140 ISLAM AT WAR
1603 Ahmet I becomes sultan; Grand Vizier Fazil is the actual ruler.
1663–64 Fazil campaigns in the Balkans.
1683 Kara Mustafa Pasha fails to take Vienna, signaling the decline
of the Ottoman Empire.
1683–89 Turkey is at war with the Holy Roman Empire and most of her
neighbors. Campaigning is constant on almost all fronts.
1696 Peter the Great takes Azov.
1703–30 Ahmet III takes the throne. War with Russia and Austria. Ot-
toman frontiers are pushed back in the Balkans and the Black
Sea regions.
1739–68 Peace with Austria and Russia
1768 War renews. Russia captures the Crimea, and Austria the
Balkans.
1799 France invades Egypt.
1806–11 War with Russia
1820s Greece rebels.
1828 War with Russia; Moldavia and Wallachia captured.
1832–33 Egypt invades Turkey, which is saved by European action.
1854–56 Turkey allies with Britain and France against Russia.
1877–78 Russo-Turkish War, Battle of Plevna. Turkey again saved by
European intervention.
1911 Italy captures Ottoman provinces in North Africa.
1912 War with Greece, Bulgaria, and Montenegro
1914–18 World War I, fighting in Syria, Arabia, Iraq, and the Dardanelles
1922–23 Greece invades Turkey. Mustafa Kemal Pasha saves the nation.
NOTES
- It should be noted that this same distress over the presence of “infidel” troops in a
Muslim nation was one of the reasons why Osama bin Laden declared his jihad against
the United States and launched the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001. - TheGoebenwas a “battle cruiser,” essentially a fast, but lightly armed battleship of
the day. TheBreslauwas a light cruiser, smaller than a modern destroyer.