1.
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
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The sultans of the Ottoman Empire, made up solely of the members of the Ottoman dynasty, ruled over the transcontinental empire from its inception in 1299 to its dissolution in 1922. At its height, the Ottoman Empire spanned from Hungary in the north to Yemen in the south, the Ottoman Empires early years have been the subject of varying narratives due to the difficulty of discerning fact from legend. The empire came into existence at the end of the thirteenth century, according to later, often unreliable Ottoman tradition, Osman was a descendant of the Kayı tribe of the Oghuz Turks. The eponymous Ottoman dynasty he founded endured for six centuries through the reigns of 36 sultans, the Ottoman Empire disappeared as a result of the defeat of the Central Powers with whom it had allied itself during World War I. The Ottoman Empire was an absolute monarchy during much of its existence and he was theoretically responsible only to God and Gods law, of which he was the chief executor. His heavenly mandate was reflected in Islamic titles such as shadow of God on Earth, all offices were filled by his authority, and every law was issued by him in the form of a decree called firman. He was the military commander and had the official title to all land. Osman son of Ertuğrul was the first ruler of the Ottoman state, newly enthroned Ottoman rulers were girded with the Sword of Osman, an important ceremony that served as the equivalent of European monarchs coronation. A non-girded sultan was not eligible to have his children included in the line of succession, although absolute in theory and in principle, the sultans powers were limited in practice. Political decisions had to take account the opinions and attitudes of important members of the dynasty. Constitutionalism was only established during the reign Abdul Hamid II, who became the empires last absolute ruler. Although Abdul Hamid II abolished the parliament and the constitution to return to rule in 1878. Since 2009, the head of the House of Osman and pretender to the defunct Ottoman throne has been Bayezid Osman, the table below lists Ottoman sultans, as well as the last Ottoman caliph, in chronological order. The tughras were the seals or signatures used by Ottoman sultans. They were displayed on all official documents as well as on coins, the Notes column contains information on each sultans parentage and fate. For earlier rulers, there is usually a gap between the moment a sultans reign ended and the moment his successor was enthroned. Because of the infighting and numerous fratricides that occurred, a death date therefore did not always coincide with the accession date of his successor. In 1617, the law of succession changed from survival of the fittest to a system based on agnatic seniority and this in turn explains why from the 17th century onwards a deceased sultan was rarely succeeded by his own son, but usually by an uncle or brother
2.
Caesar (title)
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Caesar is a title of imperial character. It derives from the cognomen of Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator, the change from being a familial name to a title adopted by the Roman Emperors can be dated to about AD 68/69, the so-called Year of the Four Emperors. For political and personal reasons Octavian chose to emphasize his relationship with Caesar by styling himself simply Imperator Caesar, without any of the other elements of his full name. His successor as emperor, his stepson Tiberius, also bore the name as a matter of course, born Tiberius Claudius Nero, he was adopted by Caesar Augustus on June 26,4 AD, as Tiberius Julius Caesar. The precedent was set, the Emperor designated his successor by adopting him, Claudius in turn adopted his stepson and grand-nephew Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, giving him the name Caesar in the traditional way, his stepson would rule as the Emperor Nero. Galba helped solidify Caesar as the title of the heir by giving it to his own adopted heir. Galbas reign did not last long and he was deposed by Marcus Otho. Otho did not at first use the title Caesar and occasionally used the title Nero as emperor, Otho was then defeated by Aulus Vitellius who acceded with the name Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Imperator Augustus. Vitellius did not adopt the cognomen Caesar as part of his name, vespasians son, Titus Flavius Vespasianus became Titus Flavius Caesar Vespasianus. By this point the status of Caesar had been regularised into that of a given to the Emperor-designate. After some variation among the earliest emperors, the style of the Emperor-designate on coins was usually Nobilissimus Caesar Most Noble Caesar, on March 1,293, Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus established the Tetrarchy, a system of rule by two senior Emperors and two junior sub-Emperors. The two coequal senior emperors were styled identically to previous Emperors, as Imperator Caesar NN, pius Felix Invictus Augustus, and were called the Augusti, while the two junior sub-Emperors were styled identically to previous Emperors-designate, as Nobilissimus Caesar. Likewise, the junior sub-Emperors retained the title Caesar upon accession to the senior position, an exceptional case was the conferment of the dignity and its insignia to the Bulgarian khan Tervel by Justinian II who had helped him regain his throne in 705. The title was awarded to the brother of Empress Maria of Alania, according to the Klētorologion of 899, the Byzantine Caesars insignia were a crown without a cross, and the ceremony of a Caesars creation, is included in De Ceremoniis I.43. The title remained the highest in the hierarchy until the introduction of the sebastokratōr by Alexios I Komnenos. The title remained in existence through the last centuries of the Empire, in the late Byzantine hierarchy, as recorded in the mid-14th century Book of Offices of pseudo-Kodinos, the rank continued to come after the sebastokratōr. Pseudo-Kodinos writes that the forms of another form of hat, the domed skaranikon, and of the mantle. In the Middle East, the Persians and the Arabs continued to refer to the Roman and Byzantine emperors as Caesar
3.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques
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The title refers to the ruler taking the responsibility of guarding and maintaining the two holiest mosques in Islam, Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina. It is believed that the first person to use the title was Saladin, after defeating the Mamluks and gaining control of the two Muslim holy cities, Mecca and Medina in 1517, the Ottoman Sultan Selim I adopted the title. Rather than style himself the Ḥākimül-Ḥaremeyn, he accepted the more pious title Ḫādimül-Ḥaremeyn and this title was used by all subsequent Ottoman Caliph Sultans until Mehmed VI, the last. The first King of Saudi Arabia to assume the title was Fahd bin Abdul Aziz in 1986 and he replaced the term His Majesty with Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. The reigning king, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, took the title after the death of King Abdullah, his half brother
4.
Ottoman Caliphate
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The Ottoman Caliphate, under the Ottoman dynasty of the Ottoman Empire, was the last Sunni Islamic caliphate of the late medieval and the early modern era. During the period of Ottoman growth, Ottoman rulers claimed caliphal authority since Murad Is conquest of Edirne in 1362, strengthened by the Peace of Westphalia and the Industrial Revolution, European powers regrouped and challenged Ottoman dominance. The Ottoman state defaulted on its loans in 1875-6, part of a financial crisis affecting much of the globe. Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, who ruled 1876–1909, felt that the Empires desperate situation could only be remedied through strong and determined leadership. Taking a hard-line against Western involvement in Ottoman affairs, he emphasized the Empires Islamic character, reasserted his status as the Caliph, refused to join the insurrectionists and had placed themselves under the control of our army, thereby recognizing American sovereignty. The Ottoman Sultan used his position as caliph to order the Sulu Sultan not to resist, collaboration between the American military and Sulu sultanate was due to the Sulu Sultan being persuaded by the Ottoman Sultan. As the Moros have never asked more than that, it is not surprising, if the reader will pause to consider what this means in men and also the millions in money, he will appreciate this wonderful piece of diplomacy, in averting a holy war. The Moro Rebellion then broke out in 1904 with war raging between the Americans and Moro Muslims and atrocities committed against Moro Muslim women and children such as the Moro Crater Massacre, the coup by the three Pashas in 1909 marked the end of his reign. Western-inclined Turkish military officers opposed to Abdul-Hamids rule had steadily organized in the form of secret societies within and outside Turkey. By 1906, the movement enjoyed the support of a significant portion of the army, the Young Turks sought to remodel administration of the Empire along Western lines. Their ideology was nationalist in character, and was a precursor of the movement that would seize control of Turkey following World War I, CUP leaders presented their ideas to the public as a revival of true Islamic principles. Under the leadership of Enver Pasha, a Turkish military officer, a counter-coup launched by soldiers loyal to the Sultan threatened the new government but ultimately failed. Many aspects of this revolt, which started within certain sections of the army in Constantinople, are still yet to be analyzed. Its generally admitted perception of a movement has sometimes been challenged. Abdul-Hamid was deposed on 13 April 1909 and he was replaced by his brother Rashid Effendi, who was proclaimed Sultan Mehmed V on 27 April. In 1911 Italy warred with the Ottomans over Libya, and Turkeys failure to defend these regions demonstrated the weakness of the Ottoman military. In 1912 Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece formed the Balkan League, the ensuing Balkan Wars eliminated what little presence the Ottomans had left in Europe, and only infighting between the Balkan League allies prevented them from advancing into Anatolia. Internally, the Ottomans continued to be troubled by political instability, nationalist uprisings that had plagued the Empire sporadically for the past fifty years intensified
5.
Padishah
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Its Arabized pronunciation as Badishah was used by Mughal emperors. The rulers on the following thrones – the first two effectively commanding major West Asian empires – were styled Padishah, The Shāhanshāh of Iran, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire The emperors of the Mughal Empire, who used the Arabic version of the title, Badshah. Miangul Golshahzada Abdul Wadud of the tiny Pakistani North West Frontier state of Swat called himself badshah from November 1918 to March 1926, ahmed Shah Durrani founded the Durrani Empire in 1747 with the title Pādshah-i Afghanistan in Persian and Badcha Da Afghanistan in the Pashto language. The Sadozai were overthrown in 1823 but there was a restoration by Shah Shujah in 1839 with the help of Ranjit Singh and the Sikh Empire. The last Basha bey of Tunisia, Muhammad VIII al-Amin, adopted the sovereign style padshah 20 March 1956 –25 July 1957, the paramount prestige of this title, in Islam and even beyond, is clearly apparent from the Ottoman Empires dealings with the European powers. The compound Pādshah-i-Ghazi is only recorded for two individual rulers, H. H, there is a large family of Turkish origin using the surname Badi in modern-day Libya. In 2008, a cricket team, the Lahore Badshahs, was founded. In India, Padishah is often a Muslim surname, from the trend of adopting titles as names by both royalty and commoners. In Frank Herberts 1965 novel Dune, the head of human space is styled Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe. In the Pathfinder role-playing game, the ruler of the Empire of Kelesh is styled Padishah Emperor, baig Emir Rana Shah Sultan RoyalArk — Select present country, then choose dynasty from its menu WorldStatesmen idem, more cases but less thorough Bartbleby. com Dictionary & Etymology
6.
Sword of Osman
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The Sword of Osman was an important sword of state used during the enthronement ceremony of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire. The sword was named after Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Dynasty, the practice started when Osman I was girt with the sword of Islam by his mentor and father-in-law Sheikh Edebali. The girding of the sword of Osman was a ceremony which took place within two weeks of a sultans accession to the throne. It was held at the complex at Eyüp, on the Golden Horn waterway in the capital Constantinople. Even though the journey from Topkapı Palace to the Golden Horn was short, the Eyüp tomb complex was built by Mehmed II in honour of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, a companion of Muhammad who had died during the first Muslim siege of Constantinople in the 7th century. The sword girding thus occurred on what was regarded as sacred grounds, the fact that the emblem by which a sultan was enthroned consisted of a sword was highly symbolic, it showed that the office with which he was invested was first and foremost that of a warrior. The Sword of Osman was girded on to the new sultan by the Sharif of Konya, a Mevlevi dervish, who was summoned to Constantinople for that purpose. Such a privilege was reserved to the men of this Sufi order from the time Osman I had established his residence in Konya in 1299, before the capital was moved to Bursa and later to Constantinople. Until the late 19th century, non-Muslims were banned from entering the Eyüp Mosque, the first to depart from this tradition was Mehmed V, whose girding ceremony was open to people of different faiths. The fact that non-Muslims were allowed to see the ceremony enabled The New York Times to write a detailed account of it. Mehmed Vs brother and successor, Mehmed VI, went even further by allowing his girding ceremony to be filmed, since he was the last reigning Ottoman sultan, this is the only such ceremony that was ever put on film. Christianity and Islam Under the Sultans
7.
Mehmed III
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Mehmed III was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1595 until his death in 1603. He was born at the Manisa Palace, during the reign of his great-grandfather, Suleiman the Magnificent and he was the son of Şehzade Murad, himself the son of Şehzade Selim, who was the son of Sultan Suleiman and Hürrem Sultan. His mother was Safiye Sultan, an Albanian from the Dukagjin highlands and his great-grandfather died the year he was born and his grandfather became the new Sultan, Selim II. His grandfather Sultan Selim II died when Mehmed was 8 and Mehmeds father, Murad III, Mehmed thus became Crown Prince until his fathers death in 1595, when he was 28 years old. Mehmed III remains notorious even in Ottoman history for having nineteen of his brothers and half-brothers executed to secure power and they were all strangled by his deaf-mutes. Mehmed III was a ruler, leaving government to his mother Safiye Sultan. His first major problem was the rivalry between two of his viziers, Serdar Ferhad Pasha and Koca Sinan Pasha, and their supporters and his mother and her son-in-law Damat Ibrahim Pasha supported Koca Sinan Pasha, and prevented Mehmed III from taking control of the issue himself. The issue grew to cause major disturbances by janissaries, on 7 July 1595, Mehmed III finally sacked Serdar Ferhad Pasha from the position of Grand Vizier due to his failure in Wallachia and replaced him with Sinan. The major event of his reign was the Austro-Ottoman War in Hungary, Ottoman defeats in the war caused Mehmed III to take personal command of the army, the first sultan to do so since Suleiman I in 1566. Accompanied by the Sultan, the Ottomans conquered Eger in 1596, upon hearing of the Habsburg armys approach, Mehmed wanted to dismiss the army and return to Istanbul. Upon returning to Istanbul in victory, Mehmed told his Vezirs that he would campaign again, the next year the Venetian Bailo in Istanbul noted, the doctors declared that the Sultan cannot leave for war on account of his bad health, produced by excesses of eating and drinking. In reward for his services at the war, Cigalazade Yusuf Sinan Pasha was made Grand Vizier in 1596, however, with pressure from the court and his mother, Mehmed reinstated Damat Ibrahim Pasha to this position shortly afterwards. In 1600, Ottoman forces under Tiryaki Hasan Pasha captured Nagykanizsa after a 40-day siege, another major event of his reign was the Jelali revolts in Anatolia. Karayazıcı Abdülhalim, a former Ottoman official, captured the city of Urfa, in 1601, Abdülhalim fled to the vicinity of Samsun after being defeated by the forces under Sokulluzade Hasan Pasha, the governor of Baghdad. However, his brother, Deli Hasan, killed Sokulluzade Hasan Pasha and he then marched on to Kütahya, captured and burned the city. In 1599, the year of Mehmed IIIs reign, Queen Elizabeth I sent a convoy of gifts to the Ottoman court. These gifts were intended for the sultans predecessor, Murad III. Included in these gifts was a large jewel-studded clockwork organ that was assembled on the slope of the Royal Private Garden by a team of engineers including Thomas Dallam
8.
Mustafa I
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He was born in the Manisa Palace, as the younger brother of Ahmed I. His mother was Halime Sultan, an Abkhazian lady, before 1603 it was customary for an Ottoman Sultan to have his brothers executed shortly after he gained the throne. But when the thirteen-year-old Ahmed I was enthroned in 1603, he spared the life of the twelve-year-old Mustafa, Mustafa might have been left alive because Ahmed had not yet produced any sons, so at the time Mustafa was his only heir. Though Ahmed went on to several sons, he did not execute Mustafa. Another factor in Mustafas survival is the influence of Kösem Sultan, however, the reports of foreign ambassadors suggest that Ahmed actually liked his brother. If Osman became Sultan, he would try to execute his half-brothers. This scenario later became a reality when Osman II executed his brother Mehmed in 1621, until Ahmeds death in 1617, Mustafa lived in the Old palace, along with his mother, and grandmother Safiye Sultan. Ahmeds death created a dilemma never before experienced by the Ottoman Empire, multiple princes were now eligible for the Sultanate, and all of them lived in Topkapı Palace. A court faction headed by the Şeyhülislam Esad Efendi and Sofu Mehmed Pasha decided to enthrone Mustafa instead of Ahmeds son Osman, Sofu Mehmed argued that Osman was too young to be enthroned without causing adverse comment among the populace. The Chief Black Eunuch Mustafa Agha objected, citing Mustafas mental problems, Mustafas rise created a new succession principle of seniority that would last until the end of the Empire. It was the first time an Ottoman Sultan was succeeded by his brother instead of his son and it was hoped that regular social contact would improve Mustafas mental health, but his behavior remained eccentric. He pulled off the turbans of his viziers and yanked their beards, others observed him throwing coins to birds and fish. The Ottoman historian İbrahim Peçevi wrote this situation was seen by all men of state and the people, Mustafa was never more than a tool of court cliques at the Topkapı Palace. In 1618, after a rule, another palace faction deposed him in favour of his young nephew Osman II. The conflict between the Janissaries and Osman II presented him with a second chance, after a Janissary rebellion led to the deposition and assassination of Osman II in 1622, Mustafa was restored to the throne and held it for another year. Nevertheless, according to Baki Tezcan, there is not enough evidence to establish that Mustafa was mentally imbalanced when he came to the throne. Mustafa made a number of excursions to the arsenal and the docks, examining various sorts of arms and taking an active interest in the munitions supply of the army. After Ahmeds death, he completed the outer court of the Blue mosque, the mausoleum
9.
Manisa
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Manisa is a large city in Turkeys Aegean Region and the administrative seat of Manisa Province. Under Ottoman rule in the centuries that followed, the city had already extended into the terrain at the start of the plain. It is also a point for other visitor attractions of international acclaim which are located nearby within Manisas depending region, such as Sardes. Historically, the city was also called Magnesia, and more precisely as Magnesia ad Sipylum to distinguish from Magnesia on the Maeander at a short distance to the south. Traditional view held that the name Magnesia derived from the tribe of Magnetes who would have immigrated here from Thessaly at the dawn of the recorded history. A connection with native Anatolian languages has also been suggested of recent date, the name is rendered as Μαγνησία in ancient and modern Greek language. The names Sipylus or Sipylum in reference to a settlement here are also encountered in some sources, again in reference to the mountain and as abbreviated forms. Traces of prehistory in the Manisa region, although few in number, the second finds are tombs contemporaneous with Troy II and found in the village of Yortan near Kırkağaç district center, north of Manisa. Original burial practices observed in these sepulchres led scholars to the definition of a Yortan culture in Anatolias prehistory, cybele monument by itself represents a step of innovation in Hittite art where full-faced figures in high relief are rare. The first millennium BC saw the emergence in the region of Phrygians and Maeonians, the accounts concerning which are blended with myths. The vestiges from their capital which reached our day bring together remains from successive civilizations. It became a city of importance under the Roman dominion and, though nearly destroyed by an earthquake in the reign of Tiberius, was restored by that emperor and flourished through the Roman empire. It was an important regional centre through the Byzantine Empire, Magnesia housed the Imperial mint, the Imperial treasury, and served as the functional capital of the empire until the recovery of Constantinople in 1261. Ruins of the Nicean-era fortifications attest to the importance in the Late Byzantine period. In the early 13th century the region of Magnesia was subject to repeated raids by invading Turkish bands, the local population was unable to repulse the Turkish raids. Thus, after an unsuccessful defence lead by the Byzantine Emperor most inhabitants fled to the Aegean coast, as a result of the Turkish invasion in the region and the destruction of the city the area was largely abandoned. His sons held the region until 1390, when the first incorporation of their lands into the expanding Ottoman state took place, after a brief interval caused by the Ottoman interregnum after the Battle of Ankara, Manisa and its surroundings definitely became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1410. Even during the 15th century Magnesia was recorded as being in ruins due to the previous Turkish raids
10.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
11.
Constantinople
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Constantinople was the capital city of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, and also of the brief Latin, and the later Ottoman empires. It was reinaugurated in 324 AD from ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great, after whom it was named, Constantinople was famed for its massive and complex defences. The first wall of the city was erected by Constantine I, Constantinople never truly recovered from the devastation of the Fourth Crusade and the decades of misrule by the Latins. The origins of the name of Byzantion, more known by the later Latin Byzantium, are not entirely clear. The founding myth of the city has it told that the settlement was named after the leader of the Megarian colonists, Byzas. The later Byzantines of Constantinople themselves would maintain that the city was named in honour of two men, Byzas and Antes, though this was likely just a play on the word Byzantion. During this time, the city was also called Second Rome, Eastern Rome, and Roma Constantinopolitana. As the city became the remaining capital of the Roman Empire after the fall of the West, and its wealth, population, and influence grew. In the language of other peoples, Constantinople was referred to just as reverently, the medieval Vikings, who had contacts with the empire through their expansion in eastern Europe used the Old Norse name Miklagarðr, and later Miklagard and Miklagarth. In Arabic, the city was sometimes called Rūmiyyat al-kubra and in Persian as Takht-e Rum, in East and South Slavic languages, including in medieval Russia, Constantinople was referred to as Tsargrad or Carigrad, City of the Caesar, from the Slavonic words tsar and grad. This was presumably a calque on a Greek phrase such as Βασιλέως Πόλις, the modern Turkish name for the city, İstanbul, derives from the Greek phrase eis tin polin, meaning into the city or to the city. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet was changed from Arabic script to Latin script, in time the city came to be known as Istanbul and its variations in most world languages. In Greece today, the city is still called Konstantinoúpolis/Konstantinoúpoli or simply just the City, apart from this, little is known about this initial settlement, except that it was abandoned by the time the Megarian colonists settled the site anew. A farsighted treaty with the emergent power of Rome in c.150 BC which stipulated tribute in exchange for independent status allowed it to enter Roman rule unscathed. The site lay astride the land route from Europe to Asia and the seaway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and had in the Golden Horn an excellent and spacious harbour. He would later rebuild Byzantium towards the end of his reign, in which it would be briefly renamed Augusta Antonina, fortifying it with a new city wall in his name, Constantine had altogether more colourful plans. Rome was too far from the frontiers, and hence from the armies and the imperial courts, yet it had been the capital of the state for over a thousand years, and it might have seemed unthinkable to suggest that the capital be moved to a different location. Constantinople was built over 6 years, and consecrated on 11 May 330, Constantine divided the expanded city, like Rome, into 14 regions, and ornamented it with public works worthy of an imperial metropolis
12.
Sultan Ahmed Mosque
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The Sultan Ahmed Mosque or Sultan Ahmet Mosque is a historic mosque located in Istanbul, Turkey. A popular tourist site, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque continues to function as a mosque today, the Blue Mosque, as it is popularly known, was constructed between 1609 and 1616 during the rule of Ahmed I. Its Külliye contains Ahmeds tomb, a madrasah and a hospice, hand-painted blue tiles adorn the mosque’s interior walls, and at night the mosque is bathed in blue as lights frame the mosque’s five main domes, six minarets and eight secondary domes. It sits next to the Hagia Sophia, another popular tourist site, after the Peace of Zsitvatorok and the crushing loss in the 1603–1618 war with Persia, Sultan Ahmet I, decided to build a large mosque in Istanbul to reassert Ottoman power. It would be the first imperial mosque for more than forty years, while his predecessors had paid for their mosques with the spoils of war, Ahmet I procured funds from the Treasury, because he had not gained remarkable victories. It caused the anger of the ulema, the Muslim jurists, big parts of the south shore of the mosque rest on the foundations, the vaults of the old Grand Palace. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque has five domes, six minarets. The design is the culmination of two centuries of Ottoman mosque development and it incorporates some Byzantine Christian elements of the neighboring Hagia Sophia with traditional Islamic architecture and is considered to be the last great mosque of the classical period. The architect, Sedefkâr Mehmed Ağa, synthesized the ideas of his master Sinan, aiming for overwhelming size, majesty and splendour. At its lower levels and at every pier, the interior of the mosque is lined with more than 20,000 handmade İznik style ceramic tiles, made at Iznik in more than fifty different tulip designs. The tiles at lower levels are traditional in design, while at gallery level their design becomes flamboyant with representations of flowers, fruit, the tiles were made under the supervision of the Iznik master. The price to be paid for each tile was fixed by the sultans decree, as a result, the quality of the tiles used in the building decreased gradually. The upper levels of the interior are dominated by blue paint, more than 200 stained glass windows with intricate designs admit natural light, today assisted by chandeliers. On the chandeliers, ostrich eggs are found that were meant to avoid cobwebs inside the mosque by repelling spiders, the decorations include verses from the Quran, many of them made by Seyyid Kasim Gubari, regarded as the greatest calligrapher of his time. The floors are covered with carpets, which are donated by the faithful and are replaced as they wear out. The many spacious windows confer a spacious impression, the casements at floor level are decorated with opus sectile. Each exedra has five windows, some of which are blind, each semi-dome has 14 windows and the central dome 28. The coloured glass for the windows was a gift of the Signoria of Venice to the sultan, most of these coloured windows have by now been replaced by modern versions with little or no artistic merit
13.
Mahfiruz Hatun
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Mahfiruz Hatun was a wife of Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I and mother of Sultan Osman II. According to historian Baki Tezcan, nothing is known about her except her probable name and her Muslim name, Mahfiruz, means favourite of the crescent. Such peculiar names were given to the women of the Imperial Harem and she was the first of Ahmed Is three women and bore him Osman II. Issue Sultan Osman II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Şehzade Bayezid, Şehzade Suleiman, there are evidence that strongly suggests that she died at latest by 1610. Venetian ambassador Contarini reported the beating of a woman who had irritated Kösem, ordered by the sultan, in 1612 and she may have been a rival of Kösem, who made efforts to keep Mustafa safe from execution, and saw an obstacle in Mahfiruz. She was buried in the sanctuary of Eyüp, Istanbul. In the 2015 Turkish television series Muhteşem Yüzyıl, Kösem, Mahfiruz was portrayed by actress Dilara Aksüyek, historical advisors to the series noted that the Sultan was a Circassian by birth. In the fifth episode of the first series, she was introduced as Çerkes güzeli Raşa before being renamed to Mahfiruz, List of mothers of the Ottoman sultans List of consorts of the Ottoman sultans Peirce, Leslie P. The Imperial Harem, Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, the Debut of Kösem Sultans Political Career
14.
Ahmed I
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Ahmed I was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1603 until his death in 1617. Ahmeds reign is noteworthy for marking the end of the Ottoman tradition of royal fratricide and he is also well known for his construction of the Blue Mosque, one of the most famous mosques in Turkey. Ahmed was born on 18 April 1590 at the Manisa Palace, Manisa, when his father Şehzade Mehmed was still a prince, after his grandfather Murad IIIs death in 1595, his father came to Istanbul and ascended the throne as Sultan Mehmed III. His father ordered the execution of nineteen of his brothers and half brothers and his elder brother Şehzade Mahmud was also executed by his own father on 7 June 1603, just before his own death on 22 December 1603. Mahmud was buried along with his mother in a mausoleum built by Ahmed in Şehzade Mosque. Ahmed ascended the throne after his fathers death in 1603, when ascended the throne, his powerful grandmother Safiye Sultan was still alive. He broke with the traditional fratricide and sent his brother Mustafa to live at the old palace at Bayezit along with their grandmother Safiye Sultan. A far lost uncle of Ahmed, Yahya, resented his accession to the Ottoman throne in 1603, in contrast to previous enthronements, Ahmed did not order the execution of his brother Mustafa, thus the Ottoman tradition of royal fratricide was brought to an end. This was most likely due to Ahmeds young age - he had not yet demonstrated his ability to sire children and his brothers execution would have endangered the dynasty, and thus he was spared. In the earlier part of his reign Ahmed I showed decision and vigor, the new borders were drawn per exactly the same line as confirmed in the Peace of Amasya of 1555. Upon ascending the throne, Ahmed I appointed Cigalazade Yusuf Sinan Pasha as the commander of the eastern army, despite the conditions being favourable, Sinan Pasha decided to stay for the winter in Van, but then marched to Erzurum to stop an incoming Safavid attack. This caused unrest within the army and the year was practically wasted for the Ottomans, the Ottoman army was routed Urmia and had to flee firstly to Van and then to Diyarbekir. Here, Sinan Pasha sparked a rebellion by executing the Beylerbey of Aleppo, Canbulatoğlu Hüseyin Pasha and he soon died himself and the Safavid army was able to capture Ganja, Shirvan and Shamakhi in Azerbaijan. Under Mehmed Pasha, the army recaptured Pest and Vác, but failed to capture Esztergom as the siege was lifted due to unfavourable weather. Meanwhile, the King of Transylvania, Stephen Bocskay, who struggled for the independence and had formerly supported the Habsburgs. Upon the promise of help, his forces joined the Ottoman forces in Belgrade. With this help, the Ottoman army besieged Esztergom and captured it on 4 November 1605, bocskai, with Ottoman help, captured Nové Zámky and forces under Tiryaki Hasan Pasha took Veszprém and Palota. Sarhoş İbrahim Pasha, the Beylerbey of Nagykanizsa, attacked the Austrian region of Istria, however, with Jelali revolts in Anatolia more dangerous than ever and a defeat in the eastern front, Mehmed Pasha was called to Constantinople
15.
Dynasty
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A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family, usually in the context of a feudal or monarchical system but sometimes also appearing in elective republics. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a house, historians periodize the histories of many sovereign states, such as Ancient Egypt, the Carolingian Empire and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties. As such, the dynasty may be used to delimit the era during which the family reigned and to describe events, trends. The word dynasty itself is often dropped from such adjectival references, until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty, that is, to increase the territory, wealth, and power of his family members. The longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. Succession through a daughter when permitted was considered to establish a new dynasty in her husbands ruling house, however, some states in Africa, determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mothers dynasty when coming into her inheritance. It is also extended to unrelated people such as poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team. The word dynasty derives via Latin dynastia from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to power, dominion and it was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, power or ability, from dýnamai, to be able. A ruler in a dynasty is referred to as a dynast. For example, following his abdication, Edward VIII of the United Kingdom ceased to be a member of the House of Windsor. A dynastic marriage is one that complies with monarchical house law restrictions, the marriage of Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, to Máxima Zorreguieta in 2002 was dynastic, for example, and their eldest child is expected to inherit the Dutch crown eventually. But the marriage of his younger brother Prince Friso to Mabel Wisse Smit in 2003 lacked government support, thus Friso forfeited his place in the order of succession, lost his title as a Prince of the Netherlands, and left his children without dynastic rights. In historical and monarchist references to formerly reigning families, a dynast is a member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchys rules still in force. Even since abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Max and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position. The term dynast is sometimes used only to refer to descendants of a realms monarchs. The term can therefore describe overlapping but distinct sets of people, yet he is not a male-line member of the royal family, and is therefore not a dynast of the House of Windsor. Thus, in 1999 he requested and obtained permission from Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco. Yet a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time and that exclusion, too, ceased to apply on 26 March 2015, with retroactive effect for those who had been dynasts prior to triggering it by marriage to a Catholic
16.
Ottoman dynasty
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The Ottoman dynasty was made up of the members of the imperial House of Osman. According to Ottoman tradition, the family originated from the Kayı tribe branch of the Oghuz Turks, the Ottoman dynasty, named after Osman I, ruled the Ottoman Empire from c.1299 to 1922. During much of the Empires history, the sultan was the regent, head of state. The imperial family was deposed from power and the sultanate was abolished on 1 November 1922 after the Turkish War of Independence, the Republic of Turkey was declared the following year. The living members of the dynasty were sent into exile as persona non gratae, though some have been allowed to return. In its current form, the family is known as the Osmanoğlu family, before Orhans proclamation of the dynasty, the tribe was known as the Bilecik Söğüt Beylik or Beys but was renamed Osmanlı in honor of Osman. The Ottoman dynasty is known in modern Turkish as Osmanlı Hanedanı, meaning House of Osman, in Ottoman Turkish it was known as Hanedan-ı Âl-i Osman, thus they still formally acknowledged the sovereignty of the Seljuk Empire and its successor, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm. The first Ottoman ruler to claim the title of Sultan was Murad I. The holder of the title Sultan was in Arabic-Islamic dynasties originally the power behind the throne of the Caliph in Bagdad, the Ottoman sultans also claimed the title of Caliph starting with Murad I, who transformed the Ottoman state into a transcontinental empire. With the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II Fatih claimed the title Kaysar-i-Rûm Emperor of Rome and he appointed the Patriarch of Constantinople Gennadius Scholarius, whom he protected and whose status he elevated into leader of all the Eastern Orthodox Christians. As Emperor of Rome he laid claim to all Roman territories, Sultan Mehmed II also took the title of Padishah, a Persian title meaning Master of Kings and ranking as Emperor, claiming superiority among the other kings. He was the first Ottoman ruler to adopt the title of Padishah. The Ottoman claim to caliphate was strengthened when they defeated the Mamluks in 1517, as the empire grew, sultans adopted secondary titles expressing the empires claim to be the legitimate successor of the absorbed states. Furthermore, they tended to enumerate even regular provinces, not unlike the long lists of -mainly inherited- feudal titles in the style of many Christian European monarchs. Some early Ottoman Sultans even had to accept the status in the eyes of a foreign overlord. However, the Ottoman Caliphate too was abolished soon afterwards, and Abdulmecid II was utterly deposed and expelled from Turkey with the rest of the Ottoman dynasty on 3 March 1924
17.
Handan Sultan
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Handan Sultan was the consort of Sultan Mehmed III, and Valide Sultan to their son Sultan Ahmed I. Of Bosnian origin, Handan Sultan was a servant in the household of Cerrah Mehmed Pasha and he was the husband of Gevherhan Sultan, the daughter of Sultan Selim II, sister of Sultan Murad III, and aunt of Sultan Mehmed III. Mehmed Pasha was formerly a surgeon and had circumcised Prince Mehmed in 1582, in 1583, when Mehmed was appointed the sancak-bey of Saruhan, Handan being beautiful was presented to him at his departure by Mehmed Pasha and Gevherhan Sultan. When Mehmed ascended the throne after his fathers death in 1595, when Ahmed ascended the throne following Mehmed IIIs death on 22 December 1603, Handan became Valide Sultan. As the mother of the new Sultan, she received 1,000 aspers a day, on Friday January 9, the former Valide Sultan Safiye Sultan, along with Şehzade Mustafa, were sent to live in the Eski Palace located at the Beyazıt Square. Soon after his succession, Ahmed wanted to express his gratitude to Mehmed Pasha, by then, however, Cerrah Mehmed Pasha was old and ailing, and died on January 9,1604. Ahmed, therefore, honored the late pashas wife and he also named one of his daughters after her. As a co-regent, she began building up her network of clients. Ahmed several times announced his eagerness to go to war and it seems that Handan Sultan and Mustafa Efendi advised him to behave in this manner in order to give the public the impression that he was capable of ruling the state. He also began to spend a great deal of time outside the palace, notably hunting or conducting incognito inspections, Handan Sultan quickly realized that her son could easily put himself in danger and thus needed to be closely watched. She favored her fellow Bosnians at her sons court and she convinced Ahmed to appoint Yavuz Ali Pasha as grand vizier, and maintained a close relationship with him, especially during the first critical months of Ahmeds reign. In spring of 1604, she and Mustafa Efendi ordered Ali Pasha to take command in Hungary, because of Handan Sultans influence on her son, Dervish Mehmed Agha replaced Bayran Agha as chief gardener in summer of 1604. Whenever Handan, Ahmed, and Derviş got altogether in the gardens, she made Ahmed promise that he will not do anything contrary to Dervişs words. Thanks to Handan’s continuous support, he managed to become the first royal favorite of Ahmed, Handan Sultan also acted as an intermediary between her son and other government officials. Any vizier who wanted to communicate with Ahmed had to submit his petition first to her, the contemporary historian Ibrahim Peçevi questioned her wisdom, but legitimized her authority over her son by an old and popular saying a mothers right is Gods right. Sinanpaşaoğlu Mehmed Pasha who had married to Piyale Pasha and Gevherhan Sultans daughter in November 1598, was sent to quell the Jelali rebellions in Anatolia. However, he proved to be ineffective, and conducted himself so inappropriately as to arouse suspicions that he had turned rebel himself, with Handan’s intercession, he was pardoned by the sultan. He returned to Istanbul, and took up his duties as vezir, however, he was executed on 20 August 1605
18.
Sunni Islam
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Sunni Islam is the largest group of Islam. Its name comes from the word Sunnah, referring to the behavior of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. According to Sunni tradition, Muhammad did not clearly designate a successor and this contrasts with the Shia view, which holds that Muhammad intended his son-in-law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib to succeed him. Political tensions between Sunnis and Shias continued with varying intensity throughout Islamic history and they have been exacerbated in recent times by ethnic conflicts, as of 2009, Sunni Muslims constituted between 87–90% of the worlds Muslim population. Sunni Islam is the worlds largest religious denomination, followed by Catholicism and its adherents are referred to in Arabic as ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamāʻah or ahl as-sunnah for short. In English, its doctrines and practices are sometimes called Sunnism, while adherents are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis, Sunnites, Sunni Islam is sometimes referred to as orthodox Islam. The Quran, together with hadith and binding juristic consensus form the basis of all traditional jurisprudence within Sunni Islam, sunnī, also commonly referred to as Sunnīism, is a term derived from sunnah meaning habit, usual practice, custom, tradition. The Muslim use of this term refers to the sayings and living habits of the prophet Muhammad, in Arabic, this branch of Islam is referred to as ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamāʻah, the people of the sunnah and the community, which is commonly shortened to ahl as-sunnah. One common mistake is to assume that Sunni Islam represents a normative Islam that emerged during the period after Muhammads death, and that Sufism and Shiism developed out of Sunni Islam. This perception is due to the reliance on highly ideological sources that have been accepted as reliable historical works. Both Sunnism and Shiaism are the end products of centuries of competition between ideologies. Both sects used each other to further cement their own identities and doctrines, the first four caliphs are known among Sunnis as the Rashidun or Rightly-Guided Ones. Sunni recognition includes the aforementioned Abu Bakr as the first, Umar who established the Islamic calendar as the second, Uthman as the third, Sunnis believe that the companions of Muhammad were the best of Muslims. Support for this view is found in the Quran, according to Sunnis. Sunnis also believe that the companions were true believers since it was the companions who were given the task of compiling the Quran, furthermore, narrations that were narrated by the companions are considered by Sunnis to be a second source of knowledge of the Muslim faith. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2010 and released January 2011 found that there are 1.62 billion Muslims around the world, Islam does not have a formal hierarchy or clergy. Leaders are informal, and gain influence through study to become a scholar of Islamic law, according to the Islamic Center of Columbia, South Carolina, anyone with the intelligence and the will can become an Islamic scholar. During Midday Mosque services on Fridays, the congregation will choose a person to lead the service
19.
Tughra
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A tughra is a calligraphic monogram, seal or signature of a sultan that was affixed to all official documents and correspondence. It was also carved on his seal and stamped on the coins minted during his reign, the tughra was designed at the beginning of the sultans reign and drawn by the court calligrapher or nişancı on written documents. The first tughra belonged to Orhan I, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire. Tughras served a similar to the cartouche in ancient Egypt or the Royal Cypher of British monarchs. Every Ottoman sultan had his own individual tughra, the tughra has a characteristic form, two loops on the left side, three vertical lines in the middle, stacked writing on the bottom and two extensions to the right. Each of these elements has a meaning, and together they make up the form that is easily recognizable as a tughra. The name of the sultan is written out in the bottom section, depending on the period, this name can be as simple as Orhan, son of Osman in the first tughra in 1326. In later periods honorifics and prayers are added to the name of the tughra holder. The loops to the left of the tughra are called beyze, the vertical lines on the top of the tughra are called tuğ, or flagstaff. The lines to the right of the tughra are called hançer and signify a sword, symbol of power and might. Although the tughra is largely identified with the Ottoman Sultans, they have sometimes been used in other Turkic states, such as the Qajar dynasty, Safavid Empire. Later, tughras were used among the Tatars of Imperial Russia, there are modern artists of calligraphy that use the characteristic tughra form today. Examples are the tughras of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Akihito, the Emperor of Japan, created by artist Vladimir Popov
20.
Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
21.
Sanjak
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Sanjaks were administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire. Sanjak, and the variant spellings sandjak, sanjaq, and sinjaq, are English transliterations of the Turkish word sancak, meaning district, banner, sanjaks were also called by the Arabic word for banner or flag, لواء liwa. Ottoman provinces were divided into sanjaks governed by sanjakbeys and were subdivided into timars, kadiluks. The unofficial, geo-political region of Sandžak in Serbia derives its name from the former Ottoman Sanjak of Novi Pazar, Liwa or Liwa is an Arabic term interchangeable with the Turkish term Sanjak. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the term was used in the Arab countries formerly under Ottoman rule and it was gradually replaced by other terms like qadaa and mintaqah and is now defunct. These were Sultan-öyügü, Hudavendigar-eli, Koca-eli and Karasi-eli, the districts which made up an eyalet were known as sanjaks, each under the command of a sanjak-bey. The number of sanjaks in each eyalet varied considerably, in 1609, Ayn Ali noted that Rumelia Eyalet had 24 sanjaks, but that six of these in the Peloponnesos had been detached to form the separate Morea Eyalet. Anatolia had 14 sanjaks and the Damascus Eyalet had 11, there were, in addition, several eyalets where there was no formal division into sanjaks. These, in Ayn Ali’s list were Basra and part of the Baghdad, Al-Hasa, Egypt, Tripoli, Tunis and he adds to the list Yemen, with the note that ‘at the moment the Imams have usurped control’. These eyalets were, however, exceptional, the pattern was the eyalet subdivided into sanjaks. However, this had not always been the case, some sanjaks in fact preserved the names of the dynasties that had ruled there before the Ottoman conquest. In 1609, Ayn Ali made a note on their formal status, in listing the sanjaks in the Diyarbekir Eyalet, he notes that it had ten ‘Ottoman districts’ and, in addition, eight ‘districts of the Kurdish lords’. In these cases, when a lord died, the governorship did not go to an outsider, in other respects, however, they resembled normal Ottoman sanjaks, in that the revenues were registered and allocated to fief holders who went to war under their lord. In addition, however, Ayn Ali noted that there were five ‘sovereign sanjaks’, which their lords disposed of ‘as private property’, there were other areas, too, which enjoyed autonomy or semi-autonomy. In the second half of the 16th century, Kilis came under the governorship of the Janbulad family. In the 1840s, the boundaries of sanjaks were redrawn to establish units of comparable population. Each of these sanjaks was headed by a muhassil, most of the sanjaks throughout the Empire were under the rule of non-hereditary appointees, who had no permanent family of territorial connections with the area. The Sanjak was governed just as a Vilayet on a smaller scale, a sanjak was typically divided into kazas, also known as kadiluks, each headed by a kadı, or judge
22.
Murad III
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Murad III was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1574 until his death in 1595. Born in Bozdağan or Manisa, Şehzade Murad was the son of Sultan Selim II, after his ceremonial circumcision in 1557, Murad was appointed sancakbeyi of Akşehir by Suleyman I in 1558. At the age of 18 he was appointed sancakbeyi of Saruhan, suleiman died when Murad was 20, and his father became the new sultan. Selim II broke with tradition by sending only his oldest son out of the palace to govern a province, Selim died in 1574 and was succeeded by Murad, who began his reign by having his five younger brothers strangled. His authority was undermined by the influences, more specifically. The power had only been maintained under Selim II by the genius of the powerful Grand Vizier Mehmed Sokollu who remained in office until his assassination in October 1579, during Murads reign the northern borders with the Habsburg Monarchy were defended by the Bosnian governor Hasan Predojević. The reign of Murad III was marked by exhausting wars on the western and eastern fronts. The Ottomans also faced defeats during battles such as the Battle of Sisak, the Ottomans had been at peace with the neighbouring rivalling Safavid Empire since 1555, per the Treaty of Amasya, that for some time had settled border disputed. But in 1577 Murad declared war, starting the Ottoman–Safavid War and he was influenced by viziers Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha and Sinan Pasha and disregarded the opposing counsel of Grand Vizier Mehmed Sokollu. The war would drag on for 12 years, ending with the Istanbul Treaty of 1590, Murads reign was a time of financial stress for the Ottoman state. To keep up with changing military techniques, the Ottomans trained infantrymen in the use of firearms, by 1580 an influx of silver from the New World had caused high inflation and social unrest, especially among Janissaries and government officials who were paid in debased currency. Deprivation from the rebellions, coupled with the pressure of over-population, was especially felt in Anatolia. Competition for positions within the government grew fierce, leading to bribery, numerous envoys and letters were exchanged between Elizabeth I and Sultan Murad III. This diplomacy would be continued under Murads successor Mehmed III, by both the sultan and Safiye Sultan alike, following the example of his father Selim II, Murad was the second Ottoman sultan who never went on campaign during his reign, instead spending it entirely in Istanbul. During the final years of his reign, he did not even leave Topkapı Palace, for two consecutive years he did not attend the Friday procession to the imperial mosque—an unprecedented breaking of custom. Murad withdrew from his subjects and spent the majority of his reign keeping to the company of few people and their negative portrayals of Murad influenced later historians. Both historians also accused Murad of sexual excess, before becoming sultan, Murad had been loyal to Safiye Sultan, his Venetian-born concubine who had given him a son, Mehmed, and two daughters. His monogamy was disapproved of by his mother Nurbanu, who worried that Murad needed more sons to succeed him in case Mehmed died young and she also worried about Safiyes influence over her son and the Ottoman dynasty
23.
Safiye Sultan
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Safiye Sultan, was the consort of Murad III and Valide Sultan of the Ottoman Empire as mother of Mehmed III. Safiye was also one of the eminent figures during the era known as the Sultanate of Women. She lived in the Ottoman Empire during the reigns of seven sultans, Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II, Murad III, Mehmed III, Ahmed I, Mustafa I, and Osman II. The identity of Safiye has often confused with that of her Venetian mother-in-law, Nurbanu. However, Safiye was of Albanian origin, born in the Dukagjin highlands, in 1563, at the age of 13, she was presented as a slave to the future Murad III by Hümaşah Sultan, daughter of Şehzade Mehmed, son of Suleiman the Magnificent and Hürrem Sultan. Given the name Safiye, she became a concubine of Murad, in 26 May 1566, she gave birth to Murads son, the future Mehmed III, same year when Suleiman the Magnificent died. Safiye had been Murads only concubine prior to his accession, and his mother Nurbanu advised him to take other concubines for the good of the dynasty, which by 1581 had only one surviving heir, Murad and Safiyes son Mehmed. In 1583, Nurbanu accused Safiye of using witches and sorcerers to render Murad impotent and prevent him from taking new concubines and this resulted in the imprisonment and torture of Safiyes servants. Murads sister Esmehan presented him with two beautiful concubines, which he accepted, cured of his impotence, he went on to father twenty sons and twenty-seven daughters. Venetian reports state that after an initial bitterness, Safiye kept her dignity and she even procured more for him, earning the gratitude of the Sultan, who continued to value her and consult her on political matters, especially after the death of Nurbanu. During Murads latter years, Safiye returned to being his only companion, however, it is unlikely that Safiye ever became Murads wife—though the Ottoman historian Mustafa Ali refers to her as such, he is contradicted by reports from the Venetian and English ambassadors. She was influential as a Haseki, a rank bestowed on her less than a year after Murad ascended the throne. When Murad died in 1595, Safiye arranged for her son Mehmed to succeed as sultan, until her sons death in 1603, Ottoman politics were determined by a party headed by herself and Gazanfer Ağa, chief of the white eunuchs and head of the enderun. Safiye eventually enjoyed an enormous stipend of 3,000 aspers a day during the part of her sons reign. When Mehmed III went on the Eger campaign in Hungary in 1596, he gave his great power over the empire. During her interim rule she persuaded her son to revoke a political appointment of the judgeship of Istanbul and to reassign to the grand vizierate to Damat Ibrahim Pasha, her son-in-law. During this period, the secretary of the English ambassador reported that while in the palace, the Queen Mother sent to enquire of the matter was told that the Vizier did justice upon certain chabies, that is, whores. The greatest crisis Safiye endured as valide sultan stemmed from her reliance on her kira, a kira was a non-Muslim woman who acted as an intermediary between a secluded woman of the harem and the outside world, serving as a business agent and secretary
24.
Sultan Yahya
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Sultan Yahya was the alleged son of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed III. His mother was a crypto-Christian Greek named Helena, who fled with him from the Anatolian town of Manisa, when his father, Mehmed, became Sultan, he followed the Ottoman custom of executing all of his brothers. Yahyas mother was concerned that this could also happen to him after the death of his father, so he was smuggled out of the empire, first to Greece. He was then baptized at an Orthodox Christian monastery, where he lived for the next eight years of his life. Eventually, Yahyas two older brothers died, but in 1603, since Yahya had escaped the country to avoid fratricide, Yahya believed that as the next oldest son of Mehmed III, he was next in line to be Ottoman Sultan and felt cheated out of his rightful destiny. He would dedicate the rest of his life to gaining the Ottoman throne, from 1603 on, Yahya made frequent trips to northern and western Europe to gain support for his claim to the throne. At one point he managed to win the support of the Tatar Khan Shahin, between 1614 and 1617, he schemed with Serbian Orthodox Christian bishops in Kosovo and Western Roman Catholic bishops and leaders as part of his strategy to gain the Ottoman throne. A few years later, with the assistance of Russian and Ukrainian cossacks, he led a fleet of 130 ships and he died in 1649 on the Montenegrin coast, where he was involved in a rebellion organized by the Roman Catholic bishops of Skodra-and-Bar. List of unrecognized heirs of the Ottoman dynasty
25.
Ottoman Hungary
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Ottoman Hungary was the territory of Medieval Hungary which was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1541 to 1699. Ottoman rule covered mostly the central and southern territories of the former medieval Kingdom of Hungary as almost the entire region of the Great Hungarian Plain, under the reign of Louis II Jagiellon, internal dissentions divided the nobility. Provoked into war by diplomatic insult, Suleyman the Magnificent attacked the Kingdom of Hungary and he did not hesitate to launch an attack against the weakened kingdom, whose smaller, badly led army was defeated on 29 August 1526 at the Battle of Mohács. Thus he became influential in the Kingdom of Hungary, while his semi-vassal, named John I Zápolya, Suleyman went further and tried to crush Austrian forces, but his siege of Vienna in 1529 failed after the onset of winter forced his retreat. The title of king of Hungary was disputed between Zápolya and Ferdinand until 1540, whereas a great many of the 17,000 and 19,000 Ottoman soldiers in service in the Ottoman fortresses in the territory of present-day Hungary were Orthodox and Muslim Balkan Slavs. Southern Slavs were also acting as akıncıs and other light troops intended for pillaging in the territory of present-day Hungary, in these times, territory of present-day Hungary began to undergo changes due to the Ottoman occupation. Vast lands remained unpopulated and covered with woods, the life of the inhabitants on the Ottoman side was unsafe. Peasants fled to the woods and marshes, forming guerrilla bands, eventually, the territory of present-day Hungary became a drain on the Ottoman Empire, swallowing much of its revenue into the maintenance of a long chain of border forts. However, some parts of the economy flourished, in the huge unpopulated areas, townships bred cattle that were herded to south Germany and northern Italy - in some years they exported 500,000 head of cattle. Wine was traded to the Czech lands, Austria and Poland, following this treaty, the members of the Habsburg dynasty administered much enlarged Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary. In the 1540s the total of the four fortresses of Buda, Pest, Székesfehérvár. The number of Ottoman garrison troops stationed in Ottoman Hungary vary, in 1640 when the front remained relatively quiet,8,000 Janissary supported by an undocumented number of local recruits was sufficient to garrison the whole of the Eyalet of Budin. The territory was divided into Eyalets, which were divided into Sanjaks. At first, Ottoman-controlled territories in present-day Hungary were part of the Budin Eyalet, later, new eyalets were formed, Temeşvar Eyalet, Zigetvar Eyalet, Kanije Eyalet, Egir Eyalet, and Varat Eyalet. Likewise, Budin, Zigetvar, Kanije and Egir eyalets also included parts of present-day Serbia, Croatia, Slovakia, pashas and Sanjak-Beys were responsible for administration, jurisdiction and defense. The Ottomans only interest was to secure their hold on the territory, the Sublime Porte became the sole landowner and managed about 20 percent of the land for its own benefit, apportioning the rest among soldiers and civil servants. The Ottoman landlords were interested mainly in squeezing as much wealth from the land as quickly as possible, of major importance to the Sublime Porte was the collection of taxes. Taxation left little for the landlords to collect, Most of the nobility
26.
Safavid dynasty
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The Safavid dynasty was one of the most significant ruling dynasties of Iran, often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history. The Safavid shahs ruled over one of the so-called gunpowder empires, the Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safaviyya Sufi order, which was established in the city of Ardabil in the Azerbaijan region. The Safavids have also left their mark down to the present era by spreading Shia Islam in Iran, as well as parts of the Caucasus, Anatolia. The Safavid Kings themselves claimed to be Seyyeds, family descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, There seems now to be a consensus among scholars that the Safavid family hailed from Persian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan, finally settling in the 11th century CE at Ardabil. Traditional pre-1501 Safavid manuscripts trace the lineage of the Safavids to the Kurdish dignitary, a massive migration of Oghuz Turks in the 11th and 12th centuries not only Turkified Azerbaijan but also Anatolia. The Azeri Turks are Shiʿites and were founders of the Safavid dynasty, by the time of the establishment of the Safavid empire, the members of the family were native Turkish-speaking and Turkicized, and some of the Shahs composed poems in their native Turkish language. Furthermore, the dynasty was from the very start thoroughly intermarried with both Pontic Greek as well as Georgian lines, Safavid history begins with the establishment of the Safaviyya by its eponymous founder Safi-ad-din Ardabili. In 700/1301, Safi al-Din assumed the leadership of the Zahediyeh, due to the great spiritual charisma of Safi al-Din, the order was later known as the Safaviyya. The Safavid order soon gained great influence in the city of Ardabil, after Safī al-Dīn, the leadership of the Safaviyya passed to Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā. The leadership of the order passed from Sadr ud-Dīn Mūsā to his son Khwādja Ali, when Shaykh Junayd, the son of Ibrāhim, assumed the leadership of the Safaviyya in 1447, the history of the Safavid movement was radically changed. Savory, Sheikh Junayd was not content with spiritual authority and he sought material power, Junayd sought refuge with the rival of Kara Koyunlu Jahan Shah, the Aq Qoyunlu Khan Uzun Hassan, and cemented his relationship by marrying Uzun Hassans sister, Khadija Begum. Junayd was killed during an incursion into the territories of the Shirvanshah and was succeeded by his son Haydar Safavi, Haydar married Martha Alamshah Begom, Uzun Hassans daughter, who gave birth to Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty. Marthas mother Theodora—better known as Despina Khatun—was a Pontic Greek princess and she had been married to Uzun Hassan in exchange for protection of the Grand Komnenos from the Ottomans. After Uzun Hassans death, his son Yaqub felt threatened by the growing Safavid religious influence, Yaqub allied himself with the Shirvanshah and killed Haydar in 1488. By this time, the bulk of the Safaviyya were nomadic Oghuz Turkic-speaking clans from Asia Minor, the Qizilbash were warriors, spiritual followers of Haydar, and a source of the Safavid military and political power. After the death of Haydar, the Safaviyya gathered around his son Ali Mirza Safavi, according to official Safavid history, before passing away, Ali had designated his young brother Ismail as the spiritual leader of the Safaviyya. After the decline of the Timurid Empire, Persia was politically splintered, the demise of Tamerlanes political authority created a space in which several religious communities, particularly Shi’i ones, could come to the fore and gain prominence. Among these were a number of Sufi brotherhoods, the Hurufis, Nuqtawis, of these various movements, the Safavid Qizilbash was the most politically resilient, and due to its success Shah Isma’il I gained political prominence in 1501
27.
Peace of Zsitvatorok
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The Peace of Zsitvatorok was a peace treaty which ended the Fifteen Years War between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy on 11 November 1606. The treaty was part of a system of treaties which put an end to the anti-Habsburg uprising of Stephen Bocskay. The treaty was negotiated between 24 October and 11 November 1606 ad Situa Torock, at the mouth of the Žitava River. This location would become the small settlement of Žitavská Tôňa. The peace was signed for a term of 20 years and has been interpreted in different ways by diplomatic historians, the Ottomans also acknowledged the tax-free privilege of nobles. However, the Ottomans never really complied with these terms, the treaty was signed by Sultan Ahmed I and Archduke Matthias of Austria on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire. On 9 December, Matthiass brother the Emperor Rudolf II ratified the treaty, the Ottomans inability to penetrate further into Habsburg territory during the long war was one of their first geopolitical defeats. However, the Treaty stabilized conditions on the Habsburg-Ottoman frontier for half a century for the benefit of both parties, the Habsburgs would face serious domestic opposition during the following years. And the Ottomans, apart from internal rebellion, had conflicts in other parts of their frontiers. At Zsitvatorok, for the first time, the Ottoman sultan recognized the equality of status of the Holy Roman Emperor by titling him Padishah, before this, the Holy Roman Emperor was regarded as mere kıral of Vienna in Ottoman diplomacy. The next European ruler to be conceded this level of respect was Catherine the Great of Russia in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774
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Archduchy of Austria
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The Archduchy of Austria was a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire and the nucleus of the Habsburg Monarchy. With its capital at Vienna, the archduchy was centered at the Empires southeastern periphery, the Archduchy developed out of the Bavarian Margraviate of Austria, elevated to the Duchy of Austria according to the 1156 Privilegium Minus by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. The House of Habsburg came to the Austrian throne in Vienna in 1282 and in 1453 Emperor Frederick III, also Austrian ruler, the Archduchys history as an Imperial State ended with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. It was replaced with the Lower and Upper Austria crown lands of the Austrian Empire, located in the Danube basin, Austria bordered on the Kingdom of Hungary beyond the March and Leitha rivers in the east. In the west, the Upper Austrian part bordered on the Bavarian stem duchy, in the course of the German mediatisation in 1803, the Austrian archdukes also acquired the rule over the Electorate of Salzburg and the Berchtesgaden Provostry. After Austria was detached from Bavaria and established as an Imperial estate in 1156, in 1358/59 the Habsburg duke Rudolf IV, in response of the Golden Bull of 1356, already claimed the archducal title by forging the Privilegium Maius. By the 1379 Treaty of Neuberg, his heirs divided the Habsburg lands, on Epiphany 1453 Emperor Frederick III, regent of Austria for his minor Albertinian cousin Ladislaus the Posthumous, finally acknowledged the archducal title. It was then conferred to all Habsburg emperors and rulers, as well as to the princes of the dynasty, however. Frederick further promoted the rise of the Habsburg dynasty into European dimensions with the arrangement of the marriage between his son Maximilian I and Mary the Rich, heiress of Burgundy in 1477. After Maximilians son Philip the Handsome in 1496 had married Joanna the Mad, Queen of Castile, by marrying Princess Anna of Bohemia and Hungary, Ferdinand inherited both kingdoms in 1526. The Archduchy of Austria continued to exist as a constituent crown land within the empire, history of Austria List of rulers of Austria
29.
Abbas I of Persia
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Shāh Abbās the Great or Shāh Abbās I of Persia was the 5th Safavid Shah of Iran, and is generally considered the strongest ruler of the Safavid dynasty. He was the son of Shah Mohammad Khodabanda. Although Abbas would preside over the apex of Irans military, political and economic power, under his weak-willed father, the country was riven with discord between the different factions of the Qizilbash army, who killed Abbas mother and elder brother. Meanwhile, Irans enemies, the Ottoman Empire and the Uzbeks, in 1588, one of the Qizilbash leaders, Murshid Qoli Khan, overthrew Shah Mohammed in a coup and placed the 16-year-old Abbas on the throne. But Abbas was no puppet and soon seized power for himself, under his leadership, Abbas created numerous opportunities for thousands of Circassians, Georgians, and Armenians to join the civil administration and the military. These actions, as well as his reforms of the Iranian army, enabled him to fight the Ottomans and Uzbeks and he also took back land from the Portuguese and the Mughals and expanded Iranian rule and influence in the North Caucasus, beyond the traditional territories of Dagestan. Abbas was a builder and moved his kingdoms capital from Qazvin to Isfahan. In his later years, following a court intrigue involving several leading Circassians, at the time of his birth, Abbas grandfather Shah Tahmasp I was the Shah of Iran. Abbas parents gave him to be nursed by Khani Khan Khanum, when Abbas was four, Tahmasp sent Abbas father to stay in Shiraz where the climate was better for his fragile health. In 1578, Abbas father became Shah of Iran, Abbas mother soon came to dominate the government, but she had little time for Abbas, preferring to promote the interests of his elder brother Hamza. Mohammad was a sovereign, incapable of preventing Irans main rivals, the Ottoman Empire. The young prince, Hamza, was promising and led a campaign against the Ottomans. At the age of 14, Abbas had come under the guardianship of Murshid Qoli Khan, when a large Uzbek army invaded Khorasan in 1587, Murshid decided the time was right to overthrow Shah Mohammad. He rode to the Safavid capital Qazvin with the young prince, Mohammad made no objection against his deposition and handed the royal insignia over to his son during the following year on 1 October 1588. The kingdom Abbas inherited was in a desperate state, the Ottomans had seized vast territories in the west and the north-west and the Uzbeks had overrun half of Khorasan in the north-east. Iran itself was riven by fighting between the factions of the Qizilbash, who had mocked royal authority by killing the queen in 1579. First, Abbas settled his score with his mothers killers, executing three of the ringleaders of the plot and exiling four others and his next task was to free himself from the power of Murshid Qoli Khan. Murshid made Abbas marry Hamzas widow and a Safavid cousin, and began distributing important government posts among his own friends, meanwhile, the Uzbeks continued their conquest of Khorasan
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Yerevan
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Yerevan is the capital and largest city of Armenia as well as one of the worlds oldest continuously inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural and it has been the capital since 1918, the thirteenth in the history of Armenia, and the seventh located in or around the Ararat plain. The history of Yerevan dates back to the 8th century BC, Erebuni was designed as a great administrative and religious centre, a fully royal capital. During the centuries long Iranian rule over Eastern Armenia that lasted from the early 16th century up to 1828, in 1828, it became part of Imperial Russia alongside the rest of Eastern Armenia which conquered it from Iran through the Russo-Persian War between 1826 and 1828. After World War I, Yerevan became the capital of the First Republic of Armenia as thousands of survivors of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire settled in the area, the city expanded rapidly during the 20th century as Armenia became part of the Soviet Union. As of 2011, the population of Yerevan was 1,060,138, according to the official estimate of 2016, the current population of the city is 1,073,700. Yerevan was named the 2012 World Book Capital by UNESCO, Yerevan is an associate member of Eurocities. One theory regarding the origin of Yerevans name is the city was named after the Armenian king, Yervand IV, the last leader of the Orontid Dynasty, and founder of the city of Yervandashat. However, it is likely that the name is derived from the Urartian military fortress of Erebuni. As elements of the Urartian language blended with that of the Armenian one, while looking in the direction of Yerevan, after the ark had landed on Mount Ararat and the flood waters had receded, Noah is believed to have exclaimed, Yerevats. In the late medieval and early periods, when Yerevan was under Turkic and later Persian rule. This name is widely used by Azerbaijanis. The city was known as Erivan under Russian rule during the 19th. The city was renamed back to Yerevan in 1936, up until the mid-1970s the citys name was spelled Erevan, more often than Yerevan, in English sources. The principal symbol of Yerevan is Mount Ararat, which is visible from any area in the capital, the seal of the city is a crowned lion on a pedestal with the inscription Yerevan. The lions head is turned backwards while it holds a scepter using the front leg. The symbol of eternity is on the breast of the lion with a picture of Ararat in the upper part, the emblem is a rectangular shield with a blue border. On 27 September 2004, Yerevan adopted an anthem, Erebuni-Yerevan, written by Paruyr Sevak and it was selected in a competition for a new anthem and new flag that would best represent the city
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Kars Eyalet
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The Eyalet of Kars was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. Its reported area in the 19th century was 6,212 square miles and it was conquered by Shah Abbas in 1604 and rebuilt by the Turks in 1616. The size of the Kars garrison in 1640s was 1,002 Janissaries and 301 local recruits, sanjaks of Kars Eyalet in the 17th century, Little Erdehan Sanjak Hujujan Sanjak Zarshad Sanjak Kechran Sanjak Kaghizman Sanjak Kars Sanjak, the seat of the Pasha
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Akhaltsikhe
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Akhaltsikhe is a small city in Georgias southwestern region of Samtskhe-Javakheti. It is situated on the banks of a small river Potskhovi, which separates the city to the old city in the north. The city is first mentioned in the chronicles in the 12th century, in the 12th–13th centuries it was the seat of the Akhaltsikhelis, dukes of Samtskhe, whose two most illustrious representatives were Shalva and Ivane Akhaltsikheli. From the 13th up to the 17th century the city and Samtkhe were governed by the family of the Jaqelis. In 1576 the Ottomans took it and from 1628 the city became the centre of the Samtskhe Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire as Ahıska. In the old part of the city one can see an old fortress, castle and mosque, the old fortress of the Jakelis, the hills nearby the city harbour the Sapara Monastery. In the late 1980s the city was host to the Soviet Armys 10th Guards Motor Rifle Division, in 2002, the population consisted of 28,473 Georgians and 16,879 Armenians. According to the 2014 Census, the population with the many surrounding villages was 46,134. The city proper is currently 17,903, in 2014 the majority were ethnic Georgians, with minority of Armenians. This includes the alluvial flood-plain of the Kura River, and all the way to the high grasslands, human occupation is attested already in the Early Bronze Age and later. The Roman and medieval periods artifacts are also represented in the area. On the northeastern outskirts of Akhaltsikhe is an important archaeological site of Amiranis Gora, the earliest carbon date for Amiranis Gora is 3790-3373 cal BC. Amiranis Gora is an important reference point for the study of the Early Bronze Age Kura-Araxes culture, the many references include the architecture, burial practices, material culture and metallurgy. Amiranis Gora is one of the best sites with fixed stratigraphy of the Kura-Araxes culture, the carbon date for the Kura-Araxes material at Amiranis Gora is 3630-3048 cal B. C. which is very early. Battle of Akhalzic Akhaltsikhe Museum Akhaltsikhe district
33.
Van, Turkey
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Van is a city in eastern Turkeys Van Province, located on the eastern shore of Lake Van. The city has a history as a major urban area. It has been a city since the first millennium BC, initially as the capital of Urartu in the 9th century BC. It remained an important center of Armenian culture until the Armenian Genocide of 1915, today, Van has a Kurdish majority and a sizeable Turkish minority. The Van Central district stretches over 2,289 square kilometres, archaeological excavations and surveys carried out in Van province indicate that the history of human settlement in this region goes back at least as far as 5000 BC. The Tilkitepe Mound, which is on the shores of Lake Van, under the ancient name of Tushpa, Van was the capital of the Urartian kingdom in the 9th century BC. The early settlement was centered on the bluff now known as Van Castle, close to the edge of Lake Van. Here have been found Urartian cuneiform inscriptions dating to the 8th and 7th centuries BC, in the trilingual Behistun inscription, carved in the order of Darius the Great of Persia, the country referred to as Urartu in Babylonian is called Armenia in Old Persian. The name Van comes from the Urartian Biaina, the region came under the control of the Orontids in the 7th century BC and quickly later the Persians in the mid 6th century BC. The inscription survives in perfect condition and is divided into three columns of 27 lines written in Old Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite. In 331 BC, Van was conquered by Alexander the Great, by the early 2nd century BC it was part of the Kingdom of Armenia. It became an important center during the reign of the Armenian king, Tigranes II, in the early centuries BC, it fell to the emerging Arsacid dynasty of Parthia until the 3rd century AD. However, it fell once to the Arsacid Dynasty of Armenia in this timespan. In the History of Armenia attributed to Movses Khorenatsi, the city is called Tosp, following the fall of the Parthians and the emergence of the Neo-Persian Empire, better known as the Sassanian Empire, the town naturally fell into the possession of the latter. During the over 700 years lasting Roman-Persian Wars, some of the wars razed at or around the location of modern-day Van, decline in Arab power eventually allowed local Armenian rulers to re-emerge, with the Artsruni dynasty soon becoming the most powerful. Initially dependent on the rulers of the Kingdom of Ani, they declared their independence in 908, the kingdom had no specific capital, the court would move as the king transferred his residence from place to place, such as Van city, Vostan, Aghtamar, etc. In 1021 the last king of Vaspurakan, John-Senekerim Artsruni, ceded his kingdom to the Byzantine empire. Incursions by the Seljuk Turks into Vaspurakan started in the 1050s, after their victory in 1071 at the battle of Manzikert the entire region fell under their control
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Erzurum
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Erzurum is a city in eastern Turkey. It is the largest city in, and the capital of and it is situated 1757 meters above sea level. Erzurum had a population of 361,235 in the 2000 census, Erzurum, known as The Rock in NATO code, served as NATOs southeastern-most air force post during the Cold War. The city uses the double-headed Anatolian Seljuk Eagle as its coat-of-arms, a motif that was a symbol throughout Anatolia. Erzurum has some of the finest winter sports facilities in Turkey, the city was originally known in Armenian as Karno Kaghak, meaning city of Karin, to distinguish it from the district of Karin. After the Arab conquest of Armenia, the city was known to the Arabs as Kālīkalā, during Roman times, Erzurum was named Theodosiopolis. It got its present name after its conquest by the Seljuks following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, a neighboring commercial city named Artsn was heavily sacked by the Seljuk Turks in 1048-49. Its Armenian, Syrian, and other Christian inhabitants moved to Theodosiopolis, some older sources derive the name Erzurum from the Arabic Arḍ-ar-Rūm land of the Rûm. The surroundings of Erzurum at the Urartian period presumably belonged to Diauehi, later, Erzurum existed under the Armenian name of Karin. During the reigns of the Artaxiad and Arsacid kings of Armenia, after the partition of Armenia between the Eastern Roman Empire and Sassanid Persia in 387 AD, the city passed into the hands of the Romans. They fortified the city and renamed it Theodosiopolis, after Emperor Theodosius I, emperors Anastasius I and Justinian I both refortified the city and built new defenses during their reigns. Theodosiopolis was conquered by the Umayyad general Abdallah ibn Abd al-Malik in 700/701 and it became the capital of the emirate of Ḳālīḳalā and was used as a base for raids into Byzantine territory. Though only an island of Arab power within Christian Armenian-populated territory, in 931, and again in 949, Byzantine forces led by Theophilos Kourkouas, grandfather of the future emperor John I Tzimiskes, captured Theodosiopolis. Its Arab population was expelled and the city was resettled by Greeks, Emperor Basil II rebuilt the city and its defenses in 1018 with the help of the local Armenian population. In 1071, after the battle at Manzikert, the Seljuk Turks took possession of Theodosiopolis. The Saltukids were rulers of an Anatolian beylik centered in Erzurum, melike Mama Hatun, sister of Nâsırüddin Muhammed, was the ruler between 1191 and 1200. Theodosiopolis repelled many attacks and military campaigns by the Seljuks and Georgians until 1201 when the city, erzen-Erzurum fell to the Mongol siege in 1242, and the city was looted and devastated. Then became part of the beylik, Black Sheep Turkmen, empire of Timur Lenk
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Tabriz
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Tabriz is the most populated city in the Iranian Azerbaijan, one of the historical capitals of Iran, and the present capital of East Azerbaijan Province. Located in the Quru River valley between the ridge of the volcanic cones of the Sahand and Eynali mountains, Tabrizs elevation ranges between 1,350 and 1,600 metres above sea level. The valley opens up into a plain that slopes down to the eastern shores of Lake Urmia,60 kilometres to the west. With cold winters and temperate summers, the city is considered a summer resort, Tabriz is named Worlds Carpet and Crafts City, it is also appointed as the exemplary tourism city in 2018 by Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. With a population of 1.6 million, Tabriz is the biggest economic hub, the population consists mostly of Iranian Azerbaijanis and the most spoken language in the city is Azeri Turkish. Tabriz is a heavy industry hub for automobile, machine tools, refineries and petrochemical, textile. The city is famous for its handicrafts including hand-woven rugs and jewelry, local confectioneries, chocolates, dried nuts, and traditional food of Tabriz are recognized all around Iran as some of the best Iranian food. Tabriz is also a hub and a site for some of the most prestigious cultural institutes in the northwest of Iran. The city contains many historical monuments representing the transition of Iranian architecture in its long historical timelines. Most of the historical sites in the city belong to Ilkhanid, Safavid. From the early era, the city was pivotal in the development, movement. From the 19th century, it became the most important city in the country in numerous respects, as the closest Iranian hub to Europe, many aspects of the early modern modernisation in Iran started in Tabriz. During almost the entire Qajar period, it functioned as the seat for the prince as well. According to some sources, including Encyclopædia Britannica, the name Tabriz derives from tap-riz, in AD297, it became the capital of Tiridates III, king of Armenia. However, this story has an origin and no ancient source has recorded such event. This is based on accounts of Vardan, the Armenian historian in 13th century, the early history of Tabriz is not well-documented. The earliest inscription about Tabriz, referring to the city as Tarui or Tauris, is on the Assyrian King Sargon IIs epigraph in 714 BC, Tabriz has been chosen as the capital for some rulers commencing from Atropates era and his dynasty. A recent excavation at the site of the Iron Age museum, in the north of the Blue Mosque site, more likely the city has been destroyed multiple times either by natural disasters or by the invading armies
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Beylerbey
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Initially designating a commander-in-chief, it eventually came to be held by senior provincial governors. Its equivalents in Arabic were amir al-umara, and in Persian, the title was also used by the Khans of the Indian princely state of Kalat. The title originated with the Seljuqs, and was used in the Sultanate of Rum initially as an alternative for the Arabic title of malik al-umara, the Mamluks of Egypt possibly used it as an alternative title for the atabak al-asakir, the commander-in-chief of the army. The Ottomans used the title from the late 14th until the mid-19th century, with varying meanings, in addition, Lala Shahin was given military authority over the Ottoman territories in Europe. After Lala Shahins death, sometime in 1385–87 he was succeeded in the position of commander-in-chief in Rumelia by Çandarlı Kara Halil Hayreddin Pasha. In 1393, Sultan Bayezid I appointed Kara Timurtash as beylerbey and viceroy was in Anatolia, when Bayezid crossed over into Europe to campaign against Mircea I of Wallachia. This process marked the birth of the first two, and by far the most important, beylerbeyliks, of Rumelia and Anatolia, while the third beylerbeylik, that of Rûm, followed soon after. The size of new provinces varied enormously, some containing as many as twenty sanjaks. Among themselves, the various beylerbeys had an order of precedence based on the date of conquest or formation of their provinces. The beylerbey of Rumelia, however, retained his pre-eminence, ranking first among the other provincial governors-general, in addition, the post was occasionally held by the Sultans chief minister, the Grand Vizier himself. From the 16th century on, however, viziers could be appointed as provincial beylerbeys, enjoying precedence, under the Safavid dynasty of Persia, the title was used from ca. 1543/44 on for governors of the important provinces. The title was used for the governors of Herat, Azerbaijan, Ganja, Karabakh, Shirvan, Fars, Iraq. The Safavids also used the title of wali for provinces even more important than those of beylerbeys, towards the end of the Safavid period, the title of beylerbey had been eclipsed by that of wali, most notably being the walis of the shahs their Georgian lands. Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, the Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume II, C–G. The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume I, A–B
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