Destiny Disrupted

176 DESTINY DISRUPTED CONSTANTINOPLE i/2mil~ 500m.,u;r> GAL ATA S e a 0 f Marmara Constantinople: The World's Most Impregnabl ...

REBIRTH 177 The Ottomans persisted, however. The cannons kept booming, the janissaries kept charging, the immense besieging army ...

178 DESTINY DISRUPTED Istanbul had only about seventy thousand people at the time of the conquest, so Mehmet the Conqueror launc ...

REBIRTH 179 ing the Spanish Inquisition in Iberia, and discrimination hounded them just about everywhere. The Eastern Orthodox c ...

180 DESTINY DISRUPTED Another set of checks and balances built into Ottoman society involved the devshirme instituted by Bayazid ...

REBIRTH 181 "Landowner" is a bit of a misnomer, however, because officially the sultan owned every scrap of soil in his empire. ...

182 DESTINY DISRUPTED least nominal affiliation with one or another of the Sufi orders and a great many actively belonging to so ...

REBIRTH 183 The Ottoman's eastward expansion did get blocked by another rising power, the Safavids (about whom more later}, but ...

184 DESTINY DISRUPTED and after that his son, and so on. In short, leadership of the group became hereditary. Second, somewhere ...

REBIRTH 185 Shi'ite doctrine declares that the twelfth imam will reveal himself at the end of history, sparking the perfection o ...

186 DESTINY DISRUPTED the spark of divinity in him. Imagine how he must have seen the world (and himself) by the time he reached ...

REBIRTH 187 Well, wouldn't you know it: the Ottoman sultan Selim the Grim retali- ated by locking up or executing Shi'is living ...

188 DESTINY DISRUPTED Chaldiran as a victory for the Ottomans, but overall it was more of a draw, because Selim could not hold T ...

REBIRTH 189 Safavid creativity climaxed in architecture. For example, unlike the monumental Ottoman mosques-those somber mounds ...

190 DESTINY DISRUPTED Ismail's named Babur, which means "tiger," and in some ways, he was even more remarkable than the prodigio ...

REBIRTH 191 and lane, orchard and vineyard; I showed civility neither to friend nor stranger, took no care for myself or others ...

192 DESTINY DISRUPTED most remarkable monarch of his age, a contemporary and equal of Eng- land's Queen Elizabeth. His father ma ...

REBIRTH 193 and no religion had the whole truth, so he decided to take the best from each and blend them into a single new relig ...

194 DESTINY DISRUPTED began spouting lyrics celebrating love in a spirit that smacked of both Su- fism and Hinduism, and scribes ...

REBIRTH 195 grandfather Akbar, and like Akbar he ruled for forty-nine years, so he had time and power to work deep changes in th ...