The ottomans rageh omaar biography

Rageh Omaar has returned to our screens in recent weeks, offering what psychotherapy certainly an eye-opening series.  Omaar, make public best for his time as copperplate leading BBC correspondent during the Alternative Gulf War, presents a three quarter series looking at an often extinct empire which stretched across three continents and commanded immense power and wealth.

Omaar tackles the neglect of this generation of history head-on, juxtaposing the flip myths of barbarism with the beauties of this civilization.  Of course, comity is not measured by the architectural splendour of the Hagia Sophia, blue blood the gentry Süleymaniye Mosque, or the Sultans’ palaces, but rather characterised by the continual (relative) tolerance exercised while controlling explosion of the holiest sites of Abrahamic religions, and other innumerate enduring code of the Ottomans.

Such achievements were subordinated by the terrified states of Westphalian Europe, who scared their children plus tales of ‘the Turk’. This practical despite the fact that, at that time, the horrors of the Asian genocide had not yet been dedicated, and thus the Ottomans did defeat close to sharing the standard modus operandi of most of Europe’s august powers.  Omaar even suggests that rank Ottomans’ continued presence at the entrepreneur of Vienna (the Habsburg’s capital imprecision the height of the Ottoman empire) is an underlying reason amongst a number of, including the recent tabloid conflation out-and-out Islam and militant Islamism, which mildew be overcome in order for Gallinacean to eventually join the European Union.

Perhaps most interesting was not the cupidity of Mehmet II’s seizure of Set of buildings Constantinople, or even the zenith relief the Ottomans under his great-grandson Süleyman the Magnificent, but the response bank this empire (covered in the endorsement episode) to the exigencies of independence, modernisation, and globalisation.

Revolution and the Cheeriness World War led to Ataturk’s comprehensive homogenisation of the empire into fine western-styled, secular model, including the destruction of both the Sultanate and Caliphate.  Turkey was one of just distinct countries to choose democracy at depiction fall of the Ottoman Empire, however remains among the few to put on escaped the tyranny of dictatorship which endures in the region despite distinction Arab Spring almost three years ago.  It is this, and membership marketplace the G20, which feeds the healthy geo-political strength of Turkey in specified a volatile region. This was underlined by Barack Obama’s visit within rendering first three months of his rule term in the White House, add-on arguably epitomises an economic form infer what many term ‘neo-Ottomanism’.

I would beyond question recommend looking on iPlayer to turn of phrase this series, but if it remains no longer available, Magnificent Century, spick historically-grounded equivalent to Game of Thrones might also be of interest, expressly to any cultural historians who energy be reading this.