Ottoman Empire
In 1683, when the Ottoman forces were besieging Vienna, the empire reached its high-water mark and then began its slow, steady decline after suffering a major defeat in this battle. Only very gradually did Europeans come to perceive it as the Sick Man of Europe, however, since it was still formidable enough to play an important role in the defeat of ussia in the Crimean War of 1854-56. This was its last major victory, however, since by 1878 it had lost most of the Balkans, or umelia as it was known to the Ottomans, and with it much of its tax revenue and the recruitment ground for the Janissaries. It lost Crete in 1896 and Macedonia and Thrace after the Balkan Wars in 1912-13, and ceased to be a European power. Compared to the Western powers that were becoming urban and industrialized in the 19th Century, the Ottoman Empire….

Ottoman Empire was a sick old man that just collapsed
The Ottoman Empire was perhaps amongst the short-lived glories that history has seen yet. Many scholars believed that the power of the Caliphate ruling over the Empire had started declining from early 1680s; yet, there are also many others who feel that the historical accounts of the Empire show that it was a dynamic and ever-advancing Empire that had an intricate design for political and administrative leadership, which over a period of time brought it decline earlier than necessary (Faroqhi, 2004). In this paper, we will focus on the statement that "the Ottoman Empire was a sick old man that just collapsed" by highlighting some of the strong points as well as weaknesses of the Empire so as to provide support to the statement or negate it.

Perhaps, one of the strengths of the Ottoman Empire was their approach to leadership. They….

Ottoman Empire is among the most fascinating periods in the history of civilization, and it remains the subject of scholarly study because of the impact it had on the world, and continues to have today.
The empire began around as a medieval state in the late 13th Century around what is now known as Turkey; the region had largely been unaffected, either socially, militarily or economically by the social progress in the rest of Europe. Hence, this empire was largely frozen in time, according to www.infoplease.com.

The Ottoman Empire began modestly enough, with many small Turkish states bonding together in Asia Minor following the disintegration of the Seljuk Turks' empire.

And it is important to note that Turkey's domination over Africa's northern areas was not entirely well defined, and the Ottoman Empire did not really have permanent, clear-cut borders; rather, the empire was more of a military administration over a vast region….

Sharif Hussein Ibn Saud and the Fall of the Ottoman Empire Introduction
The Ottoman Empire was served by a strong military and centralized political structure, but with territory that stretched into both the East and the West, the Ottoman Empire was also greatly served by its geography and the diversity of this realm. At the heart of its rule was the power of Mecca and the religious significance Mecca held for the Muslims. The relationship among the Ottomans, the Arabs, the Egyptian Ibrahim Pasha and his Sons, the Sharif of Mecca and Ibn Saud in Central Arabia all contributed to the strength of the Ottoman Empire. This paper will examine these relationships, the geographical and diverse characteristics of the Empire and the role that Mecca played in holding it all together. Ultimately it will show that the Ottomans lost the Empire as a result of turmoil among radical factions in both the….

Ottoman
As Emrah Safa Gurkan points out in "The Centre and the Frontier," the Ottoman Empire made strategic political decisions in part due to a shifting balance of power in Europe. Head to head with the Habsburg Empire, the Ottomans saw great opportunity and power in the incorporation of the North African corsairs for geographic, geopolitical, economic, and social reasons.

Although European exploits abroad were far more ambitious and large scale, the Ottoman response was by no means puny. The Ottoman model of expansion and empire was simply different from the Iberian, English, or French models. Geographically speaking, the Ottoman participation in the Age of Exploration included escapades to and around India, with remarkably important exploits that helped the Empire forge its own trade routes with India. This was of course motivated by competition with the Portuguese explorers, who can be conceived of as reacting to the Ottoman expansion rather than vice….

Mughal and Ottoman Empires
The Mughal dynasty ruled the area that is now considered India and Persia between the years 1526 and 1857. The Ottoman Empire was able to sustain power from July 1299 to the end of the First orld ar in 1923. Both empires used a form of monarchy which was called absolutism; that is the governmental belief that the monarch has supreme and absolute power. Absolutism was a form of monarchial power where the ruler's authority was unchecked. No group: not the clergy, not courtiers, not legislatures, or members of the social elite had the power to prohibit the monarch from doing whatever he or she pleased. It was a system of government controlled by one individual with absolute power over the entirety of his or her realm. Those that dared challenge the monarch met swift ends which would deter others from attempting to thwart the ruler. Among….

The Ottoman court, administrative, and military language were all Turkish; however, high culture in the Empire was cosmopolitan and popular culture in Anatolia and Thrace could only be called "Turkish." According to McCarthy, three primary factors ultimately decided the fate of the Muslims of Ottoman Europe, the Crimea, the Caucasus, and Anatolia: 1) the military and economic weakness of the Ottoman Empire, 2) nationalism among Ottoman Christian peoples, and 3) Russian imperial expansion.
Much like the United States outspending the Soviet Union to win the Cold War, the Ottoman Empire was not able to maintain any degree of parity with the European powers and by 1800, Ottoman Empire government was internally weak, and found that it was not able to support its antiquated Ottoman military system, much less a modern army and navy that would be capable of defending the empire against its increasing powerful adversaries. McCarthy reports that the….

The last Mamluk governor ruled in the 19th century as Europe was increasingly asked for advice, military weapons, and
for help to promote trade. The British were the most influential in this
regard which indicates an economic viability to Iraq that the Ottomans were
either unable or uninterested in pursuing. The Ottomans, as a European
Empire, were unable to maintain influence over its own province. After
floods and plagues in 1831, the Ottoman's sent a new governor to Iraq that
meant "A new era" for Iraq (Iraq History Page). hile this was an attempt
to regain influence on the area, many tribal competitions and allegiances
remained, including the Kurdish problem in the region. The Mamluks had
grown increasingly autonomous and the Ottoman's reasserted their authority,
but this authority was not inherently stable. IN 1690, Midhat Pasha was
appointed governor of Iraq and he attempted to modernize according to a
estern model which helped Iraqis to gain power within their own
government, but this….

Islamic omen -- Ottoman Empire
Islamic women who lived in the Ottoman Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries are the focus of this inquiry. hat was their social life like in terms fun, vice, pleasure, and other activities that involved sensuality or illegal interactions? hat do various authors report regarding the activities women engaged in during this era the Ottoman Empire? This paper reviews and critiques the literature relating to the subject of women and their activities in this period of Islamic history.

Mary Ann Fay -- "omen and AQF" (background)

In her essay, Mary Ann Fay discusses Mamluk politics and society in 18th century Ottoman Egypt, pointing to the fact that women of Mamluk households enjoyed "considerable economic autonomy" because they were owners and managers of property (Fay, 1997, 31). That gave them a certain degree of social power but as Fay explains, Mamluk women also derived power from "the importance….

The Crusades

The Crusades would shape Islamic attitudes toward the est for centuries, so much so that it was noted that George Bush should never have used the term with reference to the ar on Terror because of the bad feelings involved. In the eleventh century, much of the Moslem world was under siege from the Seljuk Turks. The Moslems were in control of the Holy Lands, the seat of Christianity, and in the eleventh century European Christians undertook the Crusades to recapture the Holy lands, notably the city of Jerusalem. The Crusaders saw their opportunity because of the dissension within the Moslem world itself. There were divisions within the Christian world as well, notably the splitting off of the Byzantine Empire as the Holy Roman Empire disintegrated. The Greeks were in power in the East, and the remnants of the Latin factions were in power in the west. The Church….

The Turkic tribes transformed themselves from a disparate, fragmented state into a hegemonic and organized empire. Lasting for centuries and making a profound impact on global politics, the Ottoman Empire built its status and power on bureaucratic authoritarianism, and also on fusing the power of religion and politics. The bastion of Sunni Islam, the Ottoman Empire colonized regions far beyond what are now the borders of the modern nation-state of Turkey. Moreover, the Ottoman Empire encompassed a wide range of linguistically and ethnically diverse people, capitalizing on access to global trade routes to bolster power and influence in and beyond Eurasia. The use of military might, of economic influence, and also of religious and cultural tools for social control and hegemony all characterized the Ottoman Empire in its heyday. At the beginning of the twentieth century, shifting balances of power, modernization, and the dismantling of authoritarian regimes trended worldwide and facilitated….

They needed to find a way to maintain peace and stability among the dozens of different peoples, of different races, religions, tribes, languages, and customs. The Ottomans accomplished this primarily by allowing each group of people a certain amount of respect. There was a "live and let live" policy directed toward the varying peoples of the empire. "This live and let live policy was in striking contrast to the fanatical bigotry of Christian states at the time." (Goldschmidt, p. 126) What seemed to matter more to the Ottomans was a people's ability to contribute to the peace and prosperity of the empire as a whole, rather than some religious or ethnic restrictions.
The Ottoman Empire began in the 1300's and lasted more than 600 years, until the end of the First World War. This was an empire where a small number of Turkish elites ruled over millions of people of….

It was this strategy that led to the slow eradication and encompassing of the Byzantine Empire, and finally the siege and capture of Constantinople (Pitman 19987).
The quiet nature of the Ottoman Empire's power was also a major part of its success and longevity. While the ruling class was of course limited to a tiny percentage of the total population of the Empire, there were no ethnic requirements for becoming a member of this ruling class -- faith in Islam, loyalty to the sultan, and compliance with certain standard of behavior were all that was necessary to become eligible for this class upgrade (Pitman 1987). In part because the Ottoman's defined themselves primarily as Muslim rather than part of a specific ethnic group, the same ethnic and cultural ambiguity was tolerated and even encouraged throughout the Empire, meaning new subjects of the realm could carry out their lives largely a….

165)
But it was the British who would have the greatest impact on the decline of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Gaining control of Egypt during the Napoleonic Wars, Britain administered Egypt as an independent province of the Ottoman Empire. However, it was World War One that gave Great Britain the opportunity to directly expand into the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans allied themselves with the Central Powers, enemies of France, ussia, and, most importantly, Great Britain. By first fomenting a revolution among the Arabs, the British were able to destabilize the Turks in the Middle East, which then led to the conquest of Palestine and Syria. While the British had promised their Arab Allies independence, the Sykes-Picot agreement actually split the Middle East into four "mandates," and "recognized long-standing French claims to Syria." (Cleveland, 2009, p 164) Three of the four "mandates" were controlled by the British, one by the French,….

Introduction
For centuries during the Middle Ages, Europe had been at war with Moslems of the Middle East. There had been Crusades (beginning in the 11th century), wars for Holy Lands, and wars of great consequence (such as the Battle of Lepanto in 1571). Charles V had struggled to combat both the invading Moslems and the Protestant rebellion in his own kingdom in the first half of the 16th century, showing just how dramatic that conflict between the West and the Middle East was for many. Yet the tension that had existed dissipated to a great extent when the Ottoman Empire began to decline. Russia grew in power in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the West was rapidly modernizing. The Ottoman Empire itself was changing, and the new dynamic of life in the modern world played a significant role in the way that some Europeans saw and created images of….