The Muslim World Expands: 1300 - 1700 Chapter 18, Pages 504 to 525 World History: Patterns of Interaction McDougal-Littell 2007 The Byzantine Empire was once strong: in the year 550 A.D., when Justinian ruled it, in included not only all of Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia, but much of the Mediterranean world. By the year 1300, however, it was smaller and weaker. Turkey, also called ‘Anatolia,’ was now largely governed by the Seljuk Turks, a Muslim group which took most of the area from the Byzantines, who now had only a small region around the city of Constantinople. The Seljuks saw themselves as “ghazis” – Islamic warriors. Although strong against the Byzantines, the Seljuks were being attacked on the other side by Muslims from Arabia. In 1300, a leader named Osman declared himself independent from the Seljuks, and established his own empire, the Ottoman Empire. This new Islamic power would find success because of its use of gunpowder. The Ottoman armies had both muskets and cannons. The expansion of the Ottoman Empire was temporarily stopped in 1402 by Tamerlane, a Muslim leader from Samarkand, a city in Uzbekistan. Tamerlane was fighting his way west from Asia, while the Ottomans were advancing to east from Anatolia. After a few years, the Ottomans were able to resume their eastward expansion. The Ottomans also expanded westward. In 1453 they attacked and defeated the city of Constantinople. They renamed the city Istanbul; earlier it was called Byzantium. Many of the scientists, scholars, and artists fled for safety went to Italy. The Ottomans expanded southward, conquering Arabia and parts of northern Africa. The Muslim Ottomans captured Islam’s holy cities, Mecca and Medina, from the Arab Muslims. The Safavid kingdom of Persia was able to resist Ottoman attacks. Suleyman the Magnificent, inheriting the Ottoman throne in 1520, expanded the empire even further: he attacked and conquered the city of Belgrade in 1521, and within the next few years invaded Greece, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. He attacked Vienna but did not succeed in subjugating it. He strictly enforced Sharia law. The Ottomans were not the only Islamic empire to go on the offensive; in 1499, a small kingdom known as the Savafids took over all of Persia under the leadership of Isma’il. The Safavid invasion of Persia was one Islamic group attacking another. The border between the Savafid-occupied Persia and the Ottoman-occupied- Babylonia is the modern-day border between Iraq and Iran. Isma’il was a religious Chapter 18 – Page 1 tyrant, killing thousands who did not practice Islam according to his ideas. After Isma’il died, later Safavid rulers used artillery and other military forces to expand the empire into the Caucasus Mountains, an area northeast of Anatolia. There, the Safavid Muslims oppressed and subjugated Christians. Further east, other empires were taking shape. Since the 700’s, Muslims had been attacking India. For several centuries, they could move no farther than the Indus River valley. Around the year 1000, well-trained Turkish Muslims swept into India. They devastated Indian cities and temples in brutal campaigns. They formed a loose empire, called the Delhi Sultanate, of Islamic warlords with a capital in Delhi, and treated Indian Hindus as conquered people. Although Tamerlane attacked the Sultanate in 1398 and did much damage, he did not defeat it. From the area of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the Muslim leader Babur and his grandson Akbar moved southward with large armies and artillery, defeating the Delhi Sultanate and establishing the Mughal Empire in India. Akbar saw military power as the root of his strength, and used powerful artillery; he died in 1605. Akbar’s grandson continued the empire and built the famous Taj Mahal; but this grandson, named Shah Jahan, allowed the ordinary people starve, while taxing them and organizing wars. When Shah Jahan became ill, his four sons competed for the throne. Aurangzeb was the one who managed to kill or outsmart the other three; he jailed his father and took power. He rigidly enforced Islamic laws; he enforced the hated tax on non-Muslims; he banned the construction of new Hindu temples and had Hindu monuments destroyed – despite the fact that the Hindus were the original inhabitants of the land, and the majority, while the Muslim minority had only recently arrived as military oppressors. When Aurangzeb’s army violently put down Hindu rebellions, he increased taxes on non-Muslims to pay for the military. Taxed and starving, the strength of the empire began to fade. In 1661, Aurangzeb greeted Portuguese explorers, and gave them the right to use the harbor of Bombay, also known as ‘Mumbai.’ Aurangzeb was willing to do business with the Portuguese, even though they weren’t Muslims, because he needed the financing. The ordinary people found the Portuguese interesting, and found that they were more lenient that Aurangzeb. The Mughal Empire soon ceased to have significance. Chapter 18 – Page 2.