Corruption And Nepotism In The Ottoman Empire

Corruption & Nepotism in the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire rose to be one of the most powerful empires in the early modern period. The story of the Ottoman expansion began when the Christian Byzantine empire began to perish the Ottomans began to expand at a rapid pace, making it’s neighbors fearful of their advancement. Over the course of history many scholars have given the arguments on the rise and fall of the once great Ottoman Empire. John Bagot Glubb published seventeen books, on the Middle East, and wrote his theory on the stages of the rise and fall of great nations. In Glubb’s The Fate Of Empires and Search for Survival Glubb explains the stages of the rise and fall of great nations begin from The Age of Conquests followed by The

613 to 632, when he died. In 633, the Arabs burst out of their desert peninsula, and simultaneously attacked the two super-powers (Glubb). The outburst of the The Ottoman state began as one of many small Turkish principalities that emerged from Anatolia during the downfall of the empire of the Seljuk Turks. The Ottoman Turks began to absorb the other states, and during the reign (1451–81) of Muhammad II they ended all other local Turkish dynasties (University of Michigan, Turkish Studies). The early phase of Ottoman expansion took place under Osman I, Orkhan, Murad I, and Beyazid I at the expense of the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria, and Serbia. Bursa fell in 1326 and Adrianople in 1361; each in turn became the capital of the empire. The great Ottoman victories of Kosovo in 1389 and Nikopol in 1396 placed large parts of the Balkan Peninsula under Ottoman rule and awakened Europe to the Ottoman danger (University of Michigan, Turkish Studies). The Ottoman siege of Constantinople was lifted at the appearance of Timur, who defeated and captured Beyazid in 1402. The Ottomans, however, soon rallied. Glubb states, the word ‘empire’, by association with the British Empire, is visualized by some people

We have already considered the age of outburst, when a little- regarded people suddenly bursts on to the world stage with a wild courage and energy, let us call it the Age of the Pioneers, then we saw that these new conquerors acquired the sophisticated weapons of the old empires, and adopted their regular systems of military organization and training (Glubb). A great period of military expansion ensued, which we may call the Age of Conquests. The conquests resulted in the acquisition of vast territories under one government, thereby automatically giving rise to commercial prosperity. We may call this the Age of