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On the edge of Europe is a city that was once
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the heart of a mighty empire.
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From here in Istanbul,
the glories of the Ottoman Empire
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came to match those of Ancient Rome.
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Wow!
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Look at this!
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This is the view that the Ottoman sultans would have seen
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and it just simply takes your breath away.
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For 600 years,
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from the Middle Ages
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to the 20th century,
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one dynasty of Ottoman sultans, a single family,
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ruled over huge swathes of the world.
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The Ottomans were staggeringly wealthy.
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This is an empire of a million square miles, it's a superpower.
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The empire stretched south to Baghdad and Cairo,
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controlling the holiest sites of Islam -
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Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.
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But it also reached deep into Europe,
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taking in Sarajevo
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and threatening the gates of Vienna.
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What's more, it was the world's last Islamic empire
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and it collapsed less than 100 years ago.
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In this series, I'll be discovering why the Ottoman Empire
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seems to have vanished from our understanding
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of the history of Europe.
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Why its story is exciting global interest once more
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and how, this year, struggles at the heart of the Ottoman story
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have reignited on the streets they once ruled,
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from Syria to Turkey and Egypt.
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It's remarkable how some of the most important yet unresolved issues
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confronting us today were also faced by the Ottomans -
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the conflicts between the Christian West and the Muslim East,
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the need to reconcile secular politics with religious ideology
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and balancing the demands of the clergy
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with the ambitions of the generals.
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All this was faced by one dynasty who ruled for 600 years,
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across three continents.
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In this first episode,
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I'll discover the surprising roots of the Ottomans,
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the extraordinary speed at which nomadic horsemen
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from a corner of what is today Turkey,
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became powerful rulers across Europe,
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the Middle East and Africa.
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Across the continents, down the centuries,
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I'll be getting to grips with what we all need to know today
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about Europe's Muslim Emperors.
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As a journalist,
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I've been dispatched to many regions of the world
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that were once part of the Ottoman Empire.
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American armour is moving at will across whole swathes of Baghdad...
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Now, with so much of the world they once ruled in turmoil...
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..I want to uncover the Ottomans' forgotten story.
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If you don't understand the Ottomans,
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both the good and the bad,
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you don't understand partly the modern transformations
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of the Balkans and the Middle East. I think they are connected.
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The roots of today's turmoil can be traced, in part at least,
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to the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War.
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Even before the war was over, the French and the British were already
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planning on how they would dismember this remaining territory.
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Many countries in the Middle East, whose names are in the news today,
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only came into being after this post-war carve-up.
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A list of the Ottoman successor states today reads like a catalogue
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of the world's trouble spots - Iraq, Syria, Israel and Palestine.
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The borders of these countries were not designed
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according to any geographical reality. The border between
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Turkey and Syria, for example, is a border that
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just doesn't have any reason.
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The two peoples on the same side
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of the border are the same people, they still speak the same language.
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Modern-day Saudi Arabia and Yemen
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escaped control by the great powers of Europe.
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Only one other major Muslim country would achieve this.
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Remarkably that nation was the heartland of the Ottoman Empire -
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modern-day Turkey.
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Turkey looks very different from its Arab neighbours.
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It's a confident, modern country whose economy and global importance
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are both growing.
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And for most of the past century,
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it's turned its back on the Ottoman past.
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Until now.
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BATTLE CRY
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In Turkey and across the world, 200 million people
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are currently gripped by a TV drama about the Ottomans.
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It's an epic story of power won and lost across three continents.
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A great cultural force in history,
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straddling the ancient and modern worlds.
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And ruled from one of the world's
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most strategically placed imperial capitals.
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Istanbul is a city that spans two continents.
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On this side is Europe,
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but a short hop across the Bosphorus takes you to the Asian side.
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It's always been a city where different beliefs
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and different cultures meet.
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Never more so than during the time of the Ottomans.
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This place became the heart of the empire.
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But the Ottoman story began across the water on the Asian shore,
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somewhere much more remote.
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The Ottomans first emerged over 700 years ago.
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Their heartland is said to be around the small town of Sogut,
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150 miles or so from modern-day Istanbul,
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in rural Anatolia, the Asian part of modern Turkey.
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Each year there's a festival here
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to commemorate the empire's founding fathers.
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The family that would become the Ottoman dynasty,
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began as nomadic warriors alongside many other tribal clans.
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They were excellent horsemen,
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this is how they survived, how they lived.
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And on account of their perhaps fearsome qualities,
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they were used as hired mercenaries.
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These guns-for-hire had moved across Central Asia
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and fought for the powerful Muslim rulers based in Baghdad.
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That's how they were introduced to Islam,
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a religion that took its place alongside other beliefs.
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The religion of the Ottomans
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was the religion of a people on the frontiers.
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They were absorbing as much spirituality from the people
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they conquered as they were taking from their own hinterlands.
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The Ottomans' nomadic ancestors settled around Sogut,
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competing with other tribes to survive.
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There were others who also settled down in neighbouring areas,
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neighbouring territory.
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And they were rivals for resources,
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they were rivals for territory, they were rivals for grazing lands,
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they were rivals for access to the sea.
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And the Ottomans needed to overturn them.
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By 1299, their leader in this ongoing struggle
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was a man called Osman or Uttman.
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His followers would become known as Osmanli, or in English, Ottoman.
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And just as Rome had its story of Romulus and Remus
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to give its origins a sense of divine authority,
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so the later Ottomans developed a founding myth around Osman.
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Osman dreamt that a tree came out of his navel,
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a very wide, spreading tree,
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which came to shade a very luscious and bountiful landscape under it.
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In the morning, Osman told this dream to his leader
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who gave him
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the great news that he will be the head of a big empire
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and his sons and grandsons will rule the state.
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The story of how this legendary dream came true
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is one that holds many surprises.
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In the late 13th century,
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no-one could have dreamt that, within a few generations,
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these nomads would become mightier than
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the imperial powers that surrounded them.
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To the southeast were influential Arab cities
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like Baghdad and Damascus,
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home to earlier leaders of the Muslim world.
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Further south was the great seat of learning in Cairo
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and Islam's holiest sites of Mecca and Medina.
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Closer to home was a crumbling Christian empire.
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The capital of the Byzantine Empire
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lay just across the water of the Bosphorus.
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Modern Istanbul was at this time called Constantinople,
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named after the fourth century Roman Emperor, Constantine.
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It was the centre of the Eastern Christian world.
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Constantinople stood for the empire
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of the Christians on Earth.
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One God in heaven,
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one Emperor on Earth
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and one imperial city.
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The Byzantine world had total confidence that it had
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the ideal constitution, the ideal system of justice,
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they thought it was the perfect Christian empire.
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But after a millennium in power, the Byzantines were in decline
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and weakened by battles with Europe's Western Catholic crusaders.
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It was still against all expectations, when in 1301,
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Osman claimed his first victory over the Byzantine imperial army
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and it made his name.
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When the other emirates or other principalities saw that,
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they started to join the Ottomans, to fight with them,
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because they see a future in the Ottomans.
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This meant that they were able to amass huge numbers of soldiers.
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They could deploy fast-riding cavalry to killer effect.
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MARCHING BAND PLAYS
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Osman's memory still arouses passions.
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At the climax of the Sogut festival,
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everyone marches to the tomb of the Ottoman forefathers.
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A scuffle breaks out
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about who should be the first to pay their respects.
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IMPASSIONED VOICES
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Osman's successors seized on his legacy
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and laid the foundations for empire.
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HE SPEAKS IN TURKISH
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Just two years into his reign,
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Osman's son, Orhan, made his mark.
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In 1326, he took the major Byzantine city of Bursa
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after a long siege, converting it into his capital city.
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He wasted no time creating the infrastructure of a settled state.
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The earliest dated Ottoman coin is from this year.
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These were no longer nomads.
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The Byzantines were alarmed at the rise of this powerful
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and warrior-like group and they tried to put this off with diplomacy.
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The Christian Byzantine emperor
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gave Orhan his daughter's hand in marriage.
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It was always part of Byzantine diplomacy
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to use the emperor's family for intermarriage.
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Hopefully you kept your enemies as friends rather than as attackers.
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The marriage did not stop the Ottomans
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setting their sights on Byzantine territory,
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beyond the narrow Bosphorus Straits on the European mainland.
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As the Ottomans looked to the fertile lands of Greece and Italy,
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they could see the rise of Venice,
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the rise of Genoese traders, the rise of Pisa.
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I think it must have been very clear that the West was the future.
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First they raided along the European coastline,
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but in the 1360s, the Ottomans seized their first European City,
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Edirne.
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It was a breakthrough moment.
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They made this their new capital.
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From this foothold in Europe,
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troops marched out to take the kingdom of Bulgaria
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and the strategic town of Sofia.
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The important city of Salonica, now Thessaloniki in modern Greece,
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fell after a long siege.
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The routes west had been opened to Ottoman advance.
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The Ottomans wanted to be the future
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and they had all sorts of reasons in terms of power,
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military power, they were fantastic.
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In less than 100 years, the Ottomans had started to take over
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from one of the most sophisticated imperial powers
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the world had ever seen.
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In what is now Greek Macedonia,
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there's a town founded by the early Ottomans.
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Yanitsa was built in the 1370s
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and then called Yenice Vardar.
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In Turkish, Yenice means "newly founded".
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And it holds some intriguing clues about the kind of future
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the Ottomans offered to their newly conquered lands.
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One traditional view in the West of the Ottomans has been to see them as
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Muslim invaders plundering Christian lands in Europe for their own gain.
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They'd raze a place to the ground, and then just simply move on
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once they'd taken everything that they could get.
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For many living in these lands today,
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it's hard to have a more positive view
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of what the Ottomans built here.
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This includes the town's mayor.
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IN TRANSLATION:
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But nonetheless, what remains 600 years on
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suggests something much more permanent
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than the image of marauding invaders would suggest.
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The historian, Heath Lowry, has been examining early Ottoman life here.
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Wow!
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It's a lot more impressive inside
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than what you can see from the outside.
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You're right. This is a typical, Ottoman bath house,
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called a "hammam".
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And what's standing today
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is really less than half of the full structure. This was a double bath,
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so it had one side for women, one side for men.
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The Ottomans as Muslims, really had a bath culture,
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a bath culture that we really see previously only under Rome.
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It's as if there was this jump between the Roman Empire
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and the Ottoman Empire.
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It certainly tells people that you have just conquered -
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that you're here to stay for a while.
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Cos it can't have been easy,
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and you wouldn't build this if you were just passing through.
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But you needed water, and you needed fresh water.
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So they, as part of this infrastructure,
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built a system, that runs 12-15 miles back in the hills,
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of aqueducts and underground pipes to bring water to the city
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to provide for the fountains at his mosque and the bath-house here.
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This is a very different view of Ottoman rule
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in this part of the world, isn't it? I mean, traditionally, the Ottomans
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were just slash-and-burn sort of people who came through.
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You know, it's very hard to look at this infrastructure
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and think about the Ottomans as just some kind of semi-Mongol type horde
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that's just interested in slaves and booty and, you know. They weren't.
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They were interested in establishing normalcy as quickly as possible.
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It would be very foolish just to wreak havoc
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and ruin your resources, when resources were what you needed,
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what life was about, especially if you were not an entirely
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settled population. You needed...
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You needed pastures, you needed sheep,
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you needed crops, gradually. And you needed towns, trades, crafts.
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To destroy everything around you
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would have been very counter-productive.
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The story of this Greek town shows how the early Ottomans
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matched the sophisticated infrastructure of the Romans.
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And before long, a young Ottoman sultan would call time
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on the Roman Byzantine Empire's last grip on power.
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By the 15th century,
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the Ottomans had their sights set on their biggest prize yet.
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In 1453, Constantinople was the last Christian stronghold
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facing a rising Muslim world.
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It was set to become the scene of a great clash of religions.
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For the Muslim world,
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any great Islamic empire aspired to extend its rule over Byzantium,
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in a sense, to prove the superiority of Islam over Christianity.
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Any assault on this Christian city by Muslims
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was a highly symbolic act.
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In fact, Islamic armies had besieged Constantinople
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only a few decades after the death of Prophet Muhammad.
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But its high walls meant it had resisted such attacks.
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By the 1450s, though,
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Constantinople was not looking as invincible as it once had.
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It was very run-down. It was a shadow of its former glory.
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Largely because of an attack by Christians,
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not by Muslims.
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In 1204,
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the soldiers of the fourth Crusade,
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coming east to the Holy Land, occupied and looted the city.
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Within the walls there were
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13 little villages.
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The population was down maybe to 50,000,
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living as best they could
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off what they grew in their gardens and what they grew in the fields.
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They questioned whether the Ottoman Turks were in fact anti-Christ
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and whether a whole cycle of world history was coming to an end.
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Others said, "Constantinople is the God-protected city."
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"God is not going to desert us."
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There had been many failed Muslim attempts on the city.
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Now the 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed II
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judged that the "golden apple" was finally ripe for the picking.
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He built a fortress, north of the city, to cut off essential supplies.
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It really meant challenging every form of defence,
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ultimately taking on the walls of Istanbul,
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and just reducing it to rubble through persistence and numbers.
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Troops set out for the city walls.
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Some were ferried in by boat.
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But the way was blocked by a massive chain placed under the water.
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By an incredible combination of ingenuity and sheer brute force,
325
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Ottoman ships were hauled out of the water, onto greased planks.
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He carried his ships up land
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from the Bosphorus over into the Golden Horn,
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so that they could be right against the sea walls.
329
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You can only imagine the skill and determination needed
330
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to lift the boats out of the waters like this.
331
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It may not be as well known a story, but as a feat of endurance,
332
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it's on a par with Hannibal driving his elephants across the Alps.
333
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The Ottoman troops, now encircling the city walls,
334
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had numbers on their side.
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But Mehmed had also invested in the latest technology.
336
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Gunpowder was a technology that was developing in the 15th century.
337
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The ability to use it was actually related to economics -
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did you have the money?
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00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:12,840
Apparently everybody knew about a man called Urban,
340
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:14,920
who was developing the cannon.
341
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He offered his expertise to the Byzantines
342
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:21,920
but they couldn't afford his prices, so he went to the Ottomans.
343
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:27,840
After centuries of failed Muslim attempts on Constantinople,
344
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it took Mehmed just 54 days to breach the city walls.
345
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In the West, the defeat of Constantinople
346
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is known as "the Fall".
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Here it's "the Conquest". It was more than a strategic gain.
348
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The taking of this city would be remembered for centuries
349
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as the moment of Muslim triumph.
350
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This was in many ways, the greatest moment in Islamic history
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since the prophetic message.
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It had always been the dream, since the beginning of Islam,
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that it become a Muslim city and it never had.
354
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And suddenly, this brash 21-year-old does what no other Muslim ruler
355
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:22,920
had ever been able to do, and it certainly gave the Ottomans
356
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:26,120
immense prestige in the Muslim world.
357
00:27:26,120 --> 00:27:30,200
In the Christian world, it was the end of Byzantium.
358
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it was the downfall of Eastern Christendom.
359
00:27:35,120 --> 00:27:41,400
The Bulgarians, the Serbs, the Russians, looked to Constantinople
360
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:46,600
as the centre, and now the centre, so it seemed, was gone.
361
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:55,200
It was just 150 years since Osman's first triumph
362
00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:56,640
against the Byzantines.
363
00:27:56,640 --> 00:27:59,960
In making Constantinople their imperial capital,
364
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these former nomads now ended 1,000 years of Christian rule.
365
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:08,080
Through the conquest of Constantinople,
366
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Mehmed II changes the state into an empire.
367
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How do you make an empire is a big question.
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One of the immediate goals is to
369
00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:20,760
develop Constantinople,
370
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make it a world-class city.
371
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The young sultan understood that he'd need to use his assets.
372
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Mehmed wanted to encourage people from all parts of the empire
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to come to Istanbul. He used favourable financial inducements
374
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and taxes in order to tempt people to come
375
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:51,880
and help rebuild the city and revitalise its trade.
376
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:55,520
But to ensure that he had the right people with the right skills,
377
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he was prepared to force craftsmen from other parts of the empire
378
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to move here.
379
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:06,000
He actually sent edicts saying,
380
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:09,240
"These groups of notables have to move to the city."
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00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:14,280
And they are using force and using threats.
382
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:18,520
He needed the builders, he needed the whole organisation.
383
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:19,840
So there's an extraordinary
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00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:24,320
revival of the city with the Christian population.
385
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:28,880
Jews are coming from Europe
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00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:31,800
to live freely and do their trades.
387
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:37,040
For the Ottomans, economy is the key issue for an empire.
388
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:43,360
He was not a ruler who said, "Mine is an Islamic empire,
389
00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:45,680
"and Christians shall have no place in it."
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00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:48,960
Rather, what he said was, "We need these people, they have skills,
391
00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:52,040
"they have resources, and we need them in our city."
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00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:57,360
Mehmed obviously wanted Constantinople to be seen
393
00:29:57,360 --> 00:30:01,080
as the centre of the civilised world. He wanted to revive that.
394
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:04,880
He did. He succeeded. It was brilliant!
395
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:09,720
Mehmed saw himself as the heir to the Romans,
396
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:14,480
ready to model his new Ottoman Empire as their natural successor.
397
00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:21,760
For the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed II is Augustus.
398
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:27,000
He plays the same role, because Augustus changes the republic
399
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:31,840
into an empire and Mehmed II changes the small Ottoman state
400
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:35,840
through the conquest of Constantinople.
401
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:39,800
But for all Mehmed's pragmatism, he understood the importance
402
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:44,160
of the victory he had given Islam over Christianity.
403
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:48,400
Within days, he made the importance of this religious supremacy
404
00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:50,760
clear for all to see.
405
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:54,720
On the first Friday after the conquest, Mehmed attended
406
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:57,800
Muslim prayers in a building which, only days earlier,
407
00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:00,720
had been the imperial church - the Hagia Sophia.
408
00:31:06,560 --> 00:31:10,160
The church of Hagia Sophia, built in the 6th century,
409
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:12,720
biggest church ever built.
410
00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:15,400
From the outside, it doesn't look that wonderful.
411
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:22,800
It's only till you go inside that it creates a feeling of another world.
412
00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:37,120
Hagia Sophia is a model of what a true place of worship should be.
413
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:41,440
The sense of space and light.
414
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:45,960
For us, it signifies Heaven on Earth.
415
00:31:49,280 --> 00:31:51,200
You could walk through any day,
416
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:54,680
you could see parts of the true cross of Christ.
417
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:58,080
You could see perhaps bits of Noah's Ark.
418
00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:00,800
It was the place where every major event
419
00:32:00,800 --> 00:32:03,840
was celebrated in the Byzantine world.
420
00:32:05,320 --> 00:32:09,040
Converting this iconic Christian basilica
421
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:11,800
into a mosque wasn't difficult.
422
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:13,560
The crosses and bells of Christianity
423
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:16,000
simply had to be replaced
424
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:19,520
with a prayer niche, pulpit and prayer mats.
425
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:23,040
But the impact on Eastern Orthodox Christians
426
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:25,440
was deep and long-lasting.
427
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:29,800
When you look around, there are visitors
428
00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:33,360
to the Hagia Sophia every day, hundreds of visitors.
429
00:32:33,360 --> 00:32:35,320
They are Muslims, they are Christians,
430
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:36,640
they are people of no faith.
431
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:38,320
Does it still have a symbolism today
432
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:42,400
for people? I mean... Oh, yes...who are Muslim and Christian?
433
00:32:42,400 --> 00:32:43,440
Oh, yes, yes.
434
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:46,880
This is... This is Mecca for Orthodox people.
435
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:52,960
This is the most important image of the Eastern Orthodoxy.
436
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:55,840
I have friends in Greece, when they are talking
437
00:32:55,840 --> 00:33:01,800
about the Hagia Sophia, they are crying, you know? They are in tears.
438
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:10,360
After 900 years as a cathedral, the imperial church became a mosque.
439
00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:14,560
Five centuries later, in the 20th century, it became a museum.
440
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:18,520
There are many Muslim groups.
441
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:21,920
They had a prayer just outside Hagia Sophia this year. Really?
442
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:24,040
Yes, they were protesting that...
443
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:27,360
It should be a mosque...into a mosque. Yes.
444
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:30,960
So, those feelings, that passion still runs pretty deep? Yeah.
445
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:38,640
The conversion of the imperial church into a mosque was not
446
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:40,800
the only act to stay in the minds
447
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:44,520
of the sultan's new Christian subjects in Europe.
448
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:59,520
In the heart of Europe is a city that exemplifies Ottoman rule
449
00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:02,000
in conquered Christian lands.
450
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:05,600
It's Sarajevo in Bosnia.
451
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:11,720
"Saray" in Turkish means "palace".
452
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:15,560
This was a major Ottoman city,
453
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:20,520
built in the 1460s and proudly facing Christian Europe.
454
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:25,280
Just as in Constantinople, the new city offered
455
00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:28,640
a degree of religious toleration to enable its own growth.
456
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:34,800
Maja Savic has studied the politics and society of Sarajevo
457
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:37,880
during Ottoman times, and helped me spot evidence
458
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:40,600
of the pecking order they introduced.
459
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:45,640
Right now, we are standing in the biggest mosque in Sarajevo
460
00:34:45,640 --> 00:34:47,080
and you can just see how,
461
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:50,000
by the size of it, and the splendour and grandeur
462
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:52,280
of all the arcs, it just tells you that it
463
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:57,280
was kind of a centre of trade life, of religious life of Sarajevo.
464
00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:01,840
Was this mosque built, in a way, to make a statement about
465
00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:05,480
Muslim grandeur? And located right at the heart of the city,
466
00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:07,920
was it a point that was being made?
467
00:35:07,920 --> 00:35:10,480
Well, certainly there was a point to be made.
468
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:14,400
But in the early Ottoman period, it wasn't really all about
469
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:17,480
showing the grandeur of Islam as a religion
470
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:22,400
and to present it in a good light to make it closer to the local people.
471
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:24,840
Primarily, they wanted to show the grandeur
472
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:28,440
of the Ottoman Empire itself, and what they were able to bring
473
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:32,480
to this region that was, in Bosnia at that time, considered backwards.
474
00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:39,480
Built around the same time as the mosque was a Serbian Orthodox church
475
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:42,120
serving the new city's Christian population.
476
00:35:46,120 --> 00:35:48,640
So now, we are at the old Orthodox church.
477
00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:53,400
And as you see, it is much more humble than the mosque.
478
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:57,440
And this pathway is very narrow, the courtyard is not very big
479
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:01,480
and you can't even see the bell-tower from here because it is very small.
480
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:06,080
So nothing could compare to the grandeur of the mosque that we saw.
481
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:08,960
But yet it's still very... They're still very close to each other.
482
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:11,040
Yes, still very close to each other.
483
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:14,400
Just a couple of minutes' walk from the mosque, actually.
484
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:17,840
So just shows you that the people were able to mix on the streets
485
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:20,360
as they left their places of worship.
486
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:23,800
And it serves as evidence that people were free to practise
487
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:26,400
their own religion in their own churches.
488
00:36:27,720 --> 00:36:31,800
Ottoman society was not completely blind to religious differences.
489
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:33,640
Far from it.
490
00:36:33,640 --> 00:36:35,800
Non-Muslims paid more tax.
491
00:36:37,360 --> 00:36:40,120
But the population accepted Ottoman authority,
492
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:41,880
and the supremacy of Islam,
493
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:44,320
in exchange for freedom from persecution.
494
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:47,600
Why don't they want to persecute?
495
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:51,480
Because they want their populations to produce.
496
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:52,600
They want...
497
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:56,080
They want their Jews to be business and traders.
498
00:36:56,080 --> 00:37:02,400
They were tolerated as long as they were obedient and peaceful
499
00:37:02,400 --> 00:37:06,280
and accepted the rule of Islam.
500
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:10,840
The Jewish priests couldn't wear the typical Turkish hats
501
00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:14,400
called turbans, and later on they were given a permission,
502
00:37:14,400 --> 00:37:16,880
but they could only be yellow.
503
00:37:16,880 --> 00:37:20,560
They also had to pay taxes to set up a business,
504
00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:24,680
and those taxes were much higher than the Muslims had to pay.
505
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:30,920
Given the standards of today,
506
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:33,280
the Ottomans are not tolerant.
507
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:37,760
But the Ottoman Empire did not live in a moment
508
00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:40,320
of democratic equal rights.
509
00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:43,840
Nobody had those rights at the time.
510
00:37:43,840 --> 00:37:49,160
What the Ottoman Empire gave is the lack of persecution.
511
00:37:54,760 --> 00:38:00,040
For many people across the Balkans, Ottoman rule was unwanted
512
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:02,320
and there were unsuccessful rebellions.
513
00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:08,240
For Christian Serbs, it's a period of hostile occupation
514
00:38:08,240 --> 00:38:11,840
that remains a strong and traumatic folk memory.
515
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:14,000
IN TRANSLATION:
516
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:09,880
According to THIS version of history,
517
00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:12,840
the Ottomans grabbed as much land as they could in Hungary,
518
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:16,240
Serbia and Bosnia, and imposed their Muslim faith
519
00:39:16,240 --> 00:39:18,480
on the towns and villages they conquered.
520
00:39:22,720 --> 00:39:25,880
Ottoman toleration had its limits.
521
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:31,080
And Christian families had good reason to live in fear.
522
00:39:31,080 --> 00:39:33,960
The Ottomans took Christian children
523
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:36,320
to provide manpower within the empire.
524
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:40,280
This practice, called the "Devsirme",
525
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:42,680
seized young Christian boys.
526
00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:50,720
Ottoman soldiers came in every few years, depending on the need,
527
00:39:50,720 --> 00:39:57,600
and levied one boy, one Christian boy from every Christian family.
528
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:03,520
If they had only one boy, they did not take,
529
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:07,160
and they did not take two boys from the same family.
530
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:11,240
So I think there is an awareness that this is a very harsh levy.
531
00:40:12,400 --> 00:40:14,960
They did not demand
532
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:17,760
so many children from each village
533
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:20,600
and leave the villagers to choose.
534
00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:24,480
They would have gone round into the homes
535
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:27,960
and taken those who seemed handsome and healthy.
536
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:38,560
The Christian boys were taken to Istanbul, converted to Islam,
537
00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:42,400
and prepared for a life in the service of the Ottoman state.
538
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:46,280
Sometimes people wanted to get their sons into the Devsirme
539
00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:49,400
knowing that they could go on and have glittering
540
00:40:49,400 --> 00:40:52,640
careers in the Ottoman army and beyond that.
541
00:40:52,640 --> 00:40:58,000
The ones that were very smart could rise to become Grand Viziers
542
00:40:58,000 --> 00:40:59,280
of the empire,
543
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:03,160
so like the Prime Minister, if you will, of the empire.
544
00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:07,240
In fact, out of 45 early Grand Viziers,
545
00:41:07,240 --> 00:41:10,000
only three or four of them were of Turkish origin.
546
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:15,400
This was a direct infringement
547
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:18,480
of the holiness of the Christian family.
548
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:23,320
And the idea that their children should be brought up
549
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:28,160
as Muslims, that was deeply resented.
550
00:41:30,680 --> 00:41:34,080
And it wasn't just soldiers and bureaucrats
551
00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:37,720
recruited from Christian communities to serve the Muslim sultan.
552
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:58,480
This is the sumptuous Topkapi Palace in Istanbul built by Mehmed
553
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:01,080
after his conquest of the city.
554
00:42:03,240 --> 00:42:07,240
Young Christian slave girls were brought here to play a key role
555
00:42:07,240 --> 00:42:09,360
at the heart of imperial power.
556
00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:17,400
The Ottomans adopted a practice of other Muslim dynasties who
557
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:20,160
used concubines to bear the sultan's children.
558
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:26,040
The use of concubines at Muslim courts
559
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:29,120
is a very well established tradition.
560
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:32,400
A ruler is superior to all others in society.
561
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:35,840
If he has a wife, that wife has a family and then that family
562
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:40,000
is able to put pressure on the ruler in various different ways.
563
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:42,320
And there's also an implication of parity,
564
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:43,880
that there are two families
565
00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:46,040
which are in alliance through the marriage.
566
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:51,000
So, that's why you have only slave women, that is
567
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:55,000
women without roots, women without strings attached,
568
00:42:55,000 --> 00:42:59,800
who are recruited in order to provide procreation.
569
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:05,720
The history and mythology of what happened here, the harem,
570
00:43:05,720 --> 00:43:07,640
is synonymous with Ottoman rulers,
571
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:10,240
with images of concubines and luxury.
572
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:14,120
This apparent exoticism has captivated
573
00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:18,400
observers of the Ottoman court through the centuries.
574
00:43:18,400 --> 00:43:21,800
It's part of the appeal of the current hit TV series.
575
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:26,760
But not all women in the harem were concubines
576
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:30,480
and the reality was less glamorous.
577
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:34,040
Life in the harem wasn't particularly exotic.
578
00:43:34,040 --> 00:43:37,960
For the most part, they spent their days chatting,
579
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:41,280
sitting around, doing needlework,
580
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:44,360
perhaps doing more menial chores if they were junior members.
581
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:47,520
They were kept in a very constrained space for life.
582
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:51,880
It was actually a very tedious, boring kind of life,
583
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:53,800
almost the polar opposite
584
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:56,960
of the exotic image we tend to have in the West.
585
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:03,560
The harem meant that Christian-born slaves became
586
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:04,880
the mothers of sultans.
587
00:44:06,200 --> 00:44:10,160
The most famous would be Hurrem, favourite of Sultan Suleiman
588
00:44:10,160 --> 00:44:14,600
in the 16th century who, unusually, even got to marry the sultan.
589
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:21,400
Like the Devsirme, the harem was an Ottoman institution that
590
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:26,200
placed the Christian-born right at the heart of the sultan's court.
591
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:28,240
The priority was simple.
592
00:44:28,240 --> 00:44:31,800
The needs of the Ottoman Empire came first
593
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:35,600
before considerations of religion or ethnicity.
594
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:42,640
Perhaps the most shocking proof of this was how the sultan removed
595
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:47,600
the possibility of any threat to his authority, even from his own family.
596
00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:54,280
Ottoman rulers were known for their lavish lifestyles
597
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:56,680
and, of course, sumptuous buildings.
598
00:44:56,680 --> 00:45:00,760
But the corridors of their palaces were also places of intrigue,
599
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:02,680
violence and murder.
600
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:12,680
There was no automatic right for the sultan's eldest son
601
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:14,440
to succeed to the throne.
602
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:18,200
Instead, it was a case of survival of the fittest.
603
00:45:21,160 --> 00:45:24,160
On the death of a sultan, there tended to be
604
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:29,240
a fight between his eligible sons to take over the sultanate.
605
00:45:29,240 --> 00:45:31,640
This meant that it was not necessarily the eldest son
606
00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:35,200
who inherited, but it did mean that you tended to get a strong,
607
00:45:35,200 --> 00:45:39,280
able man who fought his way to the top.
608
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:43,480
There are plenty of cases, especially at the beginning
609
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:46,160
of the 15th century, where the Ottoman Empire has been
610
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:50,080
on the brink of disappearing because of rivalries between siblings.
611
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:56,560
To guarantee his place on the throne, at the age of just 19,
612
00:45:56,560 --> 00:45:59,960
Mehmed had secured the backing of the religious authorities
613
00:45:59,960 --> 00:46:01,640
with an order, or fatwa,
614
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:04,520
sanctioning the murder of his brother.
615
00:46:07,600 --> 00:46:11,480
Mehmed II comes up with this idea of making sure that
616
00:46:11,480 --> 00:46:14,200
the sultan who comes to the throne
617
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:18,400
will not be subjected to that kind of rivalry and that kind of risk.
618
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:22,560
This is murder, this is homicide. You don't kill,
619
00:46:22,560 --> 00:46:27,400
let alone kill your own brothers, but this was politically expedient.
620
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:33,600
It can seem shocking, but it was actually to avoid civil war
621
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:38,160
with brothers backed by different factions contending for power.
622
00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:44,600
Dynastic struggles were a common problem for royal households
623
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:46,760
in the 15th century.
624
00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:49,160
There was a long battle for the French throne,
625
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:51,120
known as the Hundred Years' War.
626
00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:53,720
And the houses of Lancaster and York
627
00:46:53,720 --> 00:46:56,520
fought the War of the Roses for the English throne.
628
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:02,040
When you look at Europe during the same period,
629
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:04,600
what the Ottomans do institutionally
630
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:07,360
the European crowns do through poisoning.
631
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:12,440
So it was really some kind of an institutional savagery
632
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:16,320
over a chaotic one that would have happened anyway.
633
00:47:18,640 --> 00:47:23,440
But despite these policies crafted to protect Ottoman power,
634
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:26,800
by the early 16th century, there was an emerging threat
635
00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:29,000
to their growing influence.
636
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:33,240
It came not from Christian Europe but from the Muslim Middle East.
637
00:47:46,280 --> 00:47:49,800
Ottoman authority had never been accepted by neighbouring
638
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:51,760
Muslim rulers.
639
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:56,040
The task of establishing supremacy fell to Mehmed's grandson,
640
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:57,640
Sultan Selim the Grim.
641
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:02,080
In his eight-year reign, he would change the course of history
642
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:03,920
and break the great taboo
643
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:07,320
that Muslims should not fight fellow Muslims.
644
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:12,240
Under Selim I, Selim the Grim, aptly named,
645
00:48:12,240 --> 00:48:17,240
who is the Ottoman ruler from 1512 to 1520, you have full-scale war.
646
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:26,640
The Ottomans have to justify to themselves
647
00:48:26,640 --> 00:48:28,240
fighting fellow Muslims.
648
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:33,880
The threat to Selim came from the Safavid dynasty
649
00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:37,080
which originated in modern-day Iran.
650
00:48:37,080 --> 00:48:40,720
It adopted a different branch of Islam to the Ottomans,
651
00:48:40,720 --> 00:48:44,400
setting two rising powers on a collision course.
652
00:48:56,640 --> 00:48:59,760
In 2009, I gained access to Iran.
653
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:03,600
The Ottomans, like most of the Muslim world,
654
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:05,800
today followed Sunni Islam.
655
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:08,160
Here the tradition is Shia Islam.
656
00:49:13,600 --> 00:49:16,880
This is the shrine of the son of the fourth imam.
657
00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:18,320
Now, according to Sunnis,
658
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:21,760
an imam is just someone who leads a congregation into prayer,
659
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:25,200
but it has a completely different meaning according to Shias.
660
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:29,920
Here, imams are venerated as the rightful successors
661
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:32,440
of the Prophet Muhammad.
662
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:37,000
For the majority of Shia Muslims, only 12 imams are revered.
663
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:40,960
And it's believed that the 12th and final imam is hidden
664
00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:42,680
and will one day return.
665
00:49:44,040 --> 00:49:47,280
He will come as a Mahdi, a sort of messiah-like figure,
666
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:50,760
and he'll be joined, after a cataclysm on Earth,
667
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:55,320
by Jesus Christ to dispense justice and peace in the world.
668
00:49:57,000 --> 00:50:00,520
The Ottomans had never been much interested in religious
669
00:50:00,520 --> 00:50:02,760
differences within Islam.
670
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:06,280
But in 1501, the leader of the Safavids declared
671
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:08,400
Shia Islam his state religion.
672
00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:13,640
Some of the Shia religious fervour which followed spilled over
673
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:17,600
to tribes on the Ottoman eastern borderlands with Iran.
674
00:50:18,680 --> 00:50:21,920
The Kizilbash lived in the east, close to the Iranian border.
675
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:26,080
They could identify more closely with Shia Safavid Iran
676
00:50:26,080 --> 00:50:28,880
than they could with the distant Ottomans.
677
00:50:31,040 --> 00:50:34,040
They were disgruntled people.
678
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:37,680
The poorer peasants, those who had lost their land,
679
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:39,160
and so they rebelled.
680
00:50:41,520 --> 00:50:45,960
The Kizilbash, encouraged by the Safavids, staged an uprising.
681
00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:50,440
There were all sorts of incidents and uprisings,
682
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:53,800
they spread westwards, and the Ottomans had to try
683
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:56,560
and suppress, put the lid on this threat to their legitimacy.
684
00:50:56,560 --> 00:51:00,360
Troops sent to deal with the uprising were forced to
685
00:51:00,360 --> 00:51:02,280
retreat in disarray.
686
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:07,600
Emboldened, the rebels headed north towards here, Istanbul.
687
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:09,240
They got worryingly close.
688
00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:14,640
The Kizilbash rebellions were eventually quashed.
689
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:19,080
And as the new sultan, Selim the Grim was determined to deal
690
00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:22,560
with what he saw as the root cause of the trouble -
691
00:51:22,560 --> 00:51:23,960
the Shia Safavids.
692
00:51:28,320 --> 00:51:33,320
Selim was clear - there were to be no further challenges to his power.
693
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:36,920
But in Islamic law, there's no justification for going to war
694
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:38,720
with a fellow Muslim state.
695
00:51:38,720 --> 00:51:41,800
The solution? The Shia Safavids were declared
696
00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:43,880
heretics from the true path of Islam.
697
00:51:50,160 --> 00:51:54,600
Selim's decision marked a turning point in the history of Islam.
698
00:51:57,840 --> 00:52:04,040
The Ottoman Empire starts developing a stronger Sunni identity
699
00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:07,520
to fight against the Iranian Shi'ite identity.
700
00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:12,520
So, as a result, it becomes more Sunni, it becomes stronger.
701
00:52:17,080 --> 00:52:20,720
The decisive battle happened in 1514,
702
00:52:20,720 --> 00:52:23,880
close to the modern border of Turkey and Iran.
703
00:52:26,560 --> 00:52:28,240
The Ottomans won.
704
00:52:28,240 --> 00:52:31,320
Their victory shaped the Islamic world of today.
705
00:52:32,840 --> 00:52:36,960
The Shia Safavid threat receded, but it did not disappear.
706
00:52:38,640 --> 00:52:41,760
The division between the Shia and the Sunni
707
00:52:41,760 --> 00:52:43,720
is not an Ottoman product
708
00:52:43,720 --> 00:52:46,880
yet, during the Ottoman reign,
709
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:51,000
the rivalry seems to have consolidated,
710
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:56,680
and those tensions are very much part of the Middle East today.
711
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:03,120
The Ottomans tamed the Safavids' empire.
712
00:53:03,120 --> 00:53:06,000
They did not conquer it.
713
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:08,840
But their triumph encouraged greater ambition
714
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:10,800
to leadership of the Muslim world.
715
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:15,920
It was the Safavid challenge to their legitimacy to rule
716
00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:20,520
which drove the Ottomans to claim the ultimate Muslim authority.
717
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:23,200
It was a step that would prove to be every bit
718
00:53:23,200 --> 00:53:26,960
as significant as the conquest of Constantinople,
719
00:53:26,960 --> 00:53:31,480
with repercussions that echo down the centuries to today.
720
00:53:38,760 --> 00:53:42,720
The Ottomans' southeastern lands bordered the 200-year-old
721
00:53:42,720 --> 00:53:46,160
Mamluk Empire of modern-day Syria and Egypt.
722
00:53:47,640 --> 00:53:49,160
From its centre in Cairo,
723
00:53:49,160 --> 00:53:53,040
the dynasty controlled the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina.
724
00:53:56,880 --> 00:54:00,280
The Mamluks considered it a mark of their status,
725
00:54:00,280 --> 00:54:03,960
their precedence among Muslim rulers that they were able to do this.
726
00:54:03,960 --> 00:54:07,680
But they have been around for quite some time, 200 years,
727
00:54:07,680 --> 00:54:10,480
and their power's beginning to falter.
728
00:54:15,000 --> 00:54:17,600
Just like the old Byzantine Empire,
729
00:54:17,600 --> 00:54:20,480
the weakened Mamluks were vulnerable to attack.
730
00:54:20,480 --> 00:54:23,000
The only thing that could protect them
731
00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:26,360
from the Ottomans was that they were Sunni Muslim brothers.
732
00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:29,920
But as policies like fratricide had shown,
733
00:54:29,920 --> 00:54:33,960
for the Ottomans, religious doctrine was trumped by empire building.
734
00:54:35,840 --> 00:54:39,120
Selim's advisors came up with the pretext that there had been
735
00:54:39,120 --> 00:54:41,680
a Mamluk-Safavid alliance,
736
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:44,760
making the Mamluks heretics too.
737
00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:48,560
And in 1516, he marched his army into Syria.
738
00:54:56,080 --> 00:54:59,320
When the Ottomans met the Mamluks in battle,
739
00:54:59,320 --> 00:55:01,560
it was a kind of clash of cultures.
740
00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:06,640
A Mamluk would prove his valour
741
00:55:06,640 --> 00:55:09,400
by his swordsmanship and his horsemanship.
742
00:55:11,000 --> 00:55:14,840
However, the Ottomans were trained to use muskets,
743
00:55:14,840 --> 00:55:16,680
new gunpowder weapons.
744
00:55:16,680 --> 00:55:21,160
A kind of weaponry that cavalrymen often found demeaning
745
00:55:21,160 --> 00:55:24,640
and didn't want to use because it was dirty, noisy.
746
00:55:25,840 --> 00:55:29,360
So, as the Ottomans saw their Mamluk rivals from a distance
747
00:55:29,360 --> 00:55:31,520
they levelled their guns and they shot them.
748
00:55:42,360 --> 00:55:45,360
The defeat of the Mamluks in Syria gave the Ottomans
749
00:55:45,360 --> 00:55:46,760
the city of Damascus.
750
00:55:49,640 --> 00:55:54,440
With that came control over Islam's third holiest site -
751
00:55:54,440 --> 00:55:55,840
Jerusalem.
752
00:55:57,760 --> 00:55:59,960
But an even bigger prize awaited.
753
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:11,040
In 1517, Ottoman troops marched into battle in Egypt
754
00:56:11,040 --> 00:56:12,600
with their sights set on Cairo.
755
00:56:20,680 --> 00:56:23,800
Cairo was a huge metropolis, one of the largest cities
756
00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:25,040
in the world at that time,
757
00:56:25,040 --> 00:56:26,400
but on top of this,
758
00:56:26,400 --> 00:56:31,160
whoever controlled Cairo controlled the major Islamic,
759
00:56:31,160 --> 00:56:35,400
traditionally very prestigious centres of the Muslim world -
760
00:56:35,400 --> 00:56:36,720
Mecca and Medina.
761
00:56:40,640 --> 00:56:44,000
When the Ottomans seized Cairo, it gave them control
762
00:56:44,000 --> 00:56:48,440
over the Mamluk Empire which stretched into Africa and Arabia.
763
00:56:50,920 --> 00:56:54,680
What's more, this conquest secured the keys to the Muslim world's
764
00:56:54,680 --> 00:56:56,200
most important cities.
765
00:56:58,520 --> 00:57:02,680
Within the space of two years, the empire had been transformed.
766
00:57:02,680 --> 00:57:06,800
The Ottoman sultans now ruled over a vast Muslim population
767
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:09,640
and it altered the equilibrium of a state which had,
768
00:57:09,640 --> 00:57:12,600
up until that point, been predominantly Christian.
769
00:57:12,600 --> 00:57:16,760
It was a change that sealed the future direction of the empire.
770
00:57:28,280 --> 00:57:30,920
The Ottomans had made a remarkable journey.
771
00:57:32,600 --> 00:57:36,600
From a tribe of nomadic horsemen in rural modern-day Turkey...
772
00:57:38,960 --> 00:57:43,040
..to the rulers of a vast empire spanning three continents.
773
00:57:49,360 --> 00:57:53,280
With their conquests had come leadership of the Muslim faith.
774
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:57,720
How they responded to such a responsibility would impact
775
00:57:57,720 --> 00:58:00,120
the future of the Islamic world
776
00:58:00,120 --> 00:58:03,480
and have repercussions for Europe for centuries to come.
777
00:58:13,800 --> 00:58:19,200
Next time, we reach the golden age of Europe's Muslim emperors.
778
00:58:19,200 --> 00:58:21,960
In the 16th and 17th century, the Ottoman sultan really was
779
00:58:21,960 --> 00:58:24,240
the most powerful man in the world.
780
00:58:24,240 --> 00:58:28,560
The Ottomans march their armies right to the gates of Vienna
781
00:58:28,560 --> 00:58:30,280
for a battle that would define
782
00:58:30,280 --> 00:58:33,560
the relationship between Europe and Islam...
783
00:58:35,440 --> 00:58:40,360
..and the Ottomans face nationalism, fundamentalism and rebellion
784
00:58:40,360 --> 00:58:46,120
and deal with tensions echoing those of today in Egypt, Turkey and Syria.
785
00:59:13,040 --> 00:59:15,040
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
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