106 ISLAM AT WAR
The accomplishments of the great Ottoman sultans are impossible to
overstate. They descended upon the Arab Middle East that had enjoyed
600 years of uninterrupted rule by one people and displaced them with
little effort. They survived the crusaders and Mongols, and not even Tam-
erlane had their full measure. It was the Ottomans who finally toppled the
decrepit old Byzantine Empire. And it was the great line of capable sultans
who very nearly broke out of the Balkans and into Christian Europe. Few
peoples have had more glorious eras in history.
CHRONOLOGY
1055 Seljuq Turk Tugrul Bey seizes power in northern Iran.
1063–72 Seljuq Sultan Alp Arslan in power
1071 Alp Arslan wins the Battle of Manzikert against the
Byzantines.
1092–1180 Seljuq power dissipates between minor states.
1180–1225 Caliph al-Nasir of Baghdad reasserts central authority.
1280–1324 Osman Bey establishes the Ottoman dynasty.
1331 Nicaea falls to the Ottomans.
1346–50s Sultan Ohran occupies Thrace and squeezes remaining Byz-
antine territory.
1360–89 Sultan Murat expands into the Balkans, winning the Battle of
Kosovo.
1396 Sultan Bayezit rings Constantinople with forts and wins the
Battle of Nicopolis.
1402–05 Tamerlane’s Mongols intrude into Anatolia.
1421–30 Sultan Murat II fights with Venice.
1442–56 John Hunyadi attacks the Turkish Balkans.
1453 Sultan Mehmet II captures Constantinople, finishing the last
spark of the Byzantine Empire.
1454 Mehmet II moves into Moldavia.
1455 John Hunyadi defends Belgrade.
1461 Greece and Serbia are brought under Ottoman control.
1481–1512 Reign of Bayezit, expansion into Greece, war with Venice