How Did The Ottoman Empire Affect The Byzantine Empire

In 1453, Sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople. Mehmed’s conquest of the Byzantine capital substantially increased the scope and influence of the Ottoman dynasty that, since the reign of Osman I in the early 1300s, had been a minor empire in Anatolia. The expansion that followed had a large impact on Ottoman culture as a whole; the empire’s geography, history and external interactions shaped the ideas of citizenship and identity within it for centuries to come. The diversity of conquered regions brought a relative tolerance for religious and ethnic minorities and replaced nationalism with a multiethnic state. Additionally, the importance of the military in Ottoman politics reshaped class dynamics within the empire. Finally, the empire’s

Much of the land conquered by Mehmed had been shifting between Venetian and Byzantine control. This meant that there was a heavy Christian presence in the new Ottoman territories. Constantinople, which became the Ottoman capital, was an ecclesiastical centre and the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchate (Encyclopædia Britannica). The later expansion of the empire into Israel and the flight of Spanish inquisition also led to the absorption of Jewish communities in the empire on top of the “already existing Jewish communities in Anatolia” (Şenay). The Arab (and Berber) communities of the Levant and North Africa were also integrated into the empire. This led to the repopulation of Istanbul “not only with its former inhabitants but also with elements of all the conquered peoples of the empire” (Encyclopædia Britannica). Of course, some may argue that Ottoman society was not truly integrated, and Muslims were given preference over non-Muslims; for example, Muslims did have access to certain “positions… forbidden to non-Muslims” (Rachieru). This is true, but the main point is that the diversity of the empire at least substantially mitigated religious persecution, and eliminated the idea of a dominant ethnic or national identity. This is one way in which the context of the Ottoman empire shaped its ideas of identity between

The millet system began with Mehmed II’s appointment of “Gennadios Scholarios as the head of the Orthodox faith in the empire,” (Şenay) soon after the conquest of Constantinople. Eventually, there grew to be “three basic millets: the Greek, the Jewish and the Armenian communities,” and the Ottoman empire adopted a “form of indirect rule based on religious difference” (Barkey and Gavrilis). The millet system, as a whole, divided communities into administrative divisions which “allowed rulers to efficiently organize the empire’s population into communities and to devolve power to trusted intermediaries and community leaders” (Barkey and Gavrilis). It “allowed the respective communities to enjoy a certain level of administrative autonomy under their representative” who also “served to plead the causes of his community to the Ottoman government” (Baraz). These communities also had legal, religious and economic autonomy, so long as they pledged allegiance and paid taxes to the larger state. In fact, the organizational structure of the empire was so decentralized that Ottoman rulers claimed the titles of halife, hakan, and kayser,” (Wigen) each of which pertains to different communities. Essentially, “there was no single institutionalized and generalized Ottoman concept