The Ottoman Empire. Six Centuries of History

Full of secrets and contradictions, the Ottoman Empire stretched across tens of thousands of kilometers along the boundary between the East and the West. It had a colossal impact on European history, yet it was unlike Europe in almost every way. Comparable in scale to the Roman Empire, by the end of the sixteenth century it occupied three continents and brought many languages and peoples under its rule: Albanians, Armenians, Greeks, and many others were its subjects. The fall of Constantinople and wars with the Russian Empire, religion and art, the first nomadic settlements of the Seljuks and the founding of the Turkish Republic, Ottoman I and Atatürk—trying to understand this astonishing country, French historian Olivier Bouquet created a detailed portrait of the Sublime Porte and six centuries of its history.

“How did the sultans manage to scare Vienna and terrify papal legates—spreading Islam through Central and Eastern Europe in territories where it was completely alien? How did they manage to hold on for nearly half a millennium? How was it possible to create a state that became the last imperial formation in the Eastern Mediterranean and embodied Muslim universalism?” (Olivier Bouquet).