’What gave rise to and demolished the Ottomon Empire! 

                                                     When innovation science and creativity of the early 300 years of the Empire was surrendered on the altar of fanatical doctrine the terminal decline commenced. 

   1. What made the Empire:

Prof Halil_Inalcık explains that the first three centuries of the Ottoman Empire was distinct than the later, distressed and slowly undeveloped period of the Empire until its destruction about six centuries of its establishment in 1923. 

Inalcık insists that the ahead of Ottomans were marked with open_mindedness and adaptability,tolerance of several beliefs. They had emphasis on education in a rational trend like academic sciences, logic, mathematics, astronomy; advancement in state organizations was strictly merit-based regardless of philosophy or class.

The sultan had the natural right to order and was exceptional in military organization and tactics than their contemporaries in Europe and Near-East. Inventions and innovations were encouraged and quickly assimilated if they came from abroad.Many of the extraordinary architectural endeavors were created during this first period. Some tolerant and diverse Islamic religious orders tarikats, such as Bektaşis and Mevlevis, supported by charitable endowments vakıfs were established in the early days of the Empire, and  Christians and Jews were permitted to exercise their religions voluntarily. 

 

2. What Destoryed The-Empire !

One of the most extensively intriguing chapters in
the book is Chapter XVIII:

“The_Triumph_of_Fanaticism”, which illustrates that Ulema Islamic theologians and Shaikh ul Islam Şeyhülislam Chief Islamic Authority expanded importance and significance beginning with the dynasty of Sultan Süleyman I Kanuni, or the Magnificient, 1520-1566.

The time when schooling in pragmatic rationalistic and scholarly sciences was ignored and the religious pastoral study were endorsed strictly. Innovation and research study of sciences were deliberately discontinued because divinity and clerics considered the sciences “interfering in God’s injunctions and design ”. 

An astronomical observatory in Istanbul, as good as Tycho Brahe’s Europe, was razed to the ground in 1580 by the Janissaries after petitioning by Şeyhülislam during the reign of Sultan Murad III the grandson of Süleyman I.

Over time, Şeyhülislams ( like in present Pakistan today ) became all too prominent, even more so than the Grand Vizier Chief minister of the Empire and could issue fatwas religious opinion to unseat sultans.

An ecclesiastical fanatical trend Fakıs ensued in the 17th century, resembling today’s ISIS in fanaticism and ferocity, if not in the breadth of turmoil, and could be stifled with enormous complication. This led to the terminal decline that ended the empire in 1923.