The Ottoman growth era ended somewhere in the 1600s, but if it hadn't stagnated, where would they have expanded...

The Ottoman growth era ended somewhere in the 1600s, but if it hadn't stagnated, where would they have expanded? Did they have any specific territorial ambitions besides vienna?

>but if it hadn't stagnated,
You mean not fucking up at Vienna and Lepanto? The only place they could expand to realistically was Europe. The Russians and Persians were their equals so they didn't bother with them.

They wouldn't/couldn't expand much further. Maybe a little more into Europe and Central Asia.

What they could have done is try reforming their system and become more like West Europe, but then again, Islam was powerful at the time.

>Islam was powerful at the time
You mean the Yenciri?

The Jannisaries were muslim.

But the obstruction of reforms done by them were not islamic in nature they just wanted to keep ther privileges while becoming shittier and more corrupt soldiers over time.

That's just politics. As long as they were devout muslims, I don't see how it isn't Islamic power.

But if their actions weren't fueled by islam what does it then matter that they were muslims ?

The tatars tried to conquer russia in the end of the 16th century so maybe if the ottomans put more effort into helping them they could expand towards there.

It's stagnation was born directly from it's size. Simply put: it reached a point where it was almost impossible for it to keep expanding.

Now, if the Ottomans had reformed their armed forces long before the 19th century this problem might've been lessened a little. The way the Ottomans waged war was very centralized; the army would gather around Constantinople and march out from there and (usually) (especially in the early days) would do lightning fast campaigns that would conquer a lot in a very short space of time. With the increasing size of the Empire though, the army could find itself just marching towards the borders in the same amount of time it used to execute an entire campaign. The logistics and the bureaucracy supporting the army was incredibly impressive for the 14th-17th centuries, but it failed to adapt to the situation the Empire found itself in once it had grown.

Although even then they would have still had difficulties in expanding further. Before the 19th century it was just incredibly difficult for massive land empires to really administer their stuff properly. The Roman's controlled more land directly, but even they had a territorial limit and a much better road system and didn't have to deal with as much organized resistance; their only real rival being Parthia/Persia.

As for the Ottomans ambitions, well, following Islam their ambitions were in theory limitless. They were meant to spread Islam over the entire Earth, although the Turks certainly had a sort of cynical sense of realism about the whole thing. Rome was a sought after target though, if only for symbolic purposes. I forget which Sultan it was but he expressed a desire to turn St. Peter's Basilica into a stable for his horses.

Mehmet II was on a campaign to conquer Rome, but got poisoned allegedly by a jewish doctor.

> He is thought to have been poisoned; one source accuses Yakub Pasha, a Jewish convert to Islam, of administering poison to Mehmed over a period of time. His son however had no ambition to do so.

> His son however had no ambition to do so.

Fug didn't mean to include that in the quote.

based jews

Yeah, he was a hardcore Romanboo, the first Ottoman Sultan to use the title "Kayzer-i Rum" (Caesar of Rome).

He wasn't just a Romanboo, he had Roman heritage

>Mehmed also had a blood lineage to the Byzantine Imperial family: his predecessor, Sultan Orhan I, had married a Byzantine princess, and Mehmed claimed descent from John Tzelepes Komnenos.[18]

WE

WUZ

CAESARS

Their mistake was not expanding Eastwards.

What the fuck did they gain from conquering the Balkan area? Jannisaries? Useless.

They could have overrun the Safavids, especially allying with the Mughals. Then take India. Boom. Infinite source of riches. Expand further into Europe at this point and cuck it up.

>Take India
As if it were that easy

>Jannisaries? Useless
Literally the main reason why the Ottomans were so good at war.

>They could have overrun the Safavids
Safavids repelled nearly all Ottoman incursions and in general were as militarily powerful

>allying with the Mughals. Then take India. Boom. Infinite source of riches.
They wouldn't take Persia and so, can't take India.

>Expand further into Europe at this point and cuck it up.
That's what they were doing until Vienna.

Osman II supposedly wanted to take Ukraine from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after the stunning victory at the Battle of Tutora in 1620, but he REALLY fucked up the subsequent campaign. Then he blamed the Janissaries who proceeded to kill him.

They fucking tried and failed. Also look at the map, they took the Balkan area before taking Egypt or Syria.

That's a difficult question, because Ottoman conquest was a lot more complicated than you might think. The centralized nature of the empire meant the elite surrounding the Sultan and the city of Constantinople had an enormous influence on where to strike, why, and how often. The cultural development of the Ottoman court from its origins as ambitious Byzantine allies/vassals to ghazi kings to Ottoman imperialism mattered a great deal as well, and the education the sultan would receive at any point in time affected their political outlook. Hell, even whether the sultan's mother was European or Asian often influenced which way a sultan would prefer to attempt expansion.

I don't think the Turks had any territorial ambition for Vienna and Central Europe. Their first attempt on the city was to knock out the Hapsburg threat to their Danube border while the second attempt was the culmination of a period of religious revivalism that swept through the empire from the east. Ottoman ambitions would have instead aimed for domination of the Eastern Mediterranean, and for that they would need to knock out Malta, the Two Sicilies, and dominate the Adriatic coast.

Had Vienna been taken, it would have likely been given over to a satellite German or Hungarian state to create a buffer against the Germans and Poles and allow the Turks the chance to focus on Southern Italy and the Adriatic.

Islam has nothing to do during that time, don't impose modern views on Islam on history. Ottoman Empire was as muslim as any other European Empire was Christian.

To be honest they were comparably tolerant towards Christians.

Roman Empire was their only ambition. Conquer Europe, and become a muslim Roman Empire, but unlike ancient times this time there were actual governments in Europe so they couldn't.

Except for Selim, none of the sultans were particularly interested in the east anyway.

>if it hadn't stagnated
Circular reasoning, one of the reasons it stagnated was because it couldn't expand. The best they could do is more africa or perhaps ally more with france, but they really couldn't go any further. Russia and the Safavids had them cornered and the Hapsburgs were still doing pretty well against them

>Circular reasoning, one of the reasons it stagnated was because it couldn't expand.
Isn't that just as much circular reasoning as the OP?

>Ottoman Empire was as muslim as any other European Empire was Christian.

Except for the fact that it was a Caliphate - and relied intrinsically on this identity to exist. Otherwise, they would be seen as barbarian hordes without legitimacy or sovereignty to govern the domains of Islam.

Not have been as good as during the Golden Age, but it would be foolish to deny that achieved a very significant success. They kept control of trade routes, a wide influence, and a myriad of protectorates and satellites in much of the world for centuries.

In this respect, it was infinitely more successful than, for example, the Holy Roman Empire in Christendom.

Yes, it was Muslim, Muslim as it could be.

It was as Muslim as the Papal States were Christian.

balkan qt's

butifel melike

Except if what you said were true the Balkans would be muslim and speaking Turkish now.

They relied on religion as much as any European nation relied on religion, which is what you do when you are against a people of a different religion. But it's not that accurate to say that Ottoman Empire is built on religion, because this is an Empire that had samples from all the religions in the world and managed to keep them together for a really long time.

I'm not defending Ottoman Empire but I'm against understating their success with excuses like "Islam kept them back."

Janissaries were overrated desu, their primary strength lied in their cannons and the cavalry, who lost relevance as the European war strategy and technology changed

So they weren't overrated at the time of Ottoman conquest? Are longswords overrated because guns are a thing? Why do you judge history with your modern standards?

their usefulness werent only in battle, its more about drawing manpower and integrating non-turks and non-muslim population in the empire

They pretty got as far as they could. Suleiman even wrote that the extent he expanded the empire was probably the furthest they would ever get after his failure at Vienna and Malta.

They hit every geographic barrier at the Sahara, the mountains of Persia, and the Caucasus Mountains, the only places left was the steppes of Ukraine/Russia and into Europe, where the Ottoman military would be fighting an uphill battle against either opponent.

desu they btfo the safavids the first time in battle of chaldiran, the only thing stopping them from conquering deeper was the zagros mountain

>Except for the fact that it was a Caliphate - and relied intrinsically on this identity to exist. Otherwise, they would be seen as barbarian hordes without legitimacy or sovereignty to govern the domains of Islam.

That's not exactly true, though. The Caliphate was by the 16th century when they supposedly acquired it from the Mamluks just another honorific among dozens of others in the Muslim world, and for most of its known history the Ottomans never relied on that title for any sort of legitimacy. Their identity came from the Khaldunian cycle, modified to incorporate the emerging concept of Ghazi King, an alliance with the Sufi orders of Anatolia, and so on.

It was as Muslim as the Byzantines were Orthodox Christian, really.

It was a Dynastic empire fighting against Proto nation States
Them falling behind Europe was going to happen sooner or later

well in the ottomans the state was as good as its sultan and the sultans were shitters past 1600s
a path they could have taken in 1400s, if mehmet the conqueror hadn't died early, was to take rome
another path would be westernization attempts starting at 1600s instead of 1800s, they would slow down growth and try to centralize the empire. ottomans could not accomplish this before the nationalism hit and the empires numerous nations imploded with western arms support

also they did fuckall in terms of education and sciences until much later in the empire

they did try it actually

>The Ottoman growth era ended somewhere in the 1600s

Because they conquered the greatest extent of their ability, generally using gunpower against people living in mud huts.

xD

>Greeks & Balkanites finally agree they are shitholes.

>Proto-Nation states
That positivism.

>le mud hut meme
Have you ever seen the average european house in the 1600's? For your information the three story houses in the middle of Paris do not count as the average.

bump

>Except if what you said were true the Balkans would be muslim and speaking Turkish now.

Two things:
1 - The Balkans were - and still are - overwhelmingly Christian;
2 - And not even the Turks used the Turkish. The Ottoman Turkish was heavily loaded with the Arabic and Persian. The Turkish - as today is spoken - was the language of the ignorant masses of Anatolia.

>They relied on religion as much as any European nation relied on religion, which is what you do when you are against a people of a different religion. But it's not that accurate to say that Ottoman Empire is built on religion, because this is an Empire that had samples from all the religions in the world and managed to keep them together for a really long time.

It is a very pretty picture, but also extremely imaginative. Yes, the Ottoman Caliphate was extremely plural - like all its predecessors - but only one ideology prevailed.

Only one law - the Sharia and its developments (such as the Kanun, and the Millet system) - and one representative - The Sultan and Caliph.

>I'm not defending Ottoman Empire but I'm against understating their success with excuses like "Islam kept them back."

This is quite visible. But it is a wrong perception. Islam was virtually the only bond of loyalty that kept the links between most of the domains of the Ottomans, and even outside it.

>That's not exactly true, though. The Caliphate was by the 16th century when they supposedly acquired it from the Mamluks just another honorific among dozens of others in the Muslim world, and for most of its known history the Ottomans never relied on that title for any sort of legitimacy.

They acquired from the Abbasids, to begin with. The Abbasids under Mameluke protection, exercising a purely nominal rule.

The Ottomans gathered - with considerable effort - the sultanates under vague influence of links with the Mamluks, either by force (as Barbarossa did in Algiers), or for the simple assertion to the Caliphate (as in Aceh, Kilwa, Mombasa, and in their interventions in Morocco).

>Their identity came from the Khaldunian cycle, modified to incorporate the emerging concept of Ghazi King, an alliance with the Sufi orders of Anatolia, and so on.

That would be enough to rule... The Anatolia and Rumelia. Few knew the work of Ibn Khaldun, and the vast majority of Arabs and Berbers were just not give a damn for what Sufi Orders were doing.

>It was as Muslim as the Byzantines were Orthodox Christian, really.

I agree. But what you're not taking into account is that the "Byzantines" brought religion to a new level of institutionalization.

The Ottomans, of course, did not need. They had the whole apparatus they inherited from their predecessors.

Why were sufi orders actually as big as they were in the ottoman empire ?

>Did they have any specific territorial ambitions besides vienna?

It really depended on the Sultan. If he said he wanted to conquer China, they would have tried to expand towards China.

I think the next target would be Italy, though.

They tried to take over Iran, but failed. Iran was pretty much accepted as a final frontier to the East.

>And not even the Turks used the Turkish. The Ottoman Turkish was heavily loaded with the Arabic and Persian. The Turkish - as today is spoken - was the language of the ignorant masses of Anatolia.

The people you refer to as "the ignorant masses of Anatolia" were the Turks. Ottoman nobility didn't see themselves as Turkish.

Far too many people believe that the Ottoman Empire was based on a turkish Identity rather than a dynastic one