99 Fun Facts About Ottoman Empire

Which region of northwestern Anatolia, on the Byzantine frontier, was the cradle of the Ottoman beylik?

Bithynia, the Byzantine province south of the Sea of Marmara around Nicaea, was the beylik's cradle; the victory at Bapheus in 1302 opened it to Ottoman expansion.

Which city did Osman's son Orhan capture in 1326 and make the new Ottoman capital?

Bursa fell to Orhan in 1326 after a long blockade and became the first Ottoman capital; the early sultans were buried there.

Which Serbian prince led the army against Sultan Murad I at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389?

Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic commanded the Christian coalition at Kosovo Polje on 15 June 1389 and was captured and executed after the battle, in which Murad I also died.

Which Turco-Mongol conqueror defeated the Ottomans at Ankara in 1402 and captured Sultan Bayezid I?

Timur (Tamerlane) routed Bayezid I at Ankara on 20 July 1402 and held him captive until his death in 1403; the Ottoman Interregnum followed.

Which sultan conquered Constantinople on 29 May 1453?

Mehmed II, in his early twenties, entered the city on 29 May 1453 and made it his capital, earning the epithet Fatih, 'the Conqueror'.

How long did the final siege of Constantinople last in 1453?

The siege lasted 53 days, from 6 April to 29 May 1453, when the walls were breached and Emperor Constantine XI died in the fighting.

How did the besieging sultan get his ships into the Golden Horn past the Byzantine chain barrier in 1453?

The road of greased logs ran across Galata on the north side of the Golden Horn.

What was the giant Ottoman cannon that hurled 600-pound stone balls at Constantinople called?

The bombard, named the Basilica, was cast by the Hungarian founder Orban; about 8 metres long, it could be fired only around seven times a day.

Which practice did the Conqueror of Constantinople legalise to preserve the state?

The Conqueror's law code sanctioned royal fratricide, allowing a new sultan to execute his brothers 'for the good of the order of the world'; the practice lasted into the early 17th century.

Which sultan's conquests led the Ottoman rulers to adopt the title of caliph?

Selim I's conquest of Mamluk Egypt and the Hejaz in 1516-17 made the sultan guardian of the holy cities, the basis of the later Ottoman claim to the caliphate.

At which 1514 battle did the Ottomans defeat Shah Ismail of Safavid Iran?

At Chaldiran, in August 1514, Ottoman cannon and Janissary muskets broke the Safavid cavalry, and the Ottomans briefly occupied Tabriz.

By what epithet is Suleiman the Magnificent known in Turkish tradition?

Turks call Suleiman Kanuni, 'the Lawgiver', for codifying the empire's secular kanun laws during his 1520-1566 reign.

At which 1526 battle did Suleiman break the Kingdom of Hungary?

At Mohacs on 29 August 1526 Suleiman's army destroyed the Hungarian host in under two hours; King Louis II drowned while fleeing.

Which captain defended Szigetvar to the death against Suleiman's last campaign in 1566?

Nikola Zrinski led the final sortie from the burning fortress of Szigetvar on 7 September 1566, dying with his garrison shortly after Suleiman himself had died in camp.

Which Catholic king allied with Suleiman against Austria and Spain, jointly taking Nice in 1543?

Francis I of France, Charles V's rival, made the Franco-Ottoman alliance of 1536; in 1543 Barbarossa's fleet and the king's troops jointly besieged Nice.

Under what name is Hurrem Sultan, Suleiman's legal wife, better known in Europe?

Roxelana, a name meaning 'the Ruthenian', was how Europeans knew Hurrem; born in Ruthenia, she was enslaved by Crimean Tatars and sold to the palace in Constantinople.

What name is given to the 1533-1656 period when imperial consorts and mothers held great power?

The Sultanate of Women began with Hurrem's influence over Suleiman and peaked under Kosem Sultan, who was murdered in 1651 in a feud with Turhan Hatice.

Which family of grand viziers effectively ran the empire from 1656 to 1703?

The Koprulu viziers, beginning with Koprulu Mehmed Pasha in 1656, restored order and finances; under Fazil Ahmed the conquest of Crete was completed in 1669.

What did the elite Janissary infantry take their name from?

Janissary comes from Turkish yeniceri, 'new soldier'; the corps was founded under Murad I in the 14th century as the sultan's household infantry.

What was the devshirme?

The devshirme was the forced levy of Christian boys for state service: taken mainly from the Balkans, they were converted and trained for the Janissaries or the palace, and many rose to grand vizier.

Which sultan abolished the Janissary corps in 1826?

Mahmud II had the rebellious Janissaries bombarded in their barracks in June 1826 and dissolved the corps, replacing it with a modern army.

Which 1571 Holy League naval victory was the last major Western battle fought almost entirely between galleys?

At Lepanto on 7 October 1571 the Holy League fleet under Don John of Austria destroyed most of the Ottoman galleys; Miguel de Cervantes was wounded in the battle.

Which Polish king led the relief of Vienna in 1683, sweeping away Kara Mustafa Pasha's army?

John III Sobieski led the great cavalry charge of 12 September 1683 that broke the Ottoman lines before Vienna; Kara Mustafa was executed for the defeat.

Which Swedish king took refuge in the Ottoman Empire after Poltava in 1709?

The result was an Ottoman victory in the Pruth River Campaign of 1710-11.

Who persuaded the grand vizier and clergy in 1726 to allow a printing press for non-religious books?

Ibrahim Muteferrika, a Hungarian-born convert, won a fatwa and Ahmed III's firman in 1727 and printed his first book, an Arabic-Turkish dictionary, in 1729.

Which Egyptian governor was tasked with crushing the Wahhabi revolt, destroying the Emirate of Diriyah in 1818?

Muhammad Ali Pasha, the sultan's governor of Egypt from 1805, sent his sons against the Wahhabis; the campaign ended with the razing of Diriyah in 1818.

What nickname was given to the Ottoman Empire by the mid-19th century?

Tsar Nicholas I is credited with calling the empire 'the sick man of Europe' in 1853, as its hold on the Balkans weakened.

What was the name of the 1839 to 1876 reform period that modernised the Ottoman state?

The Tanzimat ('reorganisation') opened with the Gulhane Edict of 1839 and brought conscription, secular courts and the 1856 Reform Edict promising equality for non-Muslims.

Which American inventor received an Ottoman patent for the telegraph in 1847?

Samuel Morse's telegraph was demonstrated to Sultan Abdulmecid at a Bosporus palace in 1847; the sultan tested it himself and issued Morse a patent.

Which sultan reverted the empire to absolute monarchy after the 1876 constitution?

Abdul Hamid II prorogued parliament in February 1878 and ruled by decree for thirty years, until the 1908 revolution forced him to restore the constitution.

Which island's administration did Britain take over in 1878 for backing the Ottomans at the Congress of Berlin?

Under the Cyprus Convention of June 1878 Britain took over Cyprus's administration in return for supporting the Ottomans against Russia at Berlin; the island stayed nominally Ottoman until 1914.

What did the sultan do with most of the Ottoman fleet after the 1877-78 Russian war?

The sultan distrusted his navy after the war, so he locked it in the Golden Horn to rot; the warships lay idle at anchor for three decades until 1908.

Which movement's 1908 revolution restored the Ottoman constitution?

The Young Turks, organised as the Committee of Union and Progress, forced the sultan to restore the 1876 constitution in July 1908 and later seized power in a 1913 coup.

On which side did the Ottoman Empire enter World War I?

The Ottomans joined the Central Powers alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary, opening hostilities with a surprise bombardment of Russia's Black Sea ports on 29 October 1914.

Which strait did the Ottomans successfully defend in the Gallipoli campaign of 1915-16?

Ottoman forts and minefields on the Dardanelles repulsed the Allied fleet on 18 March 1915, and the Allied landings on Gallipoli were evacuated by January 1916.

Which Sharif of Mecca launched the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans in June 1916?

Sharif Hussein bin Ali proclaimed the revolt at Mecca on 10 June 1916 after the McMahon correspondence; his sons Faisal and Abdullah led its armies.

Which 1916 secret agreement carved the Ottoman Middle East into British and French spheres?

The Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916, negotiated by Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot, assigned Syria and Lebanon to France and Mesopotamia to Britain, with Palestine under international control.

Which armistice, signed on 30 October 1918, ended the Ottoman Empire's war?

The Armistice of Mudros was signed aboard HMS Agamemnon in Mudros harbour on Lemnos on 30 October 1918; Allied forces then occupied Constantinople.

Which 1920 treaty finalised the Ottoman Empire's partition but let the sultan keep his title?

The Treaty of Sevres, signed on 10 August 1920, stripped the empire of its Arab lands and much of Anatolia; Kemal's nationalists rejected it and won the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

On what date was the Ottoman sultanate abolished?

The Grand National Assembly in Ankara voted to abolish the sultanate on 1 November 1922; the last sultan sailed from Constantinople on a British warship on 17 November.

Who was the last Ottoman sultan?

Mehmed VI Vahideddin, who reigned from 1918, was deposed when the sultanate was abolished and left Constantinople aboard HMS Malaya; his cousin Abdulmecid II was caliph only.

What was the millet system?

The millet system gave autonomy for religious communities to run their own affairs: Greek Orthodox, Jewish and other millets kept their own courts, schools and leaders under the sultan.

How many sultans ruled the Ottoman Empire over its six centuries?

The Ottoman dynasty supplied 36 sultans in unbroken male-line succession, from the founder around 1299 to the sultanate's abolition; deposed rulers were always replaced by a kinsman.

What was a tughra?

A tughra was a sultan's calligraphic monogram, giving his name and his father's with the formula 'ever victorious'; it validated decrees and coins from Orhan's reign onward.

What does the name Topkapi, given to the sultans' palace in the 19th century, mean?

Topkapi means 'Cannon Gate', after a gate of the old sea walls near the palace; begun in 1459, the complex was long known simply as the New Palace.

Which palace replaced Topkapi as the sultans' main residence in the 1850s?

Dolmabahce, a Baroque-and-Ottoman palace on the Bosporus built by the Balyan family, became the imperial residence in 1856 under Abdulmecid I.

Which chief architect designed the Suleymaniye and Selimiye mosques and more than 300 other structures?

Mimar Sinan, a devshirme recruit who served as a Janissary engineer, became chief imperial architect in 1538 at about 50 and worked until his death in 1588.

Which Byzantine building strongly influenced the classical Ottoman mosque style?

The Hagia Sophia, Justinian's sixth-century domed church, set the model of a vast central dome with semi-domes that Ottoman architects followed from the 15th century.

Which astronomer built the Constantinople observatory in 1577, destroyed three years later?

Taqi al-Din's observatory in Constantinople, completed in 1577, was demolished on the sultan's order in 1580 after clerical opposition; he had also described a steam-driven roasting spit in 1551.

Which Yemeni commodity made Cairo a major Ottoman trade centre in the 17th and 18th centuries?

Coffee grown in Yemen and shipped through Mocha passed through Cairo to the rest of the empire and Europe, making the city a hub of the trade until the 18th century.

What share of the Ottoman population was Muslim in 1897?

About 74% of the roughly 19 million people counted in 1897 were Muslim, some 14 million; by 1914 non-Muslims were less than a fifth of the total.

What was Osmanli, the Turkish word for Ottoman, originally used to refer to?

Osmanli at first meant Osman's tribal followers in the 14th century; it then came to mean the ruling military-administrative class, while educated city dwellers often called themselves Rumi.

For how many months did the Venetian defenders of Famagusta hold out against the Ottomans in 1570-71?

The garrison under Marco Antonio Bragadin held out for 11 months, from September 1570 to August 1571, under a bombardment of some 163,000 cannonballs.

What was the title of the governor who ruled an Ottoman eyalet?

The beylerbey ('bey of beys') governed an eyalet and commanded its sanjak-beys in war; the 1864 Vilayet Law later replaced eyalets with vilayets.

Roughly what was the Ottoman public literacy rate until the early 19th century?

Literacy stood at about 2-3 percent until the early 19th century and only around 15 percent by its end; ordinary people hired scribes called arzuhalcis to write petitions.

Which Western language became common among educated Ottomans after the Tanzimat?

French literature was the main Western influence on Ottoman writing in the later 19th century.

The first novel published in the Ottoman Empire, The Story of Akabi (1851), was written in Turkish using which script?

Vartan Pasha, an Ottoman Armenian, wrote Akabi Hikayesi in Turkish but printed it in the Armenian alphabet, the script his community used for Turkish.

Which 17th-century writer's Seyahatname is a landmark of Ottoman travel literature?

Evliya Celebi travelled the empire and beyond for some forty years from 1640 and recorded it in the ten-volume Seyahatname ('Book of Travels').

Which sultan was an accomplished composer of Ottoman classical music?

Selim III composed dozens of works in the Ottoman classical tradition, including pieces in the makam Suzidilara that he devised; the music is built on rhythmic cycles (usul) and modes (makam).

Which 1730 uprising brought the Ottoman Tulip Period to an end?

The Patrona Halil Revolt, led by an Albanian ex-Janissary bath attendant, forced Ahmed III to abdicate in October 1730 and closed the Tulip Period.

Which 1774 treaty forced the Ottomans to recognise the Crimean Tatars as independent?

Küçük Kaynarca, signed in July 1774 after the 1768-74 war, declared the Crimean Khanate independent of the sultan; Catherine the Great annexed it outright in 1783.

The Ottoman sultan who reigned 1389–1402 was called Yıldırım, meaning what?

Bayezid I was nicknamed Yıldırım, 'Thunderbolt', for the speed of his campaigns; he blockaded Constantinople from 1394 and crushed a crusader army in 1396.

Which 25 September 1396 Crusader defeat helped end the Second Bulgarian Empire?

At Nicopolis on the Danube the knights from France charged ahead of Sigismund's Hungarians and were annihilated; the Ottomans then extinguished the last Bulgarian tsardom at Vidin.

Which sultan came out of retirement to win the Battle of Varna in 1444?

Murad II had abdicated in favour of his 12-year-old son months earlier; recalled, he routed the crusaders at Varna on 10 November 1444, where King Wladyslaw III of Poland and Hungary was killed.

Which Hungarian commander broke the Ottoman siege of Belgrade in 1456?

John Hunyadi, with the crusade preacher John of Capistrano, broke the siege on 22 July 1456; Hunyadi died of plague on 11 August, and the noon bell commemorates the victory.

Which Moldavian prince crushed an Ottoman army at Vaslui in January 1475?

Stephen III, 'the Great', beat a far larger Ottoman army in the fog at Vaslui on 10 January 1475; Pope Sixtus IV hailed him as Athleta Christi.

Which Albanian noble deserted the Ottomans in 1443 and fought them until his death in 1468?

Skanderbeg (Gjergj Kastrioti) deserted during the Battle of Nis in November 1443, seized Kruje, and repelled repeated Ottoman sieges until his death in January 1468.

Which Italian town did the Ottomans capture in August 1480 as their first outpost in Italy?

Gedik Ahmed Pasha's fleet took Otranto on 11 August 1480; some 800 townsmen were beheaded for refusing conversion, and the Ottomans withdrew in September 1481 after the sultan's death.

Which Ottoman prince lived out his exile as a hostage of the Knights of Rhodes and the Pope?

Cem, younger son of the Conqueror, lost the succession war to his brother in 1481, fled to Rhodes, and was held by the Knights and then the Popes until his death at Naples in 1495.

Which sultan sent his navy to evacuate Jews expelled from Spain in 1492?

Bayezid II sent Kemal Reis's ships to carry Sephardic Jews to Ottoman ports, reportedly mocking Ferdinand as a fool for impoverishing his own kingdom; many settled in Salonica.

Who was Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller during the Great Siege of Malta in 1565?

Jean de Valette, aged 70, led about 500 knights and several thousand soldiers through the siege from 18 May to 8 September 1565; the capital Valletta was named for him.

Which city's surviving Old City walls did Suleiman order rebuilt, a job done in 1537–41?

Jerusalem's present Old City walls, about four kilometres long with seven open gates, were built for Suleiman in 1537-41, partly on older foundations.

Which sultan commissioned the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, built between 1568 and 1575?

Selim II ordered the mosque from his chief architect, who called it his masterpiece; its dome spans about 31 metres, and the sultan died in 1574 before its completion.

How many minarets flank Istanbul's Blue Mosque?

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque, built 1609-17, has six minarets, a number then matched only by the mosque at Mecca; its 20,000 Iznik tiles earn it the name Blue Mosque.

Which 1606 peace first had the sultan recognise the Holy Roman Emperor as an equal?

The Peace of Zsitvatorok, signed in November 1606, ended the Long Turkish War; the sultan addressed the emperor as Padishah and replaced the annual Austrian tribute with a one-off payment.

Which sultan banned tobacco smoking in Constantinople on pain of death in the 1630s?

Murad IV, who reigned 1623-40, outlawed tobacco in the 1630s and had offenders executed, often patrolling the streets in disguise himself; his reign was dominated by war with Safavid Iran.

Which city did the Ottomans retake from Safavid Iran in 1638 after a forty-day siege?

The sultan led the army in person and retook Baghdad on 25 December 1638; the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab then fixed the Ottoman-Safavid frontier that Iraq and Iran largely inherited.

Which sultan's 1622 strangling by Janissaries at Yedikule was the first Ottoman regicide?

Osman II, enthroned at 14 in 1618, planned to replace the Janissaries with an Anatolian army; they deposed and strangled him at Yedikule on 20 May 1622.

What does Kafes, the palace quarters where heirs were kept under guard, literally mean?

Kafes means 'the Cage': from the early 17th century princes were confined in these apartments instead of being executed, which left several later sultans unprepared to rule.

Which 17th-century sultan had a palace room lined entirely with lynx and sable fur?

Known as Deli Ibrahim, he was deposed in 1648; some historians think he was more incompetent than mad.

How long did the Ottoman siege of Candia on Crete last before the city fell in 1669?

The siege ran 21 years, from 1648 to the surrender of 27 September 1669, making it one of the longest in history; Venice kept only a few Cretan forts.

How many covered streets make up Istanbul's Grand Bazaar?

The Grand Bazaar grew from the Inner Bedesten of 1455-56 into a roofed maze of 61 streets and some 4,000 shops, one of the world's oldest and largest covered markets.

What was a timar in the early Ottoman Empire?

A timar was a land grant in return for military service: a sipahi cavalryman drew its revenues, up to 20,000 akçes a year, and had to turn out armed when summoned.

The akçe, the chief Ottoman coin for centuries, was struck from which metal?

The akçe was a small silver coin, its name from ak, 'white', for the metal's colour; it was debased over time, and after 1687 the kuruş became the main unit.

Ottoman Turkish was mostly written in a variant of which script?

Ottoman Turkish used the Perso-Arabic script, with extra letters for Turkish sounds, until the republic adopted the Latin alphabet in 1928.

What title did the mother of the reigning Ottoman ruler hold?

Valide sultan, 'mother sultan', was first used for Hafsa Sultan, Suleiman's mother, from 1520; the valide ran the imperial harem and could be the most powerful woman in the empire.

What name did the Ottomans give to the 1826 disbanding of the Janissary corps?

The Auspicious Incident (Vaka-i Hayriye) of June 1826 saw the mutinous Janissaries shelled in their Etmeydani barracks; thousands were killed and the corps was dissolved by decree.

Which sultan's 1867 tour of Western Europe was the first ever made by an Ottoman ruler?

Abdulaziz accepted Napoleon III's invitation to the 1867 Exposition Universelle, then went on to London, where Queen Victoria received him, and to Vienna, the first sultan to tour Western Europe.

How many days did Murad V's 1876 reign last before he was deposed as mentally ill?

Murad V reigned 93 days, from 30 May to 31 August 1876, before a fatwa declared him insane; he lived on in Çırağan Palace until 1904.

At which 1827 battle did British, French and Russian ships destroy an Ottoman-Egyptian fleet?

At Navarino Bay on 20 October 1827 the allied squadrons under Admiral Codrington destroyed most of the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet at anchor, the last great battle of the sailing era, and secured Greek independence.

Which November 1853 naval rout by Russia pushed Britain and France toward the Crimean War?

At Sinop on 30 November 1853 Admiral Nakhimov's squadron, firing explosive shells, destroyed the Ottoman flotilla at anchor; the 'massacre' swung opinion in Britain and France toward war.

The 1856 peace that ended the Crimean War was signed in which city?

The Treaty of Paris of 30 March 1856 admitted the empire to the Concert of Europe, neutralised the Black Sea, and guaranteed Ottoman territorial integrity.

Which 1878 treaty with Russia created a large autonomous Bulgaria?

The Treaty of San Stefano, signed on 3 March 1878, created a 'Greater Bulgaria' reaching the Aegean; Britain and Austria-Hungary forced its revision at Berlin that July.

The Hejaz railway, begun in 1900, ran from Damascus to which holy city?

The line reached Medina in 1908, some 1,300 km from Damascus; the planned extension to Mecca was never built, and Arab raiders with T. E. Lawrence wrecked its trains in 1917-18.

Which Ottoman province did Italy seize in the 1911–12 war that saw the first aerial bombing?

Italy invaded Tripolitania (with Cyrenaica) in September 1911 and kept it as Libya under the Treaty of Ouchy of October 1912; Giulio Gavotti dropped the first aerial bombs on 1 November 1911.

Which of the Three Pashas who ran the empire from 1913 was Minister of War?

Enver Pasha became Minister of War in January 1914 and took the empire into the war on Germany's side; he died fighting the Red Army in Central Asia after the war.

After the First Balkan War, which region was the only European land left to the Ottomans?

Only Eastern Thrace behind the Enos-Midia line, with Constantinople, remained Ottoman under the May 1913 Treaty of London; Edirne was recovered when Bulgaria turned on its allies that summer.

Orhan married Theodora, daughter of which Byzantine who hired Ottoman troops for a civil war?

John VI Kantakouzenos gave Orhan his daughter Theodora in 1346 in return for troops against the regency of John V; in 1352 his Ottoman allies gained Tzympe, their first foothold in Europe.

What natural disaster let the Ottomans take Gallipoli, their first European town, in 1354?

The 2 March quake levelled nearly every building, the Greek inhabitants fled, and Süleyman Pasha seized the site within a month.