Middle East - Anthony Ham [28]
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Many of the tales recounted each night by Sheherazade in The Thousand and One Nights are set in Mamluk-era Egypt, particularly in Cairo, referred to as ‘mother of the world’.
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Rather than taking on the Byzantines directly, Osman’s successors (the Ottomans) deliberately picked off the bits and pieces of the empire that Constantinople could no longer control. By the end of the 14th century, the Ottomans had conquered Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Hungary and most of present-day Turkey. They had also moved their capital across the Dardanelles to Adrianople, today the Turkish city of Edirne. In 1453 came their greatest victory, when Sultan Mehmet II took Constantinople, the hitherto unachievable object of innumerable Muslim wars almost since the 7th century.
Sixty-four years later, on a battlefield near Aleppo, an army under the gloriously named sultan, Selim the Grim, routed the Mamluks and assumed sovereignty over the Hejaz. At a stroke, the whole of the eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt and much of Arabia, was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. By capturing Mecca and Medina, Selim the Grim claimed for the Ottomans the coveted title of the guardians of Islam’s holiest places. For the first time in centuries, the Middle East was ruled in its entirety by a single Islamic entity.
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Mehmet’s siege of Constantinople coincided with a lunar eclipse (22 May 1453). The defending Byzantines saw this ill omen as presaging the fall of the city and the impending defeat of all Christendom. The city fell within a week.
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LIFE UNDER THE OTTOMANS
The Ottoman Empire reached its peak, both politically and culturally, under Süleyman the Magnificent (r 1520–66), who led the Ottoman armies west to the gates of Vienna, east into Persia, and south through the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and into Yemen. His control also extended throughout North Africa. A remarkable figure, Süleyman was noted as much for codifying Ottoman law (he is known in Turkish as Süleyman Kanunı – law bringer) as for his military prowess. Süleyman’s legal code was a visionary amalgam of secular and Islamic law, and his patronage of the arts saw the Ottomans reach their cultural zenith.
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Zayni Barakat, by Gamal al-Ghitani, is full of intrigue, back stabbing and general Machiavellian goings-on in the twilight of Mamluk-era Cairo.
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Another hallmark of Ottoman rule, especially in its early centuries, was its tolerance. In general, Christian and Jewish communities were accorded the respect the Quran outlines for them as ‘People of the Book’ (see the boxed text, Click here) and were given special status. The Ottoman state was a truly multicultural and multilingual one, and Christians and Muslims rose to positions of great power within the Ottoman hierarchy. In a move unthinkable for a Muslim ruler today, Sultan Beyazit II even invited the Jews expelled from Iberia by the Spanish Inquisition to İstanbul in 1492.
But as so often happened in Middle Eastern history upon the death of a charismatic leader, things began to unravel soon after Süleyman died fighting on the Danube. The Ottomans may have held nominal power throughout their empire for centuries to come, but the growing decadence of the Ottoman court and unrest elsewhere in the countries that fell within the Ottoman sphere of influence ensured that, after Süleyman, the empire went into a long, slow period of decline.
Only five years after his death, Spain and Venice destroyed virtually the entire Ottoman navy at the Battle of Lepanto (in the Aegean Sea), thereby costing the Ottomans control over the western Mediterranean. North Africa soon fell under the sway of local dynasties. Conflict with the Safavids – Persia’s rulers from the early 16th century to the early 18th century – was almost constant.
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Süleyman the Magnificent was responsible for achievements as diverse as building the gates of Jerusalem and introducing to Europe, via Constantinople, the joys of coffee.
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Although