Understanding the Ottomans

When our new next-door neighbor turned out to be from Turkey, I decided I needed to learn something about Ottoman history and culture.  This book from our library was an excellent read, clear and concise and lavishly illustrated.  It covers history and geography, religion, science and medicine, literature, music, art and architecture, food, and more.  Here are some notes I jotted down while reading:

The Ottoman empire was perhaps the most cosmopolitan in the world; its 30 million subjects were from seventy ethnic groups, speaking twelve major languages. (30)

"In Aleppo in the mid-1700s, women constituted up to one-third of all commercial property buyers and investors... property laws in the Ottoman Empire were more favourable to women than in Western Europe." (49)

England became an ally of the Ottomans in the 16th century after the pope excommunicated the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I.  She initiated trade relations with the Islamic world, sending exotic gifts, including clockworks.  They returned perfumes and silks.  England then exported tin and lead, which they stripped from Catholic churches and monasteries.  The Ottomans used the lead and tin for weaponry against Catholic Spain, which delighted the English. (53)

The Ottoman empire implemented a meritocracy rather than a hereditary aristocracy.  "Rustem Pasha [was] originally a Catholic Croat swineherd... he became Suleyman the Magnificent's longest-serving grand vizier and married Suleyman and Roxelana's only daughter, the Princess Mihrimah - then the richest woman in the world." (74)

"During the 1845-52 Irish Potato Famine... the Ottoman sultan declared that he was ready to send £10,000 to help Ireland's farmers.  Queen Victoria... asked that the sultan send no more than £1,000, since she herself had sent only £2,000.  He complied, to spare her embarrassment, but in secret also sent five ships laden with food." (79)

"Images of women in the Ottoman Empire have been distorted by Western fascination with the harem... In practice, however, only about 2 per cent of marriages in the empire were polygamous... usually involved the taking of only two wives... and was often used as a good way of looking after widows or orphans who would otherwise have no support and nowhere to live.  In most Christian European societies, the solution was usually the convent or the asylum for the elite, and the street for the rest." (88)

"... coexistence and compromise between different manifestations of religious belief and practice is one of the abiding themes of Ottoman history... Orhan's Christian wife... was allowed to remain a practising Christian while at the same time being given the power to endow Muslim religious establishments." (90-1)

"Christianity, as well as Islam, was a religion that originated east of Europe, and there is no reason why Islam could therefore not be considered a European religion in the same way as Christianity." (92)

"... in 1830 Sultan Mahmud II had declared: 'I distinguish among my subjects, Muslims in the mosque, Christians in the church and Jews in the synagogu, but there is no difference among them in any other way.  My affection and sense of justice for all of them is strong and they are indeed my children.'" (99)

The most famous Ottoman admiral was Piri Reis, known now for his cartographic skillls, including his 1513 map - one of the oldest in the world to depict the Americas. (111)

Ottoman court music was played by several instruments "according to open-ended modal systems" and was never written down.  "This absence of notation encouraged improvisation and allowed a certain freedom in performance." (148)

The medical scholar Aksemseddin described microbe theory 200 years before van Leeuwenhoek: "It is incorrect to assume that diseases appear one by one in humans.  Disease infects by spreading from one person to another.  This infection occurs through seeds that are so small they cannot be seen but are alive." (170)

"The sultan's 'walled' tent palace was so large, according to the French traveller Antoine Galland, writing in 1673, that 600 camels were needed to carry the various parts." (259)

"The Turkish word kosk (our word "kiosk") is a natural extension of the tent culture, evolving gradually into a kind of garden pavilion.. [and tourist information booths]... The key piece of furniture in the Ottoman home was a padded upholstered seat or bench, without arms or a back, that in most Western languages is still known as an 'ottoman'." (261)

"The Seljuks are thought to have been responsible for the introduction of the tulip bulb into Anatolia from Central Asia, where the flowers grew wild... on the China-Kazakhstan border.  By the 15th century the flower was regarded as the symbol of the Ottomans.  It is still prominent in Turkish culture (stamps, coins, emblems, flags).  The word for tulip in both Persian and Turkish is lale, often used as a girl's name.  When written in Arabic script, lale has the same letters as 'Allah,' which is why the flower also became a holy symbol..." (266)