Ottoman
Iran-Iraq War II
If anything, the world looked upon the Iran-Iraq War with some relief. Iraq’s close ally, the Soviet Union, was distressed with Iraqi expansionist moves but happy to see the spread of Iran’s Muslim fundamentalism checked. The West, including the United States, felt that the war aided in both the containment of Iran and the exhaustion of Iraq. On 29 February…
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THE ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN BORDER IN EUROPEÂ I
Between Ottoman Europe and that other Europe, which saw itself as the only true one (Europe identified itself with Christendom), a line was drawn. It shifted with the Turks’ advance, just as, at the end of the modern period, it would follow their first retreats. When the Ottoman Empire had…
THE ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN BORDER IN EUROPEÂ II
Kazakh warrior in padded armour, 15th-16th century THE SEA BORDERS Alert systems as well as forts and bastions were also set up on the coasts and islands, which the opposing fleets and pirates of all sorts threatened. In its Stato da mare, Venice especially undertook impressive fortification projects with state-of-the-art…
THE ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN BORDER IN EUROPEÂ III
17th century Hungarian HajdĂşk Uskoks of Croatia OTHER BORDER RESIDENTS: FROM ANTAGONISM TO IMITATION This brief glimpse of the Cossacks has shown that their history is highly revealing of the complexities and ambiguities of the Islamic-Christian border. The inexpiable and chronic struggles for which that border was the theater were…
Moldavia, Tatars and Cossacks I
When Bartolomeo Bruti travelled from Istanbul to Moldavia in the spring of 1580 he was not moving outside the Ottoman Empire, but he was entering a territory very different in kind from that empire’s directly governed heartland. Many histories of the Ottomans concentrate heavily on the heartland, because it was…
Moldavia, Tatars and Cossacks II
What nearly brought Poland and the Ottoman Empire into armed conflict in this period was not the deliberate policy of the King, the Sultan or the Pope, but the unpredictable actions of two mutually hostile powers: the Tatars and the Cossacks. The Crimean Tatars were at least nominally subject to…
The Russo-Turkish War (1811)
Ottoman Army Early 19th Century. Portrait of Mikhail I. Kutuzov. G. Dawe, 1829. After Count Kamensky died in April 1811, Kutuzov was appointed commander-in-chief of the Danube army. Several months were dedicated to preparation, and on June 22 (July 4), 1811, the Russian army thoroughly defeated the outnumbered Turkish army…