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Chapter 4 • Political Transformations, 1450–1750 231

(see Map 4.5). During those centuries, the Ottoman state was transformed from a small
frontier principality to a prosperous, powerful, cosmopolitan empire, heir both to the
Byzantine Empire and to leadership within the Islamic world. Its sultan combined the
roles of a Turkic warrior prince, a Muslim caliph, and a conquering emperor, bearing
the “strong sword of Islam” and serving as chief defender of the faith.
Gaining such an empire transformed Turkish social life as well. The relative inde-
pendence of Central Asian pastoral women, their open association with men, and
their political influence in society all diminished as the Turks adopted Islam, begin-
ning in the tenth century, and later acquired an empire in the heartland of ancient and
patriarchal Mediterranean civilizations. Now elite Turkish women found themselves
secluded and often veiled; enslaved women from the Caucasus Mountains and the
Sudan grew more numerous; official imperial censuses did not count women; and
orthodox Muslim reformers sought to restrict women’s religious gatherings.
And yet within the new constraints of a settled Islamic empire, Turkish women AP ®
retained something of the social power they had enjoyed in pastoral societies. From COMPARISON
around 1550 to 1650, women of the royal court had such an influence in political mat- Compare the Ottoman
ters that their critics referred to the “sultanate of women.” Islamic law permitted women Empire’s relations with
important property rights, which enabled some to become quite wealthy, endowing conquered people with
the Spanish Empire’s
religious and charitable institutions. Many women actively used the Ottoman courts relations with conquered
to protect their legal rights in matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance, sometimes people.
representing themselves or acting as agents for female relatives. In 1717, the wife of an
English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire compared the lives of Turkish and European
women, declaring, “’Tis very easy to see that they have more liberty than we have.” 22
Within the Islamic world, the Ottoman Empire represented the growing prom-
inence of Turkic people, for their empire now incorporated a large number of
Arabs, among whom the religion had been born. The responsibility and the prestige
of protecting Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem — the holy cities of Islam — now fell
to the Ottoman Empire. AP ® EXAM TIP
But the Ottoman Empire was also the site of a highly significant cross-cultural Several AP® Exam
encounter in the early modern era, adding yet another chapter to the long-running questions have dealt
story of interaction between the Islamic world and Christendom. As the Ottoman with the Ottoman
Empire’s political, social,
Empire expanded across Anatolia, and as the Byzantine state visibly weakened and economic features.
and large numbers of Turks settled in the region, the empire’s mostly Christian The interactions between
population converted in large numbers to Islam. By 1500, some 90 percent of Muslims and Christians
in the Ottoman Empire
Anatolia’s inhabitants were Muslims and Turkic speakers. The climax of this Turkic are also an important
assault on the Christian world of Byzantium occurred in the 1453 conquest of topic.
Constantinople, when the city fell to Muslim invaders. (See Zooming In: 1453 in AP ® EXAM TIP
Constantinople, Chapter 2, page 94.) Renamed Istanbul, that splendid Christian
city became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Byzantium, heir to the glory of The Muslim conquest of
Constantinople was a
Rome and the guardian of Orthodox Christianity, was no more. major turning point in the
In the empire’s southeastern European domains, known as the Balkans, the political and cultural
Ottoman encounter with Christian peoples unfolded quite differently than it had history of Europe, North
Africa, and Southwest
in Anatolia. In the Balkans, Muslims ruled over a large Christian population, but Asia.
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