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The Ottoman Turks
This is just a short history I have extracted from the Cambridge Medieval History. I have cross-indexed it, as well as I could, with the timelines.
It was really Murad
I (son of Orkhan) who really established the Empire; during the thirty
years of his reign (1359-1389) he devoted his skill and boundless energy
to constructing an impressive power on the foundations laid by his father.
This state, with its zeal for the Holy War and its urge to expand, became
the terror of Christendom.
Murad's policy was two-fold:
he aimed primarily at prosecuting the Holy War and acquiring further territory
for Islam on the European side of the straits; he already possessed an
excellent base for attack in his occupation of the Thracian Chersonese,
the Gallipoli peninsula. His second
and equally important aim was to gain a firmer hold in Anatolia, the heart
of his empire and source of its power, whose development must keep pace
with expansion in Europe. His first expedition was therefore directed towards
the extension of his growing empire in Anatolia; he marched against Ankara,
wrested it from the control of the akhis and incorporated it into
his dominions. Later he acquired the principality of Hamid by purchase,
thus becoming master of a region on the Mediterranean coast in southern
Anatolia possessing the important harbour of Adalia (former Attalia, now
Antalya). His plans were furthered by alliances with Anatolian princes:
Murad married his eldest son Bayezid to a daughter of the prince of Germiyan,
and he gave his own daughter in marriage to the prince of Karaman `Ala'
ad-Din Bey, the successor of the Seljuqs of Rum and the most powerful Anatolian
prince apart from the Ottomans.
For his military expeditions
against Byzantium and the Balkan Christian states Murad had at his disposal
a number of admirable generals, among whom were his tutor Lala Shahin and
a certain ghazi Evrenos
Bey who had made his name in the Holy War. Immediately upon his accession
Murad dispatched an expedition to the Balkan peninsula (which the Turks
called Rumeli, `the Roman land', Rumelia). In 1360 Demotika (Didymotichus,
in Turkish Dimetoka) was captured, and Murad immediately erected a mighty
fortress there; soon afterwards (early in 1361) he took Adrianople,
the important city on the main highway from Constantinople to the Danube.
This event, news of which reached Venice as early as 14 March 1361, created
a powerful impression and drew the attention of the West for the first
time to this new power emerging in the Levant. Some sources assign a different
date to this epoch-making event, putting it in 1368-9, or even 1371, which
would appear to indicate that firm possession of the town was not immediately
established; however Adrianople (Turkish Edirne) did in fact soon come
permanently under Turkish rule, and by 1365 was being used by Murad as
a court second only in importance to Brusa, replacing Demotika which had
for a short time enjoyed this position.
From Adrianople further expeditions
were carried out in the eastern Balkans under the leadership either of
Lala Shahin or the Sultan himself. Lala Shahin is alleged to have taken
possession of the town of Philippopolis (Turkish Filibe) as early as 1363-4,
where he took up his residence as the chief governor (Beylerbey) of Rumelia.
The military operations which Murad directed against the southeast Balkan
peninsula came to a conclusion in about 1370; a considerable portion of
Thrace from the Aegean to the Black Sea was held by the Turks, and Constantinople,
with its narrow hinterland in Europe was henceforth completely encircled
by Turkish territory and cut off from the rest of Christendom. Murad, who
no longer styled himself Bey but Sultan, obliged both the Byzantine Emperor
and the Tsar of Bulgaria to acknowledge his suzerainty and contribute troops.
His stature was now so considerable that the chroniclers usually refer
to him as `Ruler' (Hudavendkar, abbreviated to Hunkar).
In 1371 the first attempt
was made to meet the Turkish threat. Evrenos Bey penetrated so far into
western Thrace that he soon reached the southern lands of the kingdom of
Serbia, which was then the most important power in the Balkans. This Turkish
menace provoked the Serbs to take the field against Murad with a powerful
army, but they were defeated on 26
Sept. 1371 at Crnomen on the Marica (in the Turkish chronicles the
battle is called Sirf sindigi, `Destruction of the Serbs', and this
name was afterwards given to the site of the battle).
After successfully countering
this attack Murad next addressed himself to organizing the affairs of the
conquered territories. He divided them (apparently about 1375-6) into great
and small fiefs (zi`amet and timar) and gave them to his
soldiers; large tracts of land, `special fiefs' (khass), were allotted
to his commanders. Apparently on the advice of his Vizier Hayr ad-Din Pasha,
he introduced an important innovation into his standing army, namely the
reinforcement of the infantry established under Orkhan by prisoners-of-
war, one-fifth of whom were considered under Islamic law as the Sultan's
property. This was the first stage in the transformation of these `new
troops' (yeni cheri or janissaries) into the slave army which was
to become so familiar.
The defeat of the Serbs
at Crnomen gave the Turks access to Serbian territory in both the north
and south Balkans. In the north the Sultan's regular army operated under
his personal leadership and captured Sofia (probably in 1385, at the earliest
1384), the environs of which had for some time been in the hands of the
Turks; shortly after they took Nis (according to the Serbian chronicles,
in 1386). In the same year, 1386, Murad marched against the Serbian prince
Lazar, whom he compelled to acknowledge his suzerainty. In the south the
campaign was carried out by the holy warriors led by Evrenos Bey and Hayr
ad-Din Pasha. In 1387 they took Serres, and after a three years' siege
Thessalonica also fell. Thessalonica did eventually pass from Turkish control,
but Serres remained permanently in Turkish hands, becoming an important
base for further Turkish expeditions in western and southern Rumelia.
The Karaman `Ala' ad-Din
Bey grew considerably alarmed at the increasing power of the Ottoman Bey,
whose acquisition of Ankara and Hamid had made them neighbours. Consequently,
despite the fact that he was Murad's son-in-law, he seized the opportunity
of Murad's absence in Rumelia to attempt an extension of his own lands
at the expense of the Ottoman kingdom. Murad refused to countenance such
an action and marched into Anatolia with a powerful army reinforced even
then by Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian auxiliaries, vanquishing `Ala' ad-Din
at Konya and obliging him to sue for peace through his wife, Murad's daughter;
it was accorded him in exchange for certain frontier districts such as
Akshehir (1386). This moderation shown to a Muslim prince, from whom he
did not exact an acknowledgment of his overlordship after victory as he
did from Christian rulers, reveals Murad's attitude as a muslim fighter;
he regarded his task as consisting solely in the extension of the authority
of Islam over the infidels; on the soil of Islam he only sought peaceful
conquests. This encounter with the Karaman ruler was the first of a series
which accompanied the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The Karamans, who were
after the Ottomans the most powerful Turkish princes in Anatolia, proved
to be their most dangerous rivals and were for almost a century a constant
thorn in the flesh, until at last Muhammad II absorbed Karamania into the
Ottoman Empire.
Murad's absence in Anatolia
was regarded by the Serbian prince Lazar, who had allied himself with Bulgaria
and Bosnia, as an opportune moment to rise in revolt against Ottoman rule.
Murad made war in person against the insurgents, forcing into submission
Sisman, tsar of the Bulgars. Next
he marched on Serbia, where on 15 June 1389 the Turks won a decisive victory
at the Battle of the Field of the Blackbird (Kossovopolje,
Turkish Kosova). During the battle, however, Sultan Murad I was murdered
by a Serb, and Prince Lazar was taken prisoner and put to death.
The murdered Sultan
was immediately succeeded by his eldest son Bayezid, who had no sooner
assumed the reins of government than he ordered the death of his brother
Ya'qub. By this deed he finally broke with ancient Turkish custom which
vested sovereignty in the entire reigning house, the members of which held
governorships in the provinces, and he introduced, along with the cruel
act of fratricide for reasons of state, the rigid practice of undivided
rule in the Ottoman Empire.
Bayezid I differed in
other respects from the earliest Ottoman rulers whose origins went back
to the Holy War. He resembled more closely the oriental type of despot
whose court etiquette he introduced, a step which alienated him from the
ghazis. He also diverged from the policy of his ancestors in his
attitude to the Turkish principalities of Anatolia in that he did not hesitate
to wage war on them as on the infidels in Rumelia; a pretext was in fact
provided by the hostile behaviour of the Karaman `Ala' ad-Din. Finally
he dispossessed them all and extended his sway over the whole of Anatolia,
an act which subsequently spelt his doom. He sought to give an air of legitimacy
to his violence by requesting the Abbasid Caliph in Cairo, in 1394, to
confer on him the title of `Sultan of Rum', which he readily obtained.
His father, Murad I, had already adopted the title of Sultan, regarding
his actual power as sufficient justification, but he was in fact only `prince'
(bey); it was Bayezid who first assumed the title of Sultan with
all its implications according to Sunnite doctrine, as the legitimate wielder
of power in his dominions.
His exploits in Anatolia
by no means deflected Bayezid's attention from events in Rumelia; on the
contrary he would often arrive on the spot with uncanny speed if his presence
was necessary, earning for himself the nickname of `Thunderbolt' (Yildirim). When
the tsar of Bulgaria, John Sisman, tried during Bayezid's
absence in Anatolia to shake off the Ottoman yoke, Yildirim hastened to
the spot. As a result of this revolt the Bulgarian tsar lost his capital,
Trnovo, was himself taken prisoner in
the fortress of Nicopolis where he had sought refuge, and was finally deprived
of his throne. Bulgaria now became an integral part of the Ottoman Empire
(1393). During another of Bayezid's absences
in Anatolia the prince of Wallachia, Mircea,
invaded Ottoman territory; he too was defeated (in the encounter known
as the battle of Rovine, or Arges,
autumn 1393) and compelled to acknowledge Ottoman suzerainty and to pay
a tribute (1394).
After these exploits
Yildirim continued to extend the scope of his activities so that the Turkish
menace assumed gigantic proportions; in 1394 the Sultan embarked on further
military expeditions in Rumelia (the reconquest of Thessalonica and campaigns
in Greece which penetrated as far as the Peloponnese, and were probably
directed by Evrenos Bey). The following year (1395) the Sultan made his
preparations for a really considerable undertaking: he commenced the siege
of Constantinople and resolved to attack Hungary. The Hungarians were well
aware of his intentions, and the western world determined on a crusade
against the Turks. The king of Hungary, Sigismund,
who later became the German Emperor, took the field with a strong cavalry
force containing contingents from every nation in Europe, but suffered
an overwhelming defeat at the hands of Bayezid on 25 September 1396 at
Nicopolis on the Danube. This was
a victory won by the rigidly disciplined regular army of the Ottoman military
machine over the undisciplined feudal army with its motley array of rival
national contingents , a victory won by the unity of purpose inherent in
a despotically governed oriental Empire over this multiplicity of western
states, whose divergent aims rendered a united defensive front most difficult
to achieve. The status of the Ottoman Empire as a first-class power was
now firmly established and evident to all.
After Nicopolis Bayezid
resumed the siege of Constantinople which had temporarily been raised in
view of the approaching crusaders' army. But Byzantium was granted yet
another period of respite, for in the East a storm was gathering which
was to break over Bayezid's head. Timurlenk, the Tamerlane of the western
chroniclers, a Turk originally of Mongol stock, had established an empire
beyond the Oxus intended as a basis for the revival of the Mongol Empire.
Since 1380 he had subjugated the whole of Persia, and in 1400 had captured
Baghdad. The dispossessed Turkish princes of Anatolia took refuge with
him and incited him to declare war on Bayezid. After Bayezid had annexed
what had once been the territory of the Mongol governors in north-eastern
Anatolia Timur complied with the wishes of the Anatolian princes and marched
from Baghdad against Rum. As early as 1400 he took Sivas, where, following
his usual practice, he organized a cruel massacre, particularly of the
Christians in the city. He then turned his attention to Syria, conquering
Aleppo and Damascus. After an interchange of messages, in which Timur sought
to restrict Bayezid within his own confines, reminding him that his real
concern should be the prosecution of the Holy War against the infidels,
and demanding restitution of the Anatolian principalities to their titular
owners, the Mongol attack was launched in 1402. On
20 July, in the plain of Cibuq Abad, to the northeast of Ankara,
the two emperors met in battle, from which Timur
emerged victorious. The proud Bayezid was taken prisoner and compelled
to accompany Timur on his passage through Anatolia carried in a litter
(some accounts say in a cage); the following year (8 March 1403) he died
while Timur's prisoner, probably by his own hand. In the autumn of 1402
Brusa, the Ottoman capital, was captured and pillaged; then Timur himself
made a significant contribution to the Holy War by taking Smyrna (Turkish
Izmir); next he re-established all the Turkish princes in their domains
before his departure in 1404 and his return to his court at Samarqand;
he died soon after on 19 February 1405. The Ottoman Empire had fallen headlong
from its rapid rise to power. The West could breathe once more.
After the catastrophe
inflicted by Timur at the battle of Ankara the young Ottoman Empire, which
had been constructed with such rapidity and energy, collapsed and was left
dismembered. True, the recently conquered portion of the Empire in Europe,
Rumelia, remained more or less intact after the disaster, and in Adrianople
Bayezid's eldest son, the amir Sulayman, ascended the throne on the death
of his father and ruled over a brilliant court. But the Ottoman possessions
in Anatolia were severely reduced. All the Turkish princes were reinstated.
In northwest Anatolia they only retained their original lands with Brusa,
covering approximately the same area as when Orkhan bequeathed it to his
son. To the northeast they still had the former domain of the Mongol governors,
with Sivas and Amasea, and here Bayezid's youngest son, Muhammad (Mehmed)
Chelebi, had established control. Two other sons,
Isa and Musa, disputed possession of the older territory. Isa was soon
defeated, and Musa then attempted to reunite the Empire under his sway
by declaring war on his elder brother the amir Sulayman, who himself aimed
at annexing Anatolia, and did in fact succeed in temporarily occupying
Brusa (1406), though he was soon driven out. Finally Musa
defeated Sulayman and reunited Rumelia with the older territory in Anatolia
(1410); Sulayman was put to death when escaping to Constantinople (17 February
1411).
It is a measure of the
prestige which the Ottoman Empire as a power in its own right had already
acquired in the eyes of its neighbours, and also of the lack of purpose
displayed by the Christians, that no advantage was taken of the weakness
of the divided empire to launch a counter-attack. Sigismund of Hungary,
who had since 1410 been German Emperor, did attempt to form a coalition
against the Turks, but without success. The Ottomans were thus given time
to recover.
Bayezid's elder sons,
particularly the amir Sulayman, had adapted themselves so completely to
their new environment in Rumelia, which Murad I and Bayezid I had conquered,
that they adopted many of the customs prevalent in neighbouring Christian
states. By so doing, however, they lost the support of their ancestors'
former adherents, the `holy warriors'. In contrast, Muhammad, the youngest
son who held court at Amasea in northeast Anatolia, was surrounded by a
much more primitive society in which the old popular Turkish traditions
of religious warfare still flourished vigorously. His attitude was therefore
more in harmony with that of the ghazis who joined his ranks in
considerable numbers. When it came to a decisive
struggle between Musa and Muhammad, the latter was victorious at Jamurlu
in Serbia (July 1413) and was able to reunite the entire Empire under a
single ruler. Musa perished in the fight.
Muhammad (Mehmed) I
had many obstacles to overcome before peaceful conditions prevailed in
the reunited empire. Scarcely had he ascended the throne when the Karaman
ruler made a belated attempt to use the situation as an opportunity for
an attack on the Ottomans. The Karaman army penetrated as far as Brusa
and invested the Ottoman capital, but the garrison captain at Brusa, Ivaz
Pasha, forced it to withdraw. Muhammad then attacked the Karamans and besieged
Konya; finally peace was made between the two (1414). Soon afterwards a
dangerous dervish revolt broke out in western Anatolia in the neighbourhood
of Smyrna; it coincided with a seditious movement
in Rumelia (originating in Wallachia)
led by a certain Badr ad-Din Mahmud who was known as the `Son of the Judge
of Samavna'. Considerable military force was necessary to quell these disturbances.
In the end the leader of both rebellions Badr ad-Din Mahmud, was seized
and executed in Serres (1416). After a brief
interval there appeared near Smyrna an adventurer called Junayd, and yet
another who claimed to be Mustafa,
one of Sultan Bayezid's sons (known as Duzme Mustafa), of whom nothing
had been heard since the battle of Ankara. Both were completely unsuccessful
and were obliged to flee to Constantinople, whereupon Muhammad concluded
an agreement with the Emperor Manuel II which assured the custody of these
two disturbers of the peace (1421). Muhammad I was thus preoccupied throughout
his reign with overcoming domestic difficulties; the prosecution of the
Holy War was out of the question. He died of apoplexy on 4 May at Gallipoli.
His son and successor
Murad II (1421-51) was also confronted with internal problems at the outset
of his reign. The Emperor Manuel released both the false Mustafa and Junayd.
Mustafa had some success to begin with, and the Greeks took advantage of
the struggle to regain possession of Gallipoli for a time. But Mustafa
was ultimately reduced to submission. Murad then directed his attack against
the Byzantine Emperor, determined to punish him for his unfriendly conduct,
and he again laid siege to Constantinople (1422). But the machinations
of Junayd and the appearance of the Sultan's younger brother, the young
Mustafa, who claimed the throne, though this design was soon frustrated
by his capture and execution (1423), obliged Murad to make peace again
with the Emperor John VIII, Manuel's successor, and to raise the siege.
In 1424 a treaty was made with Byzantium, which reduced the East Roman
Empire to little more than the city of Constantinople. It was not until
Junayd had been finally defeated and put to death in 1425, and a further
tranquility was restored and the way lay open for a resumption of the Holy
War. Meanwhile, Murad had been trying to extend his principality in Anatolia
by peaceful means. To this end he concluded a treaty in 1423 with Isfendiyar,
the prince of Kastamuni, by which an area rich in mineral deposits was
ceded to the Ottoman Empire and the house of Ottoman so retrieved its position
that the Anatolian princes regarded Murad as their overlord. The only disagreements
that still persisted were between the Ottoman rulers and their old rivals
the Karamans; the reign of Murad II saw three outbreaks of war between
Ottoman and Karaman.
Meanwhile the aged Evrenos
Bey had been richly rewarded with lands in western Thrace and Macedonia
which he governed as Bey of the Frontier, and his son had been leading
expeditions into Albania and Greece, going as far south as the Peloponnese.
Murad himself now marched on Macedonia, completing its subjugation, and
captured Thessalonica which the Venetians had recently purchased from the
Byzantines (March 1430). The partial subjection of Albania was then carried
out, mainly during the years 1435-6. There was also fighting on the Hungarian
frontier; Transylvania
was invaded from Wallachia, Hungary from Serbia; in 1439 Semendria (Smederevo)
on the Danube fell to the Turks, and remained a base for their campaigns
against Hungary.
This renewed activity
on the part of the Muslims provoked a response from the Christians. The
Byzantine Emperor John VIII Paleologus tried to obtain the help of the
West in an attempt to break the Turkish encirclement, by negotiating a
union between the Byzantine and the Roman Churches. He journeyed in person
to Italy, and at the Council of Ferrara, Florence in 1438- 9 he agreed
to the union with Rome. Nevertheless the Council's decisions were vigorously
attacked in Constantinople, and finally condemned by the Patriarch in 1443;
his action was no doubt influenced by the knowledge that the Turks would
oppose a union of the Eastern and Western Churches. The Council was therefore
a failure from the ecclesiastical point of view, but it did arouse in the
West a renewed interest in Eastern affairs.
The campaigns of the
Turkish holy warriors in Hungary and Albania called forth men who successfully
championed the Christian cause within the means at their disposal. When
the Turks under Evrenoszade `Ali Bey besieged Belgrade by land and water
(1440-1), the city was delivered at the end of six months by King Vladislav
III of Poland, now also king of Hungary. But the
real heart of Hungarian resistance to the Turks was the voivode of Transylvania,
John Hunyadi, who in the same year won
a victory over the Turks at Semendria and in the following year drove back
Turkish attacks on Transylvania. At this point Pope Eugenius IV called
for a crusade against the Turks. A Hungarian crusaders' army reinforced
with Germans and Poles and led by King Vladislav and John Hunyadi invaded
Rumelia in 1443, while the Sultan was absent in Anatolia engaged in repelling
a Karaman attack. The Christians defeated the
Turks at Nis, captured Sofia
and achieved several further victories; but as they were crossing the mountains
(Sredna Gora) into the plain of Philippopolis in the depth of winter, they
encountered invincible Turkish resistance at Zlatica
(Turkish Izladi), which compelled them to turn back (12 December 1443),
though they did gain victories over the Turks during their retreat.
These Christian successes
encouraged George Castriota, the Bey of Dibra in central Albania, to raise
the standard of revolt; when a boy he had lived at the court of Murad II
as a hostage, where he was brought up in the Muslim faith and bore the
Muslim name of Iskender Bey (to the Western world he was known as Skanderbeg).
He had subsequently been created Bey of the Frontier, receiving Dibra in
fee. He now returned to the Christian fold and took possession of the town
of Kroja (Turkish Akche-hisar, in the mountainous region between Durazzo
and Alessio), where he concluded an alliance with the Albanian chiefs in
the hope of throwing off the Turkish yoke. By means of guerilla warfare
he successfully resisted Turkish attempts to suppress this revolt. Confronted
with this difficult situation , reverses in Hungary, rebellions in Albania
and Greece, above all the threatening attitude of the Karaman Ibrahim Bey
in Anatolia , Murad II was reduced to concluding a ten-year truce with
Hungary. It was signed by the Sultan in Adrianople on 12 June 1444, and
is said to have been accepted on oath by King Vladislav at Szegedin (2)
at the end of July (at the latest on 1 August 1444). After the conclusion
of the truce Murad departed into Anatolia with the intention of subduing
his adversary, the Karaman oghlu Ibrahim Bey, leaving behind in
Adrianople his son Muhammad (Mehmed) Chelebi, a twelve-year old boy, who
later succeeded him, to rule over the European portion of the Empire under
the protection of his old advisers, more especially the vizier Halil Pasha,
grandson of the vizier of Murad I.
Meanwhile the crusading
movement had gained ground, thanks to the encouragement of Pope Eugenius
IV. As early as June 1444, before the conclusion of the truce, a crusaders'
fleet had put to sea at Venice, and on 4 August, only a few days after
the truce, King Vladislav committed himself on oath to carry through to
the end the crusade which was to expel the Turks from Europe. The
crusading army was soon on the move, crossed the Danube at Orsova
and marched through Bulgaria in the direction of Varna, from which it was
hoped to launch an attack upon the Turks by sea. On
receiving the news Murad hastily concluded the Karaman campaign, made peace
with Ibrahim Bey and hurried back to Europe, where he inflicted a crushing
defeat on the Christians at Varna on
10 November 1444; the king of Hungary, Vladislav, fell in battle, and only
fragments of the crusaders' army were able to make their way home.
Soon after the battle
of Varna, in December 1444 or early in January 1445, Murad II, for reasons
unknown, abdicated in favour of his son Muhammad (Mehmed) Chelebi , an
isolated case in oriental history , and retired to Maghnisa, formerly Magnesia
(the modern Manisa). But certain difficulties which the janissaries caused
the young Sultan, coupled with the news that Constantine, the Despot of
Mistra in the Peloponnese, and also Hunyadi, were behaving in a hostile
manner, caused the vizier Halil Pasha to summon Murad back to the throne.
Accordingly he became Sultan once again (August 1446) and sent his son
to Maghnisa. His first campaign was directed against Constantine; he stormed
and destroyed the Hexamilion, the wall across the Isthmus of Corinth which
Constantine XI had erected, and imposed Ottoman rule on the despotate of
Mistra. Next Hunyadi, eager to avenge the ignominy
of Varna, made war on the Turks and invaded Serbia. Murad took the field
with a mighty army and gained a decisive victory on 17-19 October 1448,
on the Field of the Blackbirds (Kossovopolje)
where in 1389 Serbia's fate had been decided. This victory finally restored
Ottoman rule over the Balkans. It was only in Albania that the rebels held
out under George Castriota (Skanderbeg); even so Murad succeeded in capturing
one or two fortified places, but his siege against Kroja, Castriota's headquarters,
was unavailing (1450). On 3 February 1451 Murad II died near Adrianople,
from a fit of apoplexy during a meal, at the early age of forty-nine.
The reign of Murad II
is important for the subsequent history of the Ottoman Empire by reason
of his organization of the army and his encouragement of intellectual interests
at court. It is of decisive significance that under his regime the practice
of the youth tribute (devshirme), whereby the janissary corps drew
reinforcements, became an accepted procedure; it is reported by Bartholomaeus
de Jano that Murad introduced it in 1438. The youth tribute required suitable
boys between ten and fifteen years of age to be selected from the Christian
populations in the Balkans at stated intervals, originally every five years,
later more often; they were brought up as Muslims at court and by Turkish
high dignitaries, and when they had completely assimilated the Turkish
religion, language and culture, they joined the ranks of the janissaries,
where a brilliant career awaited them, with the possibility of holding
the highest offices of the Empire. This practice enabled the Turks to deprive
their Christian subject races of the flower of their manhood, and at the
same time strengthened the Turkish core of the Empire; hence the large
number of generals and statesmen, grand viziers and other high officials
of the Sublime Porte during the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
who sprang from the ranks of the conquered Christian races; the older Ottoman
nobility, whose help and advice Murad II himself had continued to draw
on, were increasingly excluded from political life.
Another important aspect
of Murad's reign was the interest displayed both by the Sultan himself
and his dignitaries in every sphere of intellectual life. Here Murad II
was continuing the trend which began under Bayezid I and was taken over
by the Amir Sulayman; under him the Ottoman court, like those of the great
oriental rulers, became a centre of cultural life. Turkish literature,
encouraged by the Sultan himself and by his nobles, received a powerful
impetus, and in the imperial capitals, Brusa and Adrianople, there arose
buildings of artistic worth whose style (mutatis mutandis) presents
an undeniable spiritual affinity with contemporary renaissance art.
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