Chapter 6

The Mongol  Aftermath

Extract :

In the Ottoman state the Islamic religious institution reached its maturity, and achieved its final integration into the Sunni polity, Islam was now represented by a real institutional structure- a graded hierarchy of professional and academically trained men of religion, with territorial jurisdictions and defined functions and powers, under the headship of a supreme religious authority recognized as the highest instance of the Holy Law. The Ottomans made what was perhaps the only really serious attempt, in a Muslim state of high material civilization, to establish the Holy Law of Islam as the effective law of the land. They gave to its scholars and its Judges a status, authority, and power such as they had never known before.

Chapter  7

The Gunpowder Empires

Extract :

The remainder of Mehmed’s reign was devoted to a series of military campaigns on both his European and Asian frontiers. In Europe, Ottoman armies subjugated the last Greek despotates in the Morea, made Serbia and Bosnia Ottoman provinces, and conquered several of the Greek islands. In Asia, they took Amasra from the Genoese, Sinope from its Muslim amir, and Trebizond from its Greek emperor. Significantly, the Sultan refused to be drawn further east or to fight against Muslims sovereigns. When challenged by Uzun Hasan, a Turkoman ruler in eastern Anatolia and Mesopotamia, he defeated him in battle in 1473, but made no attempt to follow up his victory. In a conversation quoted by the sixteenth-century historian Kemal-pashazade, the sultan explains his reasons. It was proper to punish Uzun Hasan for his temerity; it would have been wrong to destroy his line, for “to seek the destruction of ancient dynasties of the great sultans of the people of Islam is not good practice”.[1] More to the point, it would have distracted the sultan from the serious business of the jihad in Europe.