The Ottomans and the Mongols

Following the sack of Constantinople by crusaders and the Mongols’ defeat of the Seljuk Turks, the Ottomans emerged as a power in northwestern Anatolia. Under Osman’s successors, they crossed the Dardanelles into Europe, defeating the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo. When the Mongol conqueror Timur invaded the region, he defeated Bayezid, and the subsequent conflict among Bayezid’s sons splintered the Ottoman state. Timur’s empire came to include Persia, central Asia, and northern India, but Timur died before he could fulfill his plan to invade China. Bayezid’s son Mehmed I and his grandson Murad II rebuilt Ottoman possessions in Anatolia and Europe. In 1453, among other victories, Mehmed II conquered Constantinople. He rebuilt the city, thereafter known as Istanbul, and invited scholars and artists from Asia and Europe. He was tolerant of his non-Muslim and European subjects and allowed them to remain in Istanbul, though historians see the flight of many scholars to western Europe with the preserved knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome as one factor that helped to spark the Italian Renaissance and the transition to the early modern era. Meanwhile, western European traders began to seek all-water, oceanic routes to South and East Asia. All images referenced in this podcast can be found at https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-1/pages/17-1-the-ottomans-and-the-mongols Welcome to A Journey into Human History. This podcast will attempt to tell the whole human story. The content contained in this podcast was produced by OpenStax and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-1/pages/1-introduction Podcast produced by Miranda Casturo as a Creative Common Sense production.

Om Podcasten

Welcome to a journey into human history. This podcast will attempt to tell the whole human story. You may be asking yourself what is history? Is it simply a record of things people have done? Is it what writer Maya Angelou suggested—a way to meet the pain of the past and overcome it? Or is it, as Winston Churchill said, a chronicle by the victors, an interpretation by those who write it? History is all this and more. Above all else, it is a path to knowing why we are the way we are—all our greatness, all our faults—and therefore a means for us to understand ourselves and change for the better. But history serves this function only if it is a true reflection of the past. It cannot be a way to mask the darker parts of human nature, nor a way to justify acts of previous generations. It is the historian’s task to paint as clear a picture as sources will allow. Will history ever be a perfect telling of the human tale? No. There are voices we may never hear. Yet each new history book written and each new source uncovered reveal an ever more precise record of events around the world. You are about to take a journey into human history. The content contained in this podcast was produced by OpenStax and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. For more information please review the links and resources in the description. Podcast produced by Miranda Casturo as a creative common sense production.