caesar was assassinated, and Cleopatra aligned herself with one of the assassins, Mark

Antony, rather than Caesar’s adopted son, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. In 31 B.C. the naval forces of Octavianusdefeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle ofActium (in the Ionian Sea near the Greek city of Actium). Both Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide, and Egypt became the Roman province of Aegyptus.

Julius Caesar’s adopted son Octavianus became the Emperor Augustus and ruled for the next forty-five years. Heconsidered himself the Pater Patriae or the father of his country. August died in 14 A.D. and he was followed as emperor by Tiberius, Caius (Caligula), Claudius, and Nero. Nero was the last of the so-called Julio-Claudian dynasty. When Nero died in 68 A.D., the emperorship passed to the so-called Flavian Dynasty of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. The next series of emperors began with a nominee of the Senate (Nerva) and then series of emperors who were “adopted” by their predecessors (Trajan, Hadian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius). The region south of the lower Danube River in 46 A.D. became the provinces of Thrace (Southern Bulgaria, Turkey, and the Greek coast at the northend of the Aegean Sea) and Moesia (Serbia, Northern Bulgaria, and the Dobruja). In 107 A.D. the Emperor Trajan created the province of Dacia (Rumania, today).

Roman Empire at its Greatest Extenthttp://www.bible-history.com/maps/roman_empire_color.gif

At its height the Roman Empire included the entire Mediterranean Sea, northern Gaul (France), Britain, and the Rhineland. East of Rome the main language was Greek, and west of Rome it was Latin.10 In 270 A.D. the Emperor Diocletian (284 A.D. to 305 A.D.), who was born in Illyria on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea and served in the army, divided the empire into eastern and western halves, each ruled by an Augustus. The two empires were divided further into provinces (each under a comes, or count), whichthemselves were divided into prefectures, and the prefectures into dioceses (each under vicar). Diocletian made his capital at Nicomedia on the east coast of the Sea of Marmora, across the water from the ancient Byzantium cityof Byzantium, founded by the Dorians circa 600 B.C. “When the Emperor Diocletian (284-305) divided the Roman Empire into two administrative halves to stabilize the imperial succession and to better defend the empire’s far-flung borders against foreign enemies,” writes Balkan historian Dennis Hupchick, “he did so along the invisible line markingthe human cultural divide in the northwestern corner of the Balkan Peninsula separating the Greek East and the Latin West.”11

Diocletian decided share the emperorship with Maximian,who also assumed the title of Augustus. Diocletian and Maximian each chose a Caesar to rule the other two prefectures. Diocletian chose Constantius Chlorus and Maximian chose Galerius (who married Diocletian’s daughter).When Diocletian and Maximian retired, Constantius and Galerius became the new Augusti. However, in appointing the new Caesars, Constantius passed over his own son, Constantine, and Galerius passed over Maximian‘s son, Maxentius (who had married Galerius’ daughter).

A dispute over succession broke out between Constantine(who married Maximian’s daughter) and his brother-in-law Maxentius, In 312 A.D. Constantine’s army marched into Italyand defeated Maxentius’ forces at the Battle of Vilvian Bridge across the Tiber River. Prior to the battle Constantine had a vision of a cross inscribed with the Latinwords in hoc signo vinces (“in this sign you will conquer”). After his victory Constantine converted to Christianity. In May 330 A.D. Constantine became the sole emperor of the Roman Empire and founded Constantinople as the second capital at the site where Europe and Asia met. The city was named Constantinople in honor of Constantine the Great afterhis death. However, Christianity didn’t become the official state religion of the empire until 378 A.D, when the EmperorTheodosius banned paganism. When the Emperor Theodosius diedin 395 A.D., the Empire was divided again into East and West.

http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/eunewlnd.gif

There is a mountain barrier that runs across southern Europe interrupted by passes and river valleys that geographers call “gateways” or corridors. The major mountainranges are the Alps along a part of south-central Europe extending from western France to Hungary and between southern Germany and Italy, the Carpathians in Eastern Europe, the Urals and the Caucasus in Russia, Apennines in central Italy, and the Balkan Mountains in the Balkan Peninsula. Between the mountains are broad plains, such as the Plain ofHungary between the Alps, the Balkans and the Carpathian Mountains and the Wallachian Plain along the Black Sea. In 113 B.C. Germanic tribes advanced into the Alps and by 109 B.C. they pushed into southern Gaul that had been annexed byRome in 122 B.C.

In 260 A.D. the Persian Emperor Shapur I defeated the Roman Emperor Valerian and took control of the Roman territory in northern Mesopotamia. The Roman Emperor Diocletian, who ruled from 284 to 305 A.D., reorganized the empire. He appointed another Augustus, Maximian and two heirs-designate or Caesars, Galerius in the East and Constantius in the West. This created the tetrarchy, or

government by four. In 293 A.D. Diocletian subdivided the existing provinces of the empire by creating 12 imperial dioceses, each ruled by a vicar, and four military sectors, each under an Augustus or a Caesar. Diocletian recaptured northern Mesopotamia and was able to dominate Armenia. In 359 A.D. the Persian Emperor Shapur II attacked the Roman town of Amida in Roman-controlled Mesopotamia. The Roman Emperor at the time was Julian, the Apostate, He moved to the Mediterranean city of Antioch from where he intended to launch an attack on Persia in 363 A.D. He was defeated and killed in a battle near the Tigris River.

Barbarian Invasions, 378 A.D. to 439 A.D.http://mapas.owje.com/img/Las-invasiones-germanicas-del-Imperio-Romano-378-439-dC-1352.jpg

After the Persians defeated the Romans in northern Mesopotamia, the horse-mounted Huns (a Germanic-speaking, nomadic, mounted people from the steppes of Southern Russia)around 370 A.D. attacked the Ostrogoths (or commonly known as the Eastern Goths who spoke the Gothic language and who originated north and east of the Black Sea). The Ostrogoths fled westward, pushing the Visigoths (sometimes called the

Western Goths who also spoke the Gothic language) against the Romans occupying the Danube River Valley. In 376 A.D. the Visigoths received permission from the Roman Emperor Valens to relocate across the Danube River in Thrace providing they would settle down as farmers. But the Ostrogoths also crossed the Danube without permission. The Romans planned to confine the Visigoths to Thrace in order to protect Roman holdings in Moesia and Macedonia. In 378 A.D. Valens advanced from Constantinople against the Visigoths in Adrianople where a great battle took place. TheRomans were defeated and Valens killed. Thus, Rome had suffered two major defeats within fifteen years, first the defeat of Julian by the Persians and then the defeat of Valens by the Visigoths. In both case the Roman Emperor himself led the Roman legions into battle and was killed.

After the battle of Adrianople, the Western Emperor Gratian appointed the Spanish general Theodosius as the Augustus in the East. In 382 Theodosius and Gratian agreed to allow the Visigoths to resettle along the Danube in Moesia in northern Thrace under what was known as a “federate” status. This meant that they were considered foederati or allies who promised to fight for the Roman Empire. There were as many as 20,000 Visigoths in Theodosius’s army in 394 A.D.12 Theodosius also reached an agreement with the new Persian Emperor Shapur III to partition Armenia. In 383 A.D. Gratian was killed by his ownsoldiers who were angered by his policy towards the barbarians. He was replaced by Magnus Maximus, the Count of Britain, who quickly took control of Gaul and Spain. However, Africa, Italy, and Pannonia remained loyal to the child emperor Valentinian II. In 387 Maximus marched into Italy and seized power from Valentinian, who sought refuge with Theodosius, who then invaded Italy and killed Maximus at the battle of Aquileia. Theodosius returned to Constantinople in 391, but when Valentinian was killed by his own Frankish Field Marshall, Theodosius came west again to confront Valentian’s killers in a battle on the Frigid River in Slovenia. As a result of the battle, Theodosius

became the sole Emperor of the Roman Empire. A few months after his victory, Theodosius became ill and died in Milan in January 395 A.D.

Before the end of the year, the Visigoth king Alaric, who had fought for Theodosius at the Frigidus, went to war against Rome. Stilicho, whose father was a Vandal, fought alongside the Visigoth Alaric at the Battle of the Frigidus,but then became his enemy. Stilicho was the husband of Theodosius’s niece and adopted daughter, Serena. Although his father was a Vandal, Stilicho was brought up as a Roman.In 395 A.D. Stilicho marched into Thessaly to put down the rebellion of the Visigoths, and in 397 A.D. he crossed the Adriatic Sea and confronted Alaric in the northwestern Peloponnese, but the Visigoths managed to escape again. Meanwhile Stilicho’s daughter married the Western Emperor Honorius.

In November 401 A.D. Alaric’s Visigoths invaded northern Italy, while Stilicho was busy fighting off the Suebi, Alans, and Vandals in the Alpine province of Raetia. Alaric rushed to intercept Alaric at Pollentia in northwestern Italy on Easter Day 402 A.D., but was he was temporarily defeated and was forced to return to Illyricum (the Dalmatian coast). In the process of defending Italy, Stilicho abandoned the Rhine frontier, and Honorius moved his capital from Milan to Ravenna on the Adriatic coast. This opened the door to the sack of Rome, because barbariansfrom the Rhine could easily bypass Ravenna on their way to Rome. In 406 A.D. an alliance of Vandals, Suebi, and Alans crossed the Rhine River and took control of major portions of Gaul. Because Stilicho and Honorius were more focused on the east, in Britain a usurper named Constantine was proclaimed emperor by his troops and then crossed the Channel to fight the barbarians. Stilicho persuaded Honoriusto enlist the help of Alaric in suppressing Constantine’s rebellion. Meanwhile Stilicho went to Constantinople to conspire to take over the eastern empire. Stilicho was discredited and finally executed in Ravenna in August 408

A.D. Alaric then crossed the Julian Alps and invaded Italy in October and marched on Rome. He took control of Rome portat Ostia, thereby cutting off Rome’s access to the grain from Africa, and laid siege to Rome.

In 476 A.D. the then Western Emperor, Romolus Augustus,was deposed by the Ostrogoth leader Odovacar in 476 A.D., thus marking the end of the Roman Empire. The Vandals already had taken control of North Africa, the Visigoths haddone the same in Spain, and the Burgundians in the Rhone Valley. Soon after the Frank Clovis conquered Gaul and the Ostrogoth Theodoric made himself king in Italy. In 518 A.D. Justinian, who was a peasant from Macedonia, became the Emperor. He wanted to reunite the Roman Empire. He managed to re-conquer Africa, Italy, Corsica, Sardinia, the BalearicIslands, part of Spain, the Frankish kingdom of Gaul. Historian Charles Diehl says that under Justinian “the Mediterranean becomes once more a Roman lake.”13 Justinian also developed a body of laws known as the Code of Justinian.

“By the opening of the seventh century, the eastern half of the classical Roman Empire had nearly completed its evolution into the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire,” writes Dennis Hupchick.14 The eastern half of the Roman Empire (Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, and a large part of the Balkan Peninsula) was not conquered by the barbarians, and Constantinople became the new capital of the Empire. Thenew empire was called by historians the Byzantine Empire, because Constantinople was located at the site of the ancient Greek trading center of Byzantium on the European side of the Bosphorus. The main language of the Byzantine Empire was Greek. “The Byzantine Empire,” writes the late Rutgers historian Peter Charanis, “is one of the great empires in history. It endured for over a thousand years. Down to about the middle of the eleventh century it was the center of civilization in Christendom. It preserved the thought and literature of antiquity; it developed new forms of art; it held back the barbarians. It produced great

statesmen, soldiers, and diplomats, as well as reformers andrenowned scholars. Its missionaries, aided by its diplomats and sometimes its armies, spread the gospel among the pagan tribes, especially the Slavs, who dwelt along it frontiers and beyond.”15

http://carpenterinternational.com/ages/pics/byzantine.gif

“In the centuries which followed the disintegration of the Roman power in the West, Byzantium and the West went through divergent developments,” writes Peter Charanis. “There were, to begin with, some important differences between the two. There was a difference in language: Greek in Byzantium; Latin in the West. There was a difference in ethnic composition with all its cultural implications. The West was Latin and Germanic; Byzantium and the regions underits influence, especially after Egypt and Syria were lost tothe Arabs, were Greek, Slavic, and Armenia. More differencesdeveloped as the two regions evolved under different historical conditions. The West came to be broken up into numerous feudatories with no, or hardly any, central organization; Byzantium remained a great Empire with a well established administrative system. The West derived its living almost entirely from agriculture; Byzantium drew its wealth from commerce and industry in addition to agriculture. The West had almost no cities; Byzantium had

great urban centers as, for instance, Constantinople and Thessalonica.”16

“Few rulers in the world have been more powerful than the Emperor of Byzantium,” writes Diehl.17 The Emperor was both commander-in-chief of the military, but also the legislator, thus the monarchy rested the dual foundation of arms and the law. From the Romans the Byzantine Emperor inherited absolute power, and from Christianity he inheritedthe status being the chosen and anointed vicar of God on earth. The army was made of foreigners who had settled in the Empire whom the people of Byzantium called “barbarians”—Huns, Vandals, Goths, Lombards, Persians, Armenians, Arabs, Moors and later Khazars, Russians, Georgians, and Arabs among others. It fleet dominated the eastern seas until the Arabs rose to power in the middle of the seventh century. Byzantium controlled the port of Thessalonica “the most important commercial centre in Europe after Constantinople, the necessary port of all for all trade between the Adriaticand the Bosphorus and the natural outlet for the exports of the Balkans Slavs.”18 The predominant language of Anatolia was Greek. Its best soldiers and finest civil servants came from the Anatolian aristocracy.

In 626 A. D. Constantinople withstood a siege by a combined force of Slav, Avar, and Persian soldiers. But before the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (610 A.D. to 631 A.D.) could re-conquer the lands lost to the Persia, both the Persian and the Roman empires were overrun by Arab Muslims. The Arabs succeeded in conquering Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Armenia. The Byzantine Empire was reduced to Asia Minor, the Balkan Peninsula, and the exarchate of Ravenna. Meanwhile, Slavs began to settle in the Balkans: Serbs and Croats to the northwest and Bulgars to the northeast. These groups adopted the Eastern Orthodox religion from Byzantium. In addition, the Visigoths reconquered Byzantine Spain, and the Avars (who spoke the Avar language of the north Caucassian family) and Slavs

crossed the Danube River on raids of the southern Balkan Peninsula.

In 751 A.D. the Lombards pushed Byzantium out of Italy. To prevent the Lombards from taking control of Ravenna, the Pope asked for help from the Franks. The Franksunder Pepin succeeded in holding off the Lombards and they granted the Papacy the papal domains once held by the Byzantines. This opened a breach with between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. Differences had developed between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. One of the main differences was over the worship of images of saints. This led the papacy in Rome to ally itself with the Frankish Empire and the re-establishment of the Roman imperial title. In 800 A.D. when Charlemagne re-established the Western Empire, he was anointed by Pope Leo III, which was the final breach betweenthe Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. The two churches finally separated in 1054, when a Catholic Cardinal and the Byzantine patriarch excommunicated each other. At the Council of Chalcedon the Patriarch of Constantinople became the equal of the Pope in Rome. By the end of the tenth century, Byzantium had converted the Russians to the Eastern Orthodox Church. However, the Roman Catholic Church continued to be maintained in Armenia, Cilicia, and Syria. Nor were they successful in luring the Hungarians away from the Roman Catholic Church.

The Arabian Peninsula or Arabia, as it is sometimes called, is located in western Asia northeast of Africa. It is bounded on the northeast by the Persian Gulf, on the southeast by the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, and on the west by the Red Sea. Its main geographic feature is desert, but it is strategically located between the Mediterranean and Asia. The population of the Arabian Peninsula is predominantly Bedouin Arabs of the Caucasoid race. The Arabic language is a member of the Semitic language family. In the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula Hamitic languages are also spoken.19 It main

religion is Islam. The term “Arab” originally referred only to the people of Arabia, or Bedouins, which is an Arabic term meaning either “the people of the desert” or “wanderers” because of their nomadic ways. They were dividedinto various tribes, each led by a sheikh (literally meaning “old man” in Arabic). However, over time the term Arab has been expanded to other ethnic groups that were Arabize, thatis, converted to Islam and adopted the Arabic language, suchas the Berbers, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Jordanians, the Iraqis, the Lebanese, and the Palestinians (but not the Turks or the Iranians, who adopted Islam but kept their own languages).

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Mohammed was camel caravan driver from the city of Mecca, who had a religious experience in which he was visited by the angel Gabriel who told him that he was to be the Prophet of a new religion. After preaching about this new faith that incorporated elements of Judaism and Christianity, he was forced to leave Mecca for Medina in 622 A.D. The journey as become has become known as the Hegira. In Medina Mohammed established a theocratic city-state. From Medina Mohammed and his followers conquered

Mecca as well as about one-third of the Arabian Peninsula bythe time of the Prophet’s death in 632 A.D. After the death of the Prophet Muhammed in 632 A.D., his follower Abu Bakr became the first caliph. According to Bernard Lewis, the caliphate was “the supreme sovereign office of the Islamic world.”20 Abu Bakr expanded Islam to all of Arabia. His successor Omar (634-644) expanded the caliphate to all of Palestine, Syria, and the Persian Empire, including the cities of Damascus and Jerusalem. Jerusalem became the thirdholy city for Muslims, after Mecca and Medina.

Omar was succeeded in 644 A.D. by Uthman. During his caliphate there was a series of civil wars among the Arabs beginning with Uthman’s murder in 656 A.D. by a group of Arab army mutineers. They installed Ali ib Abi Talib, the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet, as the new caliph. Hisfollowers became known as the Shi’a. Five years later, Ali himself was murdered leading to another round of civil conflict. The caliph who emerged from this conflict was Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, a member of the Umayya house in Mecca, who was the governor of Syria. The Umayyad caliphate last for almost one hundred years, but there were viewed as usurpers by the Shi’a. The Shi’a believed that the caliphatewas hereditary through the descendants of the Prophet. The Sunni believed that the caliphate was elective, and any member of the Prophets tribe was eligible for the position. In 680 A.D. Ali’s son Husayn led an insurrection in Iraq against the Umayyads, but he was defeated at the Battle of Karbala. The anniversary of this battle is observed today byShi’ite Muslims. According to Lewis, “The caliphate was always defined as a religious office, and the caliph’s supreme purpose was to safeguard the heritage of the Prophetand to enforce the Holy Law.”21

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Along the shores of Mediterranean Africa is a narrow region in which the climate is similar to that of southern Europe. It includes the Atlas Mountains, the Spanish Ifni, northern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, a coastal strip to Tripolitania, and an upland territory in Cyrenaica, Libya. At the higher elevations there are deciduous and coniferous trees, and at lower elevations cedars and cork oak trees, gardens growing cereals, tobacco, and grapes, and groves of lemons, almonds, figs, and olives. What Russell, Kniffen, and Pruitt call “the Arab-Berber Realm” includes Sahara, Egypt, Sudan, East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Near East, including Mesopotamia.22

The Afro-Asiatic-speaking Caucasians include five linguistic subgroups: the Semitic which originated in Arabiaand Mesopotamia, the Berber along the northwest coast of Africa, the Ancient Egyptian in the middle Nile valley, the Chadic in the Sahara (after which the country of Chad is named). The Berbers speak their own language, and therefore they were unable to read the Koran in Arabic. The Tuareg Berbers initially opposed the Arab invasion of the Sahara, and most remained nomads near the oases or caravan traders. However, the Arabs tended to own the better oases. The

people in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine spoke Aramaic, which isa Semitic language in the same language family as Hebrew andArabic. This enabled the people of these countries to more easily acculturate to Arab culture. In Egypt, Coptic was thenon-Semitic language of Egypt, but it has died out except for the liturgy of the Coptic Church, which enabled Egypt tobecome Arabized.

The Phoenicians had founded the city of Carthage in the ninth century B.C. and introduced bronze and iron making. In the second century B. C. the Romans conquered Carthage and introduced irrigation systems and monopolized trade with central Africa. It became part of the Byzantine Empire in fifth and sixth centuries A. D. In the seventh century Arab Muslims introduced Islam and the Arabic language. They converted the nomadic Berbers of the desert region to the south. In 634 A.D. the Bedouins who had converted to Islam defeated the Byzantine Christians and laid siege to Damascus. In the spring of 640 A.D. Muslims under the Caliph Omar crossed the Nile and within four yearsall of North Africa from Egypt to Carthage was paying tribute to the Arabs. Between 670 and 683 A.D. Islam conquered present-day Algeria from Byzantium. Some of the Berbers resisted the Arabs, but in 711 A.D. Berber converts under General Tarif crossed into Europe and defeated the Spanish Christians at Mount Tarif (Gibraltar, today). The Berber and Arab conquerors became known as the Moors.

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In 747 A.D. a former Persian slave named Abu Muslim leda revolt against the Umayyads in order to replace them as the caliphates with the Abbasids, who were the descendants of the Prophet’s uncle al-Abbas. His army defeated the Umayyads in Iraq and Syria in 749 and 750 A.D. bringing an end to the Umayyad caliphate and Syrian dominance. As a result, the capital of the caliphate was moved from Syria tothe city of Baghdad in Iraq. In addition, the Islamic leadership was no longer the exclusive monopoly of the Arabs. It now was to include Persians who had converted to Islam. Under the Abbasids the power of the caliphate began to diminish culminating in 946 A.D. when the Shi’ite Persianhouse of Buyeh occupied Baghdad. The Iranians established their own independent dynasties, the Tahirids followed by the Saffarids followed by the Samaninds followed by the Buyids.

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Sunni Empire was weakened on a number of fronts. In Europe, Christian forces retook parts of Spain and Sicily and the first Crusade invaded the Near East. In North Africa and southern Spain the Berbers asserted their power, and the Berbers of Upper Egypt moved into Libya and Tunisia. Christians in Georgia attempted to restore the Georgina

Empire from the Black Sea to Daghestan. But the most important invasion was that of the Altaic speaking people ofthe Asian steppes. Turkish-Tataric (Turkish, Tataric, Kalmuckian, Kirghizic and Turkomanic) is one of the Ural-Altaic languages. The Muslims had been bringing Turks into their empire as slaves, or Mamluks, and training them for military service. In time the Mamluks converted to Islam, began to dominate the military, and eventually took over theempire. The Turkish tribes migrated into Eastern Europe fromthe Eurasian steppes by way of the Danube and Prut river plains. The Huns were the first to enter the Balkans in the fifth and sixth century. They were followed by the Avars in the sixth and seventh centuries. The Avars were a Turkic tribal confederation governed by a central ruler (kaghan). The Bulgars established their state south of the Danube River, and by the ninth century they challenged the Byzantine Empire for control of the Balkans. The Seljuk Turks, who were pastoral nomads from Central Asia, moved into the Middle East and Anatolia in the 12th century. In 1071 the Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert (Malazgird) in eastern Anatolia. In 1087a branch of the Seljuk dynasty established itself with its capital in the town of Konya in central Anatolia. They introduced Islam into Christian Anatolia.

In 1095 at a church council in Piacenza, the Byzantine Emperor Alexius appealed for help from Pope Urban II, who then went to France to organize the First Crusade with the aim of liberating Jerusalem from the Turks. Pope Urban II responded at the Council of Clermont in 1095 by calling for a crusade. However before the crusaders reached Jerusalem, agroup of them established a “crusader state” in Syria. In 1096 the European Crusaders advanced along the coast of Syria into Palestine, establishing principalities at Antioch, Edessa, Tripoli, and Jerusalem. In April 1097 the crusader armies met in Constantinople and advanced through Asia Minor. They took control of Jerusalem in July 1099, andorganized the conquered territory in Syria and Palestine into feudal principalities. In 1100 the Latin kingdom of

Jerusalem was founded. The Byzantines, however, were not happy with the result, because the crusaders did not restorethe principality of Antioch to the Byzantines as they promised.

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The Crusades were not only aimed at retaking the Holy Land from the Muslims, it also targeted the Byzantine Empireand the Eastern Orthodox Church, which the Roman Catholic Church viewed as a heresy. Frederick Barbarossa, the German Holy Roman Emperor, sought to capture Constantinople. His son Henry VI forced the kingdoms of Armenia and Cyprus to become vassals of the Holy Roman Empire and sought to conquer Constantinople from a base in Syria. The antipathy between the Greeks and Latins was increased during the Second Crusade (1147-1149). In 1154 the Seljuk Turks took over Damascus in order to confront the Crusaders. In May 1182 there was a large-scale massacre in Constantinople of the Latin population (mostly from Venice, Genoa, and Pisa) that controlled most of the trade in the city. An estimated 60,000 Roman Catholics were killed, and another 4,000 were sold as slaves to the Turks in what became known as the Massacre of the Latins. In response, in 1185 a Norman

expedition led by William II of Sicily sacked Thessalonica, the Byzantine Empire’s second largest city.

The Kurdish officer named Saladin was sent to Egypt, and from there he seized Syria and launched a jihad against the Crusaders in 1187. In response, a third crusade was led the three greatest rulers of Europe, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of Germany, Philip II Augustus of France, and Richard I of England. Frederick died on route. Philip took part in the siege of Acre, but returned to France because of ill health. Frederick Barbarossa plotted with the Serbs, Bulgars, and Muslim Seljuk Turks against theByzantine Empire. Also during this crusade, Richard I of England seized the Byzantine province of Cyprus and sold theisland to the Knights Templar. Richard also negotiated a treaty under which Christians retained the coastal cities, the Muslim controlled the interior, and Christians were allowed to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. However, by 1193 Saladin had recaptured Jerusalem.

In 1198 when Innocent III became the pope, he called for a new crusade. His appeal was ignored by the European monarchs, until 1201 when the Italian count Boniface of Montferrat was elected leader of a crusading army. Boniface sent envoys to Venice, Genoa, and other Italian city-states for a contract to transport the army to Egypt. Genoa was uninterested, but Venice agreed to transport 33,500 soldiers. The Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo insisted that thecrusaders pay the full amount before he would allow them to depart. The crusaders could not afford to pay, and so Dandolo proposed that the crusaders pay their debts by attacking ports along the Adriatic Sea, including the port of Zara in Dalmatia. Meanwhile, Boniface visited his cousin Philip of Swabia, who happened to be the brother-in-law of the recently deposed Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelos, whose son Alexios IV Angelos had sought refuge in Swabia. Alexios IV offered to pay the entire debt owed to the Venetians if the crusaders agreed first to go to Constantinople to depose his uncle, the reigning Byzantine

emperor Alexios III Angelos. Boniface agreed and he and Alexios IV rejoined the crusader fleet at Corfu. Doge Dandolo also agreed to the plan of diverting the crusaders to Constantinople, but the Pope didn’t want there to be an attack on fellow Christians.

In April 1204 the crusaders took control of the Constantinople, set fire to it and sacked the city, destroying the famous Library at Constantinople. Alexios IIIfled to Thrace, and in August Alexius IV was crowned a co-emperor with his favor Isaac II. In order to pay the crusaders Alexius IV ordered that the Byzantine and Roman icons be melted down to extract their gold and silver, whichmade Alexios IV unpopular with the Greek population of the city. A Byzantine nobleman named Alexios Doukas Mourtzouphlos, who led the anti-crusader faction, overthrew Alexios IV in February 1205, ordered that the deposed emperor be strangled, and had himself crowned Alexios V. When the new emperor refused to honor Alexios IV promised payment, the crusaders aided by the Venetians attacked the city again. Alexios V’s army and his imperial bodyguard (theVarangians) fought to defend the city, but Alexios V himselffled the city.

After the sacking of Constantinople the crusaders established the Latin Empire of Constantinople, which in effect divided the Byzantine Empire among the victors with Venice gaining the lion’s share. Baldwin of Flanders was crowned emperor of the Latin Empire, Boniface founded the vassal state of the Kingdom of Thessalonica, the Venetian founded the Duchy of Archipelago in the Aegean Sea, the Byzantine refugees founded the successor states of the Empire of Nicaea, the Empire of Trebizond, and the Despotateof Epirus. In the end, Pope Innocent III, who had launched the Fourth Crusade, spoke out against the diversion of its goal into a war between Greek and Latin Christians. At its height the Byzantine Empire included all of Anatolia into modern Syria. However, it never recovered from the sacking of Constantinople in 1204 by the knights of the Fourth

Crusade. In 1054 the Roman Catholic Church declared the Eastern Orthodox Church as a schism. From 1204 to 1261 the Roman Catholics occupied Constantinople. During the Fourth Crusade the Holy Roman Empire placed a Flemish count on the Byzantine throne and granted Venice large parts of the Byzantine territory. This “dealt a blow to Byzantium from which it never recovered, and exacerbated the Greeks’ hatred of the West.”23

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In July 1439 the 375-year schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches was healed by the signing of a document of union by John VIII Palaeologus, theByzantine Emperor, and the Pope. However, Bishop Isidore of Kiev, who was made a cardinal by the Pope, was deposed when he visited Moscow. The patriarch of Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch refused to agree with the union. The union of the Orthodox and Catholic churches in 1439 raised the spectre of future crusades against the Ottoman Empire. It became Mehmed II’s goal to conquer the city. He first made treaties with Serbia, Hungary, and Venice to pre-empt any outside aid being sent to Constantinople from these places. He began his effort to take the city by building a fortress on the Anatolian shore of the Bosporus in 1451-1452. The Byzantine Emperor appealed to the West again. Genoa sent some troops, and Venice rented some naval support. Pope Nicholas V made additional demand on the Eastern Orthodox

Church as the price for his aid, which was refused by the Byzantines. In April 1453 the siege of the city began. The Byzantines placed a boom across the Golden Horn to prevent the navy from entry. After fifty-four days the city surrendered. The basilica of Hagia Sophia, built by the Empreror Justinian, was turned into a mosque. The name of the city was changed from Constantinople to Istanbul.

The name Turkey was not used until the Middle Ages whenthe Turks arrived from the east. During the Christian periodit was known as Asia Minor or Anatolia. In the eleventh century the Seljuk Turks conquered Anatolia from Byzantium, which had previously been occupied by Greek Christians. But the most important invasion was that of the Altaic speaking people from the Asian steppes. The Muslims had been bringingTurks into their empire as slaves, or Mamluks, and training them for military service. In time the Mamluks converted to Islam, began to dominate the military, and eventually took over the empire. The Seljuk Turks moved out of their homeland on the steppes into eastern Iraq in 1055, Iran, Syria, and Palestine by 1079 and eventually conquered the greater part of Anatolia. The Seljuks were Sunni Muslims andtheir leaders became known as the Great Sultans. The centerof the Arabic-speaking world shifted from Iraq to Egypt under the Mamluks. In 1260 the Mamluk general Baybar became the sultan and united Egypt and Syria into a single state. In effect, Baybar brought the caliphate to Egypt, but it only lasted until 1517 when the Ottoman Turks took over Egypt.

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“The Ottoman Empire was, in origin, a military institution dedicated to fulfilling the sacred obligation ofextending the ‘Abode of Islam’ by conquering the lands of the unbelievers,” according to historian Alan Palmer.24 The founder of the Ottoman Empire was a Turkish chieftain named Osman, who waged a Muslim holy war against the Christian Byzantine state in western Anatolia. Between the Byzantine and the Seljuk were frontier “marches” where the Ottomans had their origins. In the marches were Muslim holy men or dervishes, who wandered the country-side and told epic stories of their piety and deeds. In 1301 a military leader named Osman defeated a Byzantine force at the Battle of Bapheus on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara. Osman’sson, Orhan, adopted Sunni Islam as the state religion and established a dervish lodge east of Iznik. The Ottoman sultans who followed Ofhan were all affiliated with one of the dervish orders.

The term Ottoman comes from the dynasty known as the Osmanli in Turkish or Othman in Arabic that descended from Osman. His son, Orhan, captured the city of Bursa in 1326 and made it the Ottoman capital. From there, he expanded hisconquests to the towns of Nicaea (Iznik) in 1331 and Nicomedia (Izmit) in 1337. At first the Ottoman Empire was

divided into two eyalets: Rumeli (Europe) and Anatolia. By the end of the sixteenth century there were thirty-one eyalets. The primary provincial unit of the empire was the sancak. The sancaks were divided into kazas (townships) that were governed by beys. The Ottoman Empire was actually administered by the Grand Vizier from a large building constructed in 1654 near the Seraglio known to Europeans as the Sublime Porte. The Grand Vizier was the chief executive presiding over the Divan or council during peace, and he personally commanded the Ottoman army in war, assisted by the Aga of the Janissaries and the Captain Pasha of the Ottoman navy. The Ottomans instituted the system of devshirme, which was a slave army recruited from Christian converts to Islam who were separated from their parents in childhood. This institution lasted until the seventeenth century.

Non-Muslims (including Christians and Jews) within the Ottoman Empire were known as the zimmis (“protected ones”). In 1454, after conquering Constantinople, the Sultan Mehmed established the millet (“religious nation”) system of administration for the zimmis. “Although the term millet involved the idea of ‘nation’ in the Turkish language, it shared little with the Western European concept. Millet identified people solely on the basis of religion; ethnicityplayed no role.”25 For example, the Ottomans made no distinction between Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonia, orRomanina Orthodox Christians. They were all grouped within the same millet. “By eliminating all consideration of ethnicity, millet identification entirely lacked the territorial connotations associated with the Western Europe concept of nation.”26

Greek is spoken not only in Greece, but on the islands of the Aegean, southern Albania and Yugoslavia, southwesternBulgaria, parts of Turkey, and the islands of Cyprus and Crete. The Greek language was the direct ancestor of the Cyrillic alphabet, but also influenced, by way of Phoenicia,the Etruscan and Roman alphabets. The Sultan Mehmed II

recognized the Orthodox Christians as a religious nation, ormillet with a degree of self-government, but they had to pay heavy taxes. Later sultans used Greek Orthodox Christians asdragomans (i.e., interpretors) and diplomats. The Green quarter of Constantinople was near an old Byzantine lighthouse known as the Phanar. The Greeks became known as the “Phanariots,” and by the early eighteenth century they formed a mercantile aristocracy.

The Orthodox millet was divided between Greek and Slavic rites, that is, whether the liturgy was performed in Greek or Slavic languages. The Greek rite was the dominant one with all the Orthodox churches under the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople. “Until well into the eighteenth century, all Balkan Orthodox believers were identified as ‘Greeks’ byEuropean observers.”27 In 1387 the Ottomans took control of Thessaloniki (Salonika) in northern Greece, and between 1396and 1397 Bayezid annexed Karaman in southwestern Anatolia. The Ottomans also won victories in Europe against the Greeksand Serbs. In 1423 Thessalonica, a vital port for commerce and communications on the northern coast of the Aegean Sea (in present-day Greece), was ceded by the Byzantine “despot”(a title referring to Byzantine princes in the Balkans) to Venice on the condition that it Orthodox customs be respected. However, the city had been under siege by the Ottomans since 1422, which made it impossible for Venice to take possession of it. In 1429 war was declared between Venice and the Ottomans. In 1430 the Ottoman Emperor Murad took Thessalonica from Venice, and a peace was signed. In 1451 the Sultan Murad died, and he was succeeded again by his son Mehmed II. In 1458 Mehmed II captured the Peloponnese Peninsula in southern Greece. In 1455 the Ottomans captured Athens, which was previously under the control of Florence. In 1459 the Ottomans conquered Serbia. The Ottoman capture of Bosnia in 1463 endangered the Venetian possessions on the Adriatic.

In the spring of 1453 the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II advanced toward Constantinople. The last Byzantine Emperor

Constantine XI Dragases appealed for European military support against the Muslims, but the result was negligible. In May the Turks took control of the city, the Sultan Mehmedthe converted St. Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, into a mosque. Mehmed II recognized the Orthodox Christians as a religious nation, or millet with a degree of self-government, but they had to pay heavy taxes. Later sultans used Greek Orthodox Christians as dragomans (i.e., interpretors) and diplomats. The Green quarter of Constantinople was near an old Byzantine lighthouse known asthe Phanar. The Greeks became known as the “Phanariots,” andby the early eighteenth century they formed a mercantile aristocracy.

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The Adriatic Sea is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea and separates the Italian Peninsula with its Appenine Mountains from the Balkan Peninsula and its Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges. Today, on its western coast is the country of Italy and on its eastern, or Dalmatian, coast the countries of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Albania. Two strategic

cities are located in the northern part of the Adriatic: Venice and Trieste. Venice is on a lagoon north of the mouthof the Po River, which flows from west to east across northern Italy through the provinces of Piedmont, Lombardy, Emilio-Romano and Veneto. Trieste, which today is part of Italy, is a port city near the border with Slovenia. Historically, it was considered the major commercial outlet for Austria to the Mediterranean by way of mountain passes across the Alpine Mountains.

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Both Genoa and Venice relied on the Black Sea for trade. Between 1351 and 1355 Venice and Genoa were at war over this trade. Venice had acquired a colony at Azov at thehead of the Sea of Azov, and Genoa had established several colonies on the shores of the Black Sea including one in theCrimea. In 1337 the Genoese made an alliance with Orhan to support his attack on Constantinople. Genoa had a trading colony across the Golden Horn in Galata (a.k.a Pera). The

Byzantine Emperor even appealed to the Pope in Rome. With the death of Emperor Andronicus III in 1341 a civil war broke out in Byzantium. Another Crusade in 1344 burned the fortress and port at Izmir (Smyrna, today), the Byzantine outlet to the Mediterranean Sea. The Ottomans formed an alliance with Byzantium, when Orhan married Theodora, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor John VI. The Genoese provided Orhan’s forces with boats to ferry them across the Bosporus into Thrace. In 1386 Venice took possession of the island of Corfu, which gave her control of the entire Adriatic. Braudel calls Venice the “Queen of the Adriatic.”28 The only rival to Venice’s dominance of the Adriatic was Trieste, which was under the rule of the Hapsburgs. In 1479 Venice took the island of Cyprus from Genoa, but the Ottomans took the island from Venice between 1570 and 1572. Genoa reached its peak in the eleventh century, when Saracenpower of the sea was declining and mountain roads through the Dei Giovi Pass in the Alps opened up northern Europe to Italy. In 1528 Genoa formed an alliance with Spain, which put her in the position of “the leading financial city of the world” by virtue of being an intermediary between Seville and the Americas.29 Genoese and Florentine financiers controlled insurance in the city of Venice. They also had a monopoly on credit in Spain.

In 1352 the Byzantine Emperor John VI engaged a band of Turkish mercenaries to establish a garrison in Gallipoli on the north shore of the Dardanelles. These Turks then offered their allegiance to Suleyman Pasha, the son of Orhan, thus establishing an Ottoman foothold in the Balkans.In 1354 the Ottomans captured the Gallipoli Peninsula to thewest and Ankara to the east. Then the Turkish horsemen crossed the Dardanelles into Europe. The Byzantine Emperor John Palaeologus in 1364 approach Serbia, another Orthodox state threatened by the Ottoman expansion, but the death of King Stephen Dušan in 1355 resulted in a power struggle within Serbia. The Ottomans then pushed into the Balkans, capturing the town of Adrianople (Endirne) in 1361. In 1371

Ottoman forces defeated Serbia petty rulers at the Battle ofMaritsa River, and the Serbian lords and three rulers of Bulgaria who fought with them became vassals of the Ottoman Empire. In the late fourteenth century, the Sultan Murad I created the Janissaries, a slave bodyguard, which, says Palmer, “became a nucleus of the first standing army in modern Europe.”30 One out of every five sons of Christian peasant families were required to become Muslim and serve assoldiers. Many came from the present-day countries of Bosnia, Albania, and Bulgaria.

Meanwhile in the east, the Mongols from China began moving into Central Asia. The Mongol prince Temujin became the leader of Mongolia and took on the title of Jenghiz Khan. In 1206 he united all the Mongol tribes and launched an invasion to the west. By 1220 he conquered the cities ofBukhara and Samarqand. Jenghiz Khan died in 1227, but underhis successors the Mongols conquered western Iran, Georgia, Armenia, and northern Mesopotamia. In 1243 they defeated the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia. From that time the Seljuk sultan was made to pay a tribute to the Mongol khan, whose seat of power was at Karakorum in central Asia. In 1258 the Mongols conquered Baghdad ending Sunni leadership of the Abbasid caliphate. But the Mongols never conquered Egypt, and in 1260 the Mamluk Egyptians defeated the Mongols in Syria and incorporated Syria into the Egyptian sultanate. However, according to Bernard Lewis, “Baghdad and Iraq neveragain recovered their central position in the Islamic world.”31

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The Safavid dynasty of the shahs in Iran constituted a Shi’ite threat to the Sunni Ottomans. In 1380 Tamerlane (or Timur, as he was also known), the Mongol ruler of Central Asia, invaded Iran and succeeded in conquering the entire country over the next seven years. Although a Mongol, Tamerlane was both “Turkicized” and “Islamized” in the wordsof Bernard Lewis. His army was made up of a majority of Turks, but it was led by the Mongols. In 1399 Tamerlane took control of the towns of Malatya and Albistan in the Euphrates River Valley. Tamerlane advanced in 1400 to the south along the Euphrates River into Mamluk territory as faras Damascus. He raided India, annexed Iraq, and forced the Mamluk sultan of Syria to pay him homage. After this he invaded Anatolia. In July 1402 Tamerlane met the Ottoman army near Ankara. Bayezid’s forces included the so-called janissaries, infantry made up of Christian prisoners captured in the Balkans, Serbians provided by the Ottoman vassal state, and Vlachs from Thessaly recently conquered bythe Ottomans. Tamerlane had trained elephants from which hisforces launched so-called “Greek fire.” However, it is generally agreed that the Ottomans lost the battle because of desertions from its army. Bayezid himself was taken captive. His sons, who fled the battle then engaged in a dispute over who would succeed the sultan. There followed

years of disruption within the Ottoman Empire. Tamerlane continued his conquest to Smyrna (Izmir) on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea. Tamerlane did allow Bayezid’s sons to have small principalities in Anatolia and the Balkans. Tamerlane died in 1405 and was buried in Samarquand. “With his death, the great movement of the steppe peoples that hadbegun in the tenth century and had transformed the Middle East seems to have come to an end.”32 After Tamerlane the Ottomans and Mamluks resumed control of Anatolia and Syria. The Turkomans retained control of Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia, but the Mongols were in control in eastern Iran and Central Asia. The center of the Arabic-speaking world shifted from Iraq to Egypt under the Mamluks. In 1260 the Mamluk General Baybar had became the sultan, and he united Egypt and Syria into a single state. In effect, Baybar brought the caliphate to Egypt.

In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman sultan was opposed by the Mamluk sultan of Egypt based in Cairo, who ruled over Syria, Palestine, an Arabia, including the holy places of Mecca and Medina, and the Shah of Persia, who was a Turkish-speaking Shi’ite from Azerbaijan. In 1504 the Safavid dynasty in Iran under its Shah Ismail occupied Baghad and advanced into southeastern Anatolia. The Ottoman Emperor Bayezid’s son, Selim I, seized power from his fatherand defeated the Safavids in August 1514 at the battle of Chaldiran, after which which the Ottomans occupied the Iranian capital of Tabriz and the province of Azerbaijan. Eventually, the Ottomans withdrew to Turkey, leaving Iran asa weakened but independent state.

In 1516 the Sultan Selim I marched into Syria and confronted the Mamluk army north of Aleppo. The Mamluk army was no match for the firepower of the Ottoman cannon and muskets. From Aleppo Selim marched south to Damascus. The Mamluk mobile cavalry archers were no match for the Ottoman firepower. In 1517 the Selim captured Cairo, thus making thelast Abbasid Caliph a pensionary of the Ottomans. The Sherifof Mecca sent Selim the keys of the Muslim holy cities of

Medina and Mecca, thus acknowledging the de facto shift of thecaliphate to the Ottomans. The caliphate originated in Baghdad and then moved to Egypt, but then went into decline.The Shi’ites in Persia and Mesopotamia never acknowledged the Sunni Ottoman spiritual leadership. The conquest of Egypt enabled the Ottomans to extend their hegemony to Abyssinia and the Red Sea as far as the Horn of Africa. By 1534 they replaced the Safavids from rule over Baghdad and by the end of the 1540s they controlled the Persian Gulf. By the 1570s they expanded their control across North Africafrom Libya to Morocco. Thus, they created “a vast tri-continental empire,” according to John Darwin. “With their sovereignty unimpaired, with their unchallenged status as guardians of the holy places (in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem), and as the overlord of Cairo, the cultural and intellectual capital of Islam, the Ottomans had been able tokeep the delicate balance between the different elements of their extraordinary system; a multi-ethnic empire perched onthe flank of Europe, and the political embodiment of orthodox Islam in its Near Eastern heartlands.”33

The Danube River became the main route for the Ottomansin their invasion of Europe. The river has its source in theBlack Forest region of southwestern Germany. It flows 1,785 miles to the east through the countries of ten countries today (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Serbia,Bulgaria, Romania, Moldavia, and Ukraine) and four Central European capitals (Vienna, Budapest, Bratslavia, Belgrade) before it empties into the Black Sea. The narrowest part of the Danube is eighty-three mile narrow gorge known as the Iron Gates separating the southern Carpathian Mountains of present-day Romania and the foothills of the northern BalkanMountains of present-day Serbia. In ancient times the Danubewas the northern border of the Roman Empire.

The Danube Riverhttp://static.uniworld.com/resize/760x0/Rivers/Europe/Maps/Danube_River_Cruise.jpg

Hungary was viewed as “Catholic Europe’s eastern bulwark” against the Ottoman Empire.34 The Ottomans under Sultan Bayezid annexed possessions of the Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Shishman in the Danube region in 1393 in order to counter raids across the Danube from Wallachia, then a Hungarian client state. King Sigismund of Hungary appealed to help from the West, and England and France responded by sending crusader armies to confront the Ottomans in September 1396 at Nicopolis on the Danube River. Bayezid defeated the crusaders at Nicopolis in September 1396, and in 1398 he annexed the principality of Vidin. The battle wasa victory for the Ottomans, which gave them control of the Balkans south of the Danube and was followed by Ottoman raids into Hungary. King Sigismund of Hungary seized the Ottoman fortress of Belgrade at the confluence of the Danubeand Sava rivers. This seizure was formalized in 1428 in a treaty between Hungary and the Ottomans.

“The emergence of an Ottoman-dominated Balkans posed a direct threat to the Hungarian state, which viewed Serbia as

a buffer,” writes Mehrdad Kia. “Thus, when Pope Boniface IX (1389-1404) called for a Christian crusade against the Ottomans, the Hungarian monarch, Sigismund (1387-1437) assumed the leadership of the Christian army.”35 The Sultan Murad II suddenly announced his abdication in favor of his twelve-year-old son, Mehmed. This was viewed in the West as a sign of weakness, and another crusade against the Ottomanswas launched by Vladislav, the ruler of Poland and Hungary. Serbia and Transylvania also joined the anti-Ottoman coalition. In September 1444 the Hungarian army crossed the Danube and marched east toward the Black Sea. The former Sultan Murad resumed his position as head of the Ottoman army and marched to confront the Hungarians at the Battle ofVarna on the coast of the Black Sea, where King Wladyslaw ofHungary-Poland was killed. In 1448 the Ottomans defeated an army of Hungarians and Wallachians at the second battle of Kosovo Polje. The Ottoman advance into Eastern Europe was stopped by János Hunyadi in Transylvania in 1442 and near Belgrade in 1456.

The Ottoman Emperor Selim was succeeded as sultan by his son, Suleiman I, the Magnificent. “His reign—from 1520 to 1566, the longest of any Sultan—marks the apogee of the Ottoman Empire,” writes Alan Palmer.36 Süleyman extended theOttoman Empire by capturing Belgrade in 1521. Süleyman then invaded Hungary where in 1526 he defeated King Louis II at the battle of Mohács. This initiated a 15-year struggle between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs in central Europe. InSeptember 1529 he laid siege to Vienna, but had to abandon the siege because of the rains. Suleyman also turned his attention to capturing Rhodes. It was the base for pirates who attacked Ottoman shipping, but also of the Knights Templar who held many Muslim captives. The siege of Rhodes lasted five months, but finally it surrendered in December 1522. The Knights were allowed to find refuge on the island of Malta, from where they were charged with defending the Spanish outpost of Tripoli in North Africa. Now only Cyprus and Crete remained outside Ottoman control. In 1533 the Ottoman navy captured Tunis on the southern shore of the

Mediterranean, and in 1535 Süleyman invaded Iran and occupied Iraq. The Safavids signed the Treaty of Amasya in May 1555 under which they ceded most of Azerbaijan and the southern Caucasus to Turkey. The Ottomans also extended their empire to Yemen by capturing its capital of Sana’a in 1547.

Alan Palmer writes that Suleyman at his height of power“ruled directly over much of southern Russia, over Transylvania, Hungary and the Balkans, Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and most of modern Iraq, Kuwait and the western shore of the Gulf. He was protector of Jerusalem andthe Muslim holy places in modern Saudi Arabia and the overlord of Aden, the Yemen and all the North African coast from the Nile delta to the foothills of the Atlas Mountains.”37 His father Mehmed had developed and Suleyman modified a system of imperial administration run by ministers (viziers) and military commanders taken from the ranks of Christian-born slaves, who were converted to Islam,and made into the imperial bodyguard. “After Suleiman’s death the qualities of kingship shown by the Sultans deteriorated rapidly,” writes Palmer.38

http://infoaboutturkey.com/img/ottoman-empire-1580.gif

The Turks became the “masters of the eastern Mediterranean” after their occupation of Syria in 1516 and

Egypt in 1517, writes Fernand Braudel.39 The turning point in the history of the Mediterranean, according to Braudel, was when Philip II returned to Spain in 1559. After that theSpaniards became dominant in the western Mediterranean, and the Turks controlled the eastern Mediterranean. According toDennis Hupchik, “The Western European Age of Discovery struck a damaging blow to the Ottoman economy by both shifting the primary Asian-European trade routes and openingthe Americas to Western European exploitation. The former effectively removed the Ottomans as middlemen in the lucrative spice and luxury trade, from which the empire derived tremendous revenues. The latter brought a flood of silver into Europe from Spain’s mines in South America, which swiftly spread into Ottoman markets, causing monetary inflation in the traditionally fixed economy.”40

In 1568 a group of Moriscos (Spanish Moors who converted to Christianity but secretly remained Muslims) revolted in Granada. This rebellion led to the Ottoman Empire retaking Tunis from Spain in January 1570. Next fighting broke out in Cyprus, which prompted Rome, Venice, and Spain to establish a Holy League. In October 1571 what Braudel calls “the most spectacular military event in the Mediterranean during the entire sixteenth century” took place at Lepanto. A joint Austrian, Spanish, Genoese, and Venetian armada defeat the Ottoman navy at Lepanto in the Gulf of Patras. Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quijotede la Mancha, was wounded at the battle and lost the use of his left hand. Venice lost the island of Cyprus to the Turksin 1571. After Lepanto the Turks conquered Istria and Dalmatia. Suspicious of Spanish motives, Venice feared that Spain might use its base in Milan to attack Venice itself and in March 1573 Venice withdrew from the Holy League. In 1581 Spain and Turkey reached a truce agreement. Braudel argues that the battle between Portugal and Spain for control of the Atlantic and therefore the world during the years 1578 through 1583 turned Spain’s focus from the Mediterranean to the Western Europe.41 In 1580 Philip moved to Lisbon, where he remained until 1583. Braudel says that

Lisbon, located on the Atlantic coast, was a better place than Madrid for Philip to rule the Hispanic world.

The long decline of the Ottoman Empire began in the early seventeenth century when Iran under Shah Abbas took back Azerbaijan and the south Causasus. Iran then destroyed the Ottoman cities of Yerevan (Erivan) and Kars, and from Armenia Shah Abbas reoccupied the entire eastern Caucasus, southeastern Anatolia and Iraq. The Kurds in Syria then staged uprisings against the Ottomans. Under the Sultan Murad IV, Turkey captured the city of Baghdad and restored its control over Arabia. Finally, in May 1639 Turkey and Iran signed a peace treaty at Qasr-I Shirin under which Turkey retained control of Iraq and Iran maintained control of Azerbaijan and the southern Caucasus. In 1656 a financialcrisis and the failure of the Ottoman’s lift break a Venetian siege of Istanbul for the Sultan Mehmed IV to appoint Mehmed Köprülü, whose father was an Albanian, as theGrand Vizier. Mehmed and his son Köprülüzade Fazil Ahmed, who succeeded his father as Grand Vizier in 1661, “dominatedOttoman politics until 1676, crushed antigovernment revolts in Anatolia and re-established the authority of the central government in the provinces.”42

In the early seventeenth century Hungary and Transylvania had tried to maintain their autonomy from the Hapsburg and the Ottomans, but Turkey gradually extended itsinfluence over the Magyar state by establishing puppet rulers there and in Wallachia and Moldavia. In 1663 Turkish forces crossed the Danube and invaded Hungary, Moravia, and Silesia. Pope Alexander VII formed a Holy League to oppose the Turkish incursion. Under a truce in 1664 Hungary was divided with the western part under the influence of Austriaand the eastern part of Transylvania paying tribute to Turkey.In 1683 Turkey under the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa again invaded Hungary. In July he laid siege to Vienna. The Habsburg Emperor Leopold I fled the city. Mustafa, known forhis cruelty, ordered the systematic killing of Austrian

prisoners and exhibiting their heads to demoralize the enemy. Leopold appealed for help from the Pope and from KingJohn Sobieski, who marched from Poland across the Carpathians to arrive in August at the northern bank of the Danube River. In September his was joined by German soldiersunder Charles, the Duke of Lorraine. Duke Charles of Lorraine took back Buda and Pest, and the Habsburg armies reconquered Croatia and Transylvania. Kara Mustafa’s troops were forced to retreat from Vienna down the Danube to the fortress of Buda and then to Belgrade. In December Mustafa was assassinated in the Kalemegdan Fortress in Belgrade on orders issued by the Sultan Mehmed IV. Mustafa was decapitated and his head sent to Mehmed IV as proof of his demise.

Venice began to raid Ottoman bases along the Dalmatian coast and Bosnia, and in 1685 Venice opened a campaign led by Francesco Morosini against the Ottomans in Greece. In September 1687 a Germany mercenary in Athens fired a mortar at the Parthenon that the Turks had converted to a powder magazine. Alan Palmer writes: “The classical heritage of Athens suffered more from Morosini’s expedition than from any depredations inflicted during the past two centuries of Ottoman rule—although it was, of course, the Turks who used the Parthenon as a gunpowder store.”43 In September 1688 Holy Alliance forces led by the Elector of Brandenburg, Maximilian II Emanuel took back Belgrade, and held it until 1690, when the Turks regained control. The Sultan Mustafa IIattempted to stop the advance of the Austrians. In early 1697 Mustafa personally led a force from Belgrade north across the Danube River into the Hungarian granary of Backsa(now the Serbian Vojvodina). In September the Austrians under Prince Eugene of Savoy engaged the Turks as they attempted to cross the Tisza River at Zenta. After this decisive defeat of the Ottomans, England and the Netherlandsarbitrated a peace settlement that took the form in January 1699 with a peace treaty at Carlowitz (Sremski Karolovici, Serbia, today). Austria retained control over Hungary and Transylvania (except for the Banat of Temesvar, straddling

the present-day border between Hungary, Serbia, and Romania), the Venice consolidated control over Dalmatia and the Peloponnese, the Turks evacuated southern Poland and Ukraine. It confirmed the right of Roman Catholics to freely worship within the Ottoman Empire with a vague suggestion that the Habsburg Emperor could intervene in internal Ottoman affairs.

“The Ottoman Empire entered the eighteenth century in turmoil and decline,” writes Mehrdad Kia. “Long wars againstthe Habsburg, Venice, Poland, and Russia had drained the resources of the state, which could not even pay the salaries of its officials and troops. Consequently, corruption and nepotism became rampant.”44 After signing a peace treaty with Russia in June 1713, Turkey attempted to recapture the Morea in southern Greece from Venice, which itdid in 1715. In 1716 Prince Eugene retook Temesvar and Belgrade in 1717, but in 1739 the Turks took control of Serbia again. The Treaty of Carlowitz finally stopped the Ottoman advance into Europe. John Darwin states: “With the loss of Hungary and Transylvania [to the Habsburgs under thePeace of Carlowitz in 1699] the Ottomans fell back upon the physical barrier of the Carpathian Mountains. Recovering Belgrade (in 1739) restored their control over the strategicfunnel between Habsburg Europe and the Ottoman Balkans.”45

“The North African lands, from Libya westwards,” writesAlan Palmer, “were by now no more than nominal vassal states. In 1711 Ahmed III had recognized the hereditary ruleof the Qaramanli family in Tripolitania and the Husaynid dynasty as beys of Tenus, as well as accepting the right of local Janissaries to nominate a governor in Algeria who would share power with three provincial beys [provincial governors]. . . . Egypt was virtually ‘governed’ . . . by rival Mameluke princes, working sometimes with and sometimesagainst the resident Janissaries. . . . In Mosul, Baghdad, Aleppo, and Damascus by the middle of the century, the vali [or Wali in the Arab regions of the Ottoman Empire] was, in effect, a hereditary governor-general, his family forming an

embryonic local dynasty safeguard by a private army.”46 After signing a peace treaty with Russia in June 1713, Turkey attempted to recapture the Morea in southern Greece from Venice, which it did in 1715.

Since the 1760 merchants in Marseilles wanted France toestablish a colony in Egypt. In April 1798 the Corsican-bornBrigadier General in the French army Napoleon Bonaparte landed 40,000 troops in Egypt to remove the Marmeduke rulers. “An Egyptian empire would compensate France for the loss of its American colonies—Quebec and Louisiana, lost in 1763. It would help check the forward movement of Russia towards its ultimate object, the Ottoman capital at Constantinople,” says John Darwin. “With France lodged at Suez, at the head of the Red Sea, and French influence radiating towards the Gulf and Iran, the diplomatic and military position of the British East India Company would bedrastically weakened.”47 While he temporarily succeeded in removing the Marmeduke from power, Napoleon was left stranded by the British admiral Nelson’s victory near the mouth of the Nile River. He laid siege to fortified port of Acre (in northern Israel today). However, with bubonic plague spreading among his troops, Napoleon abandoned his expedition and returned to France.

Muhammad Ali, a tobacco merchant born in Kavalla, Greece, as an official in the Albanian regiment and in May 1805 was appointed by the Ottoman Sultan Selim II as provincial wali (governor) of Egypt. “A Franco-Ottoman-Persian alliance would not merely protect the right flank ofNapoleon’s armies as his empire thrust deeper into Eastern Europe: it would provide a corridor to the Caucasus and the frontiers of India,” writes Palmer. “Paradoxically, in posing the Eastern Question in a broader from the [Napoleon]aroused for the first time a British strategic interest in the Ottoman heartlands.”48 In May 1812, with the prospect ofan attack by the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte on Russiaon the horizon, Tsar Alexander agreed to a peace treaty withthe Turks signed in Bucharest. Three years later with the

final defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna establisheda British protectorate over Corfu and the seven other IonianIslands off the west coast of Greece. “During the closing stages of the Napoleonic Wars the British replaced the French as the principal western European traders in the Levant,” says Palmer; “they therefore showed some concern over what was happening in Alexandria, Cairo, and Beirut.”49

“Educated Greeks,” writes Caroline Finkle, “were receptive to the revolutionary ideas emanating from America and France in the 1770s and 1790s, and to the notions of liberalism and nationality circulating in Europe during and after the Napoleonic Wars.”50 In March 1821 an aide-de-camp to the Tsar named Alexander Ypsilantis led a raid across theRussian border on Bucharest and Jassy. Ypsilantis attempted to form an alliance with the Serbian rebel leader Miloš Obrenović. However, Miloš, wanting to be recognized by the Sultan as the hereditary Prince of Serbia, rebuffed Ypsilantis, as did the peasants in Moldavia and Tsar Alexander himself. Ypsilantis escaped to Austria as a fugitive. Ypsilantis’s raid started the Greek war of independence. The Sultan Mahmud issued a fetva proclaiming a Holy War against Greek Christians. The Ottoman government ordered the Orthodox Patriarch, Gregory V, in Instanbul to excommunicate the Greek rebels. On Palm Sunday the V issued an Anathema (a formal ecclesiastical condemnation) against the Philike Hetairia and excommunicating Ypsilantis. Despite this condemnation, the following Easter Sunday, while the Patriarch Gregorius was presiding at church service in the Stamboul section of Constantinople, a group of Ottoman soldiers broke into the church in the Phanar quarter, hangedhim from the gate of the city.

In 1814 Greek merchants in the Russian port of Odessa founded the secret Society of Friends (Philiki Hetairia), but Tsar Alexander I stopped short of endorsing their activities. “However much they might have sympathized with the Greek cause,” writes Orlando Figes, “Russia was the founder of the Holy Alliance, the conservative union formed

with the Austrians and Prussians in 1815, whose raison d’être was to combat revolutionary and nationalist movements on theEuropean continent.”51 Without Russian support, the Greek uprising in the principalities was suppressed and Ypsilantisfled to Transylvania, where he was arrested by the Austrians, and the Turks occupied Moldavia and Wallachia. The Russians protested this occupation as a violation of theTreaty of Kuchuk Kainariji and broke off diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire. The Greek uprising spreadto central Greece, the Peloponnesian peninsula, Macedonia, and the islands of Crete and Chios. The Ottoman suppression of the uprising on Chios was depicted by the French painter Eugéne Delacroix’s 1824 masterpiece The Massacre of Chios.

Eugéne Delacroix, The Massacre of Chios (1814)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_Le_Massacre_de_Scio.jpg

In February 1822 Tsar Alexander appealed to the Austrian Foreign Minister Prince Metternich (the chief creator of the Concert of Europe) and the British Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh for support against Turkey, and they agreed to convene an international conference. Alexander wanted an autonomous Greek state under Russian protection like Moldavia and Wallachia, but Britain was concerned about the Russians gaining too much power in the region. Austria was concerned that the Greek revolt against the Ottoman Empire might provoke similar nationalist revolts

against the Hapsburg Empire. None of the powers were willingto support the Greek until 1825 when the Ottoman Sultan brought in Muhammad Ali, his vassal in Egypt, to violently suppress the Greek revolt.

By this time, Nicholas I replaced his brother Alexanderas Tsar. “More than Alexander,” notes Figes, “Nicholas placed the defence of Orthodoxy at the centre of his foreignpolicy. Throughout his reign he was governed by an absolute conviction in his divine mission to save Orthodox Europe from the Western heresies of liberalism, rationalism and revolution.”52 Nicholas demanded that the Turks evacuate theDanubian principalities. In 1826 the British Duke of Wellington agreed to an Anglo-Russian Accord to mediate between the Greeks and the Turks. They were later joined by France in the 1827 Treaty of London. The three countries called for the establishment of an autonomous Greek provinceunder Ottoman sovereignty, but the Sultan rejected this proposal.

In 1827 a combined fleet of British, Russian, and French warships defeated the Egyptian-Ottoman fleet in Navarino (Pilos) Bay, which gave the advantage to the Greek rebels. Russia declared war on the Ottomans in 1828, which forced the Sultan to sign the Treaty of Edirne in 1829, under which Russia occupied the Romanian Principalities. Under the 1830 London Protocol Greece received it independence as an independent monarchy guaranteed by Britain, Russia, and France. But the newly independent Greece only included the Peloponnese, Attica, and the Cyclades Islands, leaving most Greeks as Ottoman subjects, and the Greeks rejected the protocol. The Greeks proclaimed the Greek Republic and elected John Capodistrias as their first president, only to be assassinated in 1831.

The following year Britain, Russia, and France invited the young Bavarian Catholic Prince Otto Wittelbach to becomethe king of Greece. “The nationalists launched a powerful irredentist movement known as the ‘Great Idea’ (Megale

idaia),” writes Hupchick. “In its more temperate form, the ‘Great Ida’ demanded the incorporation of all Greek-inhabited islands as well as mainland territories (Epiros, Thessaly, and Macedonia) north of the 1833 border. In its more radical form, the ‘Great Idea’ sought the Byzantine Empire’s restoration as the ‘natural’ Greek state, with borders defined by Greek linguistic dominance within the Ottoman Orthodox millet.”53

In October 1827 the British Admiral Edward Coldrington defeated the combined Turkish and Egyptian fleets at the Battle of Navarino, but the Sultan still refused any furthermediation.Nicholas used this is a justification to unilaterally declare war on Turkey, and in April 1828 an army of Russiansand Cossacks crossed the Danube and proceeded toward Constantinople. However, their invasion was hindered by disease and fighting in the Danube delta. The Russians renewed their offensive in the spring of 1829 and advance asfar as Edirne (Adrianople, today) a short distance from Constantinople. However, the Austrians refused to support the Russians in overthrowing the Ottoman Empire, and Nicholas concluded that would be better to keep the Ottoman Empire in existence in a weakened state rather than risk bringing Britain, France, and Austria into the region.

An Egyptian army proceeded to the south up the Nile River and founded the city of Khartoum in 1822. The sultan offered to make Muhammad’s son, Ibrahim, Pasha of Crete and Governor of Peloponnese. In the spring of 1823 the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud turned for help in suppressing the Greek independence movement from his vassal, Muhammad Ali, the Viceroy of Egypt. Ali had previously crushed the Wahhabi revolts in Arabia ensuring Ottoman control of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Muhammad Ali expected territorial compensation for his son Ibrahim’s long campaigns in Greece. In February 1825 Ibrahim landed with a force of 10,000 men at Modon in the southern Peloponnese. In

July the Greek provisional government appealed for help fromGreat Britain. In April 1826 the Duke of Wellington, in Russia for the funeral of Tsar Alexander I, and the Russian Foreign Minister Count Karl Nesselrode signed the St. Petersburg Convention offering to mediate the issue and calling for the creation of an autonomous Greek state withinthe Ottoman Empire.

In July 1827 Britain, France, and Russia signed the Treaty of London committed the three countries to an autonomous Greece and calling for an armistice in the region. In October 1827 a combined British, French, and Russian fleet under the command the British Vice Admiral SirEdward Codrington defeated a Turkish and Egyptian fleet in Navarino Bay. “By cutting off supplies from Crete and Egypt,Codrington ensured the eventual triumph of the Greek cause,”says Palmer.54 Thirteen weeks after the Battle of Navarino Bay John Capodistrias, who came ashore on one of Codrington’s ships, became Greece’s first President at the town of Nauplion. Shortly after, the Sultan Mahmud ordered the closing of the Straits to all foreign ships, which resulted in April 1828 by Tsar Nicholas declaring war on Turkey. As the Russian armies advanced into eastern Anatoliaand took control of Kars, they were welcomed as liberators by Armenian Christians. Another Russian army advanced in theBalkans and capture Edirne (also known as by its Byzantine name Adrianople).

In September 1829 the Great Powers mediated the Treaty of Adrianople. Under the treaty the Russian frontier was moved to the south in the Caucasus to include Georgia, but Russia evacuated Erzerum, Kars, and the regions south of thePruth River. In exchange the Sultan agreed to an autonomous Greece with undefined borders and an autonomous Serbia underMiloš Obrenović as hereditary Prince of Serbia, although Ottoman troops remained in Belgrade. In addition Turkey had to pay an indemnity of over twice the annual budget of the Ottoman Empire and to accept a demilitarization of the region along the Danube and Pruth Rivers.

“Fearful of the perceived Russian threat, the British began to shape a policy towards the Eastern Question. To prevent Russia from gaining the initiative in Greece, they gave their backing to the independence of the new Greek states, as opposed to mere autonomy under Turkish sovereignty (which they feared would make it a dependent of Russia).”55 In February 1830 under the London Protocol, Russia, Great Britain, and France guaranteed to protect a sovereign Greek kings, and in 1832 the German Prince Otto ofBavaria agreed to be crowned King of Greece. By the 1830s the Ottoman sultan acknowledged the autonomy of Greater Egypt, which included Syria, Crete, and the Sudan.

In November 1831 Muhammad Ali crossed the Gaza desert and marched into the Levant, taking control of Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Haifa, and he laid siege to Acre. By the summer of 1832 Egypt controlled Syria and Lebanon. While Aliand Ibrahim still considered themselves loyal subjects of the Ottoman Empire who had taken their just compensation forthe service, the Sultan Mahmud proclaimed them to be rebels.Ibrahim then continued to advance across the Taurus Mountains into Anatolia, and in December 1832 defeated the Ottoman forces near Konya. By February he was within two hundred miles from the Bosphorus. The Sultan appealed to Russia for help. The Russians responded with a naval force that sailed through the Bosphorus to the Golden Horn followed by a force of almost 30,000 troops to defend Constantinople. Concerned about the Russian presence, Britain and France sent naval forces to the Dardanelles.

Under the Convention of London in 1832, the modern Greek state was created with the pro-British Otto of Bavariaas its first king.In 1833 after helping the Turkish sultan against the Greeks,Mohammad Ali demanded hereditary power over Egypt and Syria.When the sultan refused, Ali’s son, Ibrahim Pasha, led troops into Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. The sultan appealed for help from the British and French. Failing to

gain their support, the sultan then approach the Russian Tsar who agreed to help. Once the Russian intervened the British and French sent warship to Besika Bay beyond the Dardanelles, and in May 1833 they mediated a peace between Muhammad Ali and the Turks under which the Egyptians agreed to withdraw from Anatolia in exchange for the island of Crete and the Hijaz in western Arabia. Ibrahim was appointedthe governor for life of Syria, but Muhammad Ali didn’t obtain the hereditary kingdom in Egypt. The presence of the British forced the Russians to withdraw. Orlando Figes writes: “The events of 1833 were a turning point in British policy towards Russia and Turkey. Until then, Britain’s mainconcern in the Ottoman Empire had been to preserve the status quo, mainly from fears that its breakup would affect the balance of power in Europe and possibly lead to a European war, rather than from any firm commitment to the sovereignty of the Sultan (their support for Greece had not demonstrated much of that). But once the British woke up to the danger that the Ottoman Empire might be taken over by the Egyptians at the head of a powerful Muslim revival, or, even worse, that it might become a Russian protectorate, they took an active interest in Turkey.”56

After the Egyptians evacuated Anatolia, the Russians withdrew from Constantinople. “Parisian bankers hoped they might turn Muhammad Ali’s lands into a commercial satrapy dominating the Levant. For a variety of motives, the French therefore sought the inclusion of Syria and Lebanon—as well as the Arabian peninsula—in the territories of which he was overlord,” writes Palmer. This put him at odds with the British. “There was sufficient hostility to Muhammad Ali andhis dynasty in both London and St. Petersburg to foster an Anglo-Russian entente which was suspicious of the French and, since it was prepared to bolster up the Ottoman Empire as long as possible, could count on Austrian and Prussians support.”57

In 1839 the Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali tried a second time to overturn the Ottoman sultan, this time with French

support. The Ottoman navy defected to the Egyptians at Alexander, and the Sultan Abdülmecid appealed to Russia again for help, but this time the Tsar decided to work with Britain to restore the rule of the Sultan, aiming to create a wedge between Britain and France. Russia, Britain, Austria, and Prussia convinced Mohammad Ali to withdraw fromSyria. In July 1840 Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia and Turkey signed the Treaty of London, which closed the Straitsto foreign warships in time of peace. They also demanded that Muhammad Ali submit to the authority of the Sultan or face joint intervention by the Great Powers. Thinking he could count on French support, Ali refused this demand. The French didn’t intervene, and in September and October 1840 British and Austrian warships bombarded the coast of Lebanon, and British, Austrian, and Turkish forces reinforced Druze (a Shi’ite sect of Islam) rebels in the hills north of Beirut. As Ibrahim’s forces withdrew from Lebanon, the British occupied Acre. In November 1840 Muhammad Ali was forced to sign the Convention of Alexandria, under which Egypt agreed to withdraw from Crete and Arabia. In February 1841 the Sultan Abdulmecid issued a decree recognizing Muhammad Ali as the hereditary Viceroy ofEgypt. By the spring of 1841 rival factions began an armed resistance to Ottoman rule. The unrest in Syria and the Lebanon alarmed Russia that supported Orthodox Christians there; Britain that supported the Druze, Jews, and Protestants; and the France and Austria that supported the Maronite Catholics.

In 1858 a civil war broke out around Mount Lebanon between Maronite Catholics and Druze (Shi’ite) Muslims, which spread to Damascus in the spring of 1860. Seeking to protect the Maronites, Napoleon III called for a peacekeeping force to be sent to Beirut and Syria. To intercept the French-led force, the Ottoman Foreign MinisterMehmed Fuad rushed to Beirut to remove the Ottoman officialsand army officers who failed to prevent the violence. In 1861 France convened a conference at which Britain, France, and Turkey reached an agreement that most of the interior

would become an autonomous province with a non-Christian governor and an advisory council made up of an equal representation of the different religious faiths and administration districts for each sect. When this was put inplace, Napoleon II withdrew his troops.

“The range of the Sultan’s authority had contracted considerably in the past half-century,” writes Palmer. “Algeria was a French possession, Tunisia already dependent upon France; and, although the Ottomans had re-established effective rule in Tripolitania, the Bedouin of Cyrenaica followed the strictly puritanical Sanussi order which led throughout the second half of the century by Sayyid Muhammadal-Mahdi. In Egypt the cordiality which had marked the relationship between the Sultanate and the Viceregal dynastyon the eve of the Crimean War soon waned; it did not survivethe death of Abbas Hilmi in 1854 and the accession of his uncle, Muhammad Said, who had been Muhammad Ali’s favourite son.”58 As Viceroy, Said authorized his French friend Ferdinand de Lesseps to draw up plans from the Suez to a newMediterranean port named after Said. Palmer writes: “The British, always mistrustful of the French in Egypt, assured the Porte that the opening of a new waterway in the most prosperous of the Sultan’s tributary dependencies might benefit entrepreneurs in Paris but would certainly lower theimportance of the old trade routes from the Straits to the Euphrates and Persia.”59

European powers continued “pluck ripe fruit” from the Ottoman Empire, in Bismarck’s words. Egypt’s long-staple cotton was in demand in industrial Europe. The during American Civil War with cotton exports from the American South cut-off by the Northern blockade, prices for Egyptian cotton soared. The Ottoman governor Said bought a large share in the company established to build the Suez Canal. However, when the Civil War ended cotton prices fell. The Egyptian government was forced to sell its shares in the canal (which opened in 1869) to the British government. “TheSuez Canal—the booster rocket toward full independence,”

writes John Darwin, “became the Trojan Horse of foreign control, and quite literally) the invasion route for alien rule.”60 In 1867 the Ottoman governor Ismail obtained the title of khedive. Heavily in debt to European creditors, theEgyptian khedive Ismail agreed to allow Britain and France jointly to supervise Egypt’s finances. When this so-called “Dual Control” called for reducing the size of the Egyptian army, a revolt broke out in 1881 under the leadership of an Egyptian officer named Colonel Arabi. In September 1882 the British Liberal government under Gladstone sent troops into Egypt, sent Arabi into exile, and supervised the writing of a new constitution. Although initially saying they would withdraw, British troops occupied the country indefinitely and Egypt became “a veiled protectorate” of Britain.

The British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli felt that Britain needed a base of operations in Asia Minor. Under thesecret Cyprus Convention of June 1878, Turkey agreed to allow Britain to occupy Cyprus (which would remain under Turkish sovereignty) in return for Britain agreeing to defend Turkey against any future attack by Russia. Over the winter of 1896-1897 there were clashes between Christians and Muslims on Crete. In February a flotilla of torpedo boats commanded by the Greek king’s son, Prince George, departed Salamis to take control of Crete. The Russian tsar intervened, convincing the Greek king to call back the flotilla. Despite this recall, 1,500 volunteers of the Ethnike Hetairia departed from Piraeus, heading towards Crete, while further to the north others made raids from Thessaly. In April Sultan Abdulhamid declared war on Greece.After thirty days of fighting, King George I of the Hellenesaccepted an armistice mediated by Russia. Under its terms the Greek fighters on Crete were to be withdrawn and replaced by international peacekeepers from Austria-Hungary,France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Russia. Under the final peace treaty, Greece had to pay an indemnity to the Ottoman Empire and Greece retained control of Thessaly, but had to permit Muslims living there to seek refuge in Anatolia. Crete remained under Ottoman suzerainty, but with a

Christian governor. Alan Palmer notes that “Russian, British, French and Italian troops occupied the chief towns—an early and successful experiment in international policingof a troubled region.”61

However, Greece continued to support uprisings on Crete. In 1898 Turkey agreed to create an autonomous state of Crete under Ottoman suzerainty. In the summer of 1912 Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro formed a Balkan League. In October Montenegrin troops invaded northern Albania and Novibazar, which was followed by a combined assault on Macedonia, a Bulgarian attack on Thrace, and Greek attacks in the Aegean. In November 1912, Bulgaria had occupied Thrace, including the city of Edirne; Serbia had taken control of Kossovo, Monastir, Ochred and Skopje; and the Greeks controlled the port of Salonika. By the terms of the peace agreed to in June 1913 Turkey lost Crete, Macedonia, Thrace, Albania, and most of the Aegean islands. In December 1913 Crete became part of Greece.

The French had annexed Algeria in 1830. At the height of the Egyptian Crisis in 1881, the French “grabbed ‘the pear’ of Tunisia [and] retained their political ambitions inSyria.” They established a protectorate in Morocco in 1912. “Even the Italians, who had looked covetously at Tunisia before the French established their protectorate there, wereshowing an interest in Tripolitania and the Dodecanese islands.”62 In September 1911 Italy issued an ultimatum concerning alleged mistreatment of Italians traders and merchants in Libya. This was followed by Italian attacks on Tripoli, Benghazi, Derna, and Tobruk. By November the Kingdom of Italy succeeded in annexing Libya. The following spring Italy sent a squadron into the Dardanelles, upon which the Turks closed the Straits to all commerce. While being repelled from the Straits, Italy occupied the islands of Rhodes and the Dodecanese.

One might ask why a work on ethnicity, self-determination, and the American Empire has taken a detour

into World History dating back to ancient times. The point here is that counter to post-modernist scholars such as Benedict Anderson who argues in this book Imagined Communities:Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism that ethnicity and nationality are “social fictions” that did not exist prior to their being “imaged” in the nineteenth century, the rootsof ethnicity and nationality are older than either the use of the terms or even the self-identification of the people themselves.63 The roots of ethnicity (in this case, the Greeks, the Romans or Italians, the Turks, the Persians or Iranians, the Arabs, the Berbers, the Egyptians, Austrians, the Hungarians or Magyars, the Germans, and the northern andsouthern Slavs) are found in religious and linguistic differences and ancient empires that can only be understood in terms of geography. Most Americans have little understanding of the geographic significance of the Black Sea and the rivers that flow into it, the Bosphorus and the Straits of the Dardanelles as the geographic link between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, or the strategic importance of Istanbul (formerly, Constantinople), Turkey, at the intersection of Europe and Asia. The Turks, the British, the French, the Austrians, and the Russians all understood this, but Americans, on the other hand, came knowabout this region only in the aftermath of World War One. Yet, most Americans, including our leaders, still didn’t understand the interplay between ethnicity and empire that shaped the region and continued during the century that followed World War One. Understanding the fate of the Caliphate has become even more important in the twenty-firstcentury because of the so-called “War on Terrorism.”

1 Orlando Figes, Crimea: The Last Crusade (London and New York: Allen Lane,2010), p. 24.

2 Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable (1855; Reprint, New York: Harper and Row, 1966), pp. 15-18, 32-34, 130-131.

3 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of PhilipII, translated by Sián Reynolds. Vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 17.

4 Ibid., pp. 23, 25, 167.

5 H.D. Kitto, The Greeks (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1951)p. 28.

6 Ibid., pp. 7, 15.

7 Ibid., op. cit.

8 R. H. Barrow, The Romans (Baltimore: Penquin Books, 1949), p. 37

9 Traian Stoianovich, A Study in Balkan Civilization (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), pp. p. 51, 61-62

10 Barrow, op. cit.

11 Dennis P. Hupchick, The Balkans: From Constantinople to Communism (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. 14.

12 Arther Ferrill, The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), p. 69.

13 Charles Diehl, Byzantium: Greatness and Decline (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1957), p. 21.

14 Hupchick, op. cit., p. 19.

15 Peter Charanis, “Byzantium and the West,” in Great Problems in European Civilization, edited by Kenneth M. Setton and Henry R. Winkler (New York:Prentice-Hall, 1954), pp. 94-95.

16 Ibid., p. 95.

17 Charles Diehl, Byzantium: Greatness and Decline (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1957), p. 27.

18 Ibid., p. 81.

19 Richard Joel Russell, Fred Bowerman Kniffen, and Evelyn Lord Pruitt, Culture Worlds. Rev. Ed.( London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 336-337.

20 Bernard Lewis, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (New York: Scribner, 1995), p. 54.

21 Ibid., p. 138.

22 Russell, Kniffen, and Pruitt, op. cit., p. 323.

23 Diehl, op.cit., p. 221.

24 Alan Palmer, The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire (London: John Murray, 1992), p. 4.

25 Hupchick, op. cit., p. 134.

26 Ibid., p. 134.

27 Ibid., p. 147.

28 Braudel, op. cit., p. 127.

29 Ibid., p. 321.

30 Palmer, op. cit., p. 22.

31 Lewis, op. cit., p. 99.

32 Ibid., pp. 103-104.

33 John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000 (New York, Berlin, and London: Bloomsbury Press, 2008), pp. 74, 143.

34 Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 25.

35 Mehrdad Kia, Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (Santa Barbara, Denver, and Oxford, England: Greenwood Press, 2011), p. 3.

36 Palmer, op. cit., p. 2.

37 Ibid., p. 3.

38 Ibid., The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire, p. 6.

39 Braudel, op. cit., p. 136.

40 Hupchick, op. cit., pp. 164-165.

41 Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, translated by Sián Reynolds. Vol. 2 (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), pp. 1088, 1176.

42 Kia, op. cit., p. 8.

43 Palmer, op. cit., p. 19.

44 Kia, op. cit., p. 9.

45 Darwin, op. cit., p. 141.

46 Palmer, op. cit., p. 44.

47 Darwin, op. cit., p.182.

48 Palmer, op. cit., pp. 65-66.

49 Ibid., p. 81.

50 Finkel, op. cit., p. 431.

51Palmer, op. cit., p. 33.

52 Ibid., p. 37.

53 Hupchick, The Balkans, pp. 223-224.

54 Palmer, op. cit., p. 98.

55 Orlando Figes, Crimea: The Last Crusade (London and New York: Allen Lane, 2010), p. 41.

56 Figes, op. cit., pp. 45-46.

57 Palmer, op. cit., p. 108.

58 Palmer, op. cit., p. 132.

59 Ibid., p. 132.

60 Darwin, op. cit., p. 291.

61 Palmer, op. cit., p. 186.

62 Ibid., p. 169

63 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983; Reprint, London and New York: Verso, 1991).