The Ottoman Empire

At its hight the Ottoman Empire consisted of area in three continents and spanned over two million square miles, approximately half of the United States. In an empire so vast, culture varied widely depending on the region and its population’s ethnicity. Although many europeans saw the empire as savage, the Ottoman Empire was successful in creating a society of tolerance across the borders of ethnicity and religion. All citizens in the empire were treated equally and with respect by both their peers and rulers.

The Ottoman Empire contained immense amounts of cultural diversity. That area would today include parts or all of the following: southeast Hungary, Albania, the six republics that were pre-1991 Yugoslavia (Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina), Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, southern and Caucasian Russia, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. The sheer size of the Ottoman Empire, mixed with its convenient location on the crossroad between Europe, Africa and Asia guaranteed that there would be many different cultures encompassed by the Ottomans. As both northern Africa and the Middle East were dominated by Islam, the majority of cultural differences were located in the european stretch of the empire where the population was mainly Christian with a minority of Jews. Despite the tolerance of the empire, the Europeans did not like the Ottoman presence.

The Europeans disdained the Ottoman Empire on grounds of a religious threat, even though the ottomans were tolerant of Christianity. Many Europeans ignored the Ottoman Empire’s advanced methods of government, its tolerance of ethnic and religious diversity, and its scientific and cultural achievements. Instead, they condemned the Ottoman conquests as brutal and viewed the Turks as a threat to Christian civilization. From the european point of view, this conflict is relatively well founded. Here is an empire preaching peace, equality and tolerance and yet they proceed to attempt invasion after invasion to get farther west into Europe. If the Ottomans were really so peaceful and tolerant, why wouldn’t they let the Europeans be? Because of how the europeans perceived the ottomans, they passed up a chance to become more peaceful and tolerant towards others, lessons that could have been very useful for Europe later on. However, the practices of peace and tolerance were in full swing elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire used an incredible system to rule non Islamic territories called the millet system. Non-Muslim subjects were not pressured to convert. On the contrary, they were left to practice their religion and had their personal safety guaranteed and functioned as an autonomous community. What the millet system did was let non Islamic areas govern themselves while still having all of the benefits of being part of the Ottoman Empire. The inhabitants of these millets still had to pay taxes to the Ottoman Empire but other than that, the millets were generally left to their own devices. This was a symbiotic relationship. The Ottoman Empire got money from the millets and didn’t have to expend its resources to govern new lands while the millets were able to live by their own laws and traditions and receive the full protection, benefits and rights that Muslim citizens had. This autonomy among different groups of the empire was one of its most defining aspects. However, allowing this autonomy caused lack of standardization across the empire.