Ottoman Turks?

Question

What is a legacy of the Ottoman Turks?

Answer 1

Architecture - See various mosques in Istanbul and other places, dams and cisterns in Belgrade Forest, walls of Jerusalem - all designed by Sinan. Coffee culture in Europe. Public baths (hamam). Language - ottoman=a piece of furniture. Interior design, especially tiles inspired by those from Iznik. The pastry known as the croissant was created as a reaction to the siege of Vienna, the crescent being the symbol of the Ottoman Empire. Military bands, timpani. The tulip. Yoghurt. ETC

Answer 2

That was how Languschi, an Italian contemporary, described Mehmed II (reigned 1451–80) as he was soon after his accession to the Ottoman Sultanate at the age of nineteen in 1451. In 1453 Mehmed commanded the Turkish armies in the conquest of Constantinople. There had been twelve previous attempts by Muslim armies to capture that city and in the course of the centuries a considerable body of
prophetic literature had developed which promised that the Byzantine capital would fall to Islam before the End of the World. Often these prophecies linked the fall of Constantinople to the fall
of Rome.

Mehmed’s capture of Constantinople established his reputation as a warrior in the service of Jihad – the ‘holy struggle’ to spread the faith among hostile unbelievers – the traditional role of the Ottoman sultans.

The origins of the Ottomans are obscure, but they first appear in history in Bursa, western Anatolia, at the beginning of the fourteenth century. They commanded tribesmen who attacked Greeks and other Christians for the promise of booty or, failing that, martyrdom in the service of Jihad. By the mid-fifteenth century the Ottoman Empire included most of Anatolia and a large area of the Balkans. But as long as Constantinople remained in Christian hands, that empire was vulnerable, with Venetian and Genoese fleets having the power to cut Turkey in Europe off from Turkey in Asia. Though the Byzantine fortifications of Constantinople had proved a formidable obstacle, the place that Mehmed and his troops entered in 1453 was a ghost city. Large areas within the walls had become a wilderness. The Sultan set about repopulating and Islamising the city. Citizens were conscripted from more heavily populated parts of the empire. An enormous mosque complex known as the Fatih (Conqueror) was constructed. Mehmed shunned the ruined palaces of his predecessors, which he believed to be haunted by djinns (spirits which assumed human and animal forms) and started the complex of buildings that was known as the Yeni Saray (New Palace) and later, in the nineteenth century, as Topkapi Saray (Gun Gate Palace). He also had a vast and characteristically Islamic bedesten (covered market) constructed. Mosques and religious teaching colleges sprang up throughout the city.

Answer 3

You could say that for some time they unified the Middle East, and defeated Byzantine Rome