Ottoman Turkish Religion

Before adopting Islam a process that was greatly facilitated by the Abbasid victory at the 75 battle of Talas, which ensured Abbasid influence in Central Asia the Turkic peoples practiced a variety of shamanism. After this battle, many of the various Turkic tribes including the oguz Turks, who were the ancestors of both the Seljuks and the Ottomans gradually converted to Islam, and brought the religion with them to Anatolia beginning in the 11th century. In the Ottoman Empire, in accordance with the Muslim Dhimmi system, Christians were guaranteed limited freedoms such as the right to worship but were treated as second class citizen. Christians and Jews were not considered equals to Muslims: testimony against Muslims by Christians and Jews was inadmissible in courts of law.

Ottoman Turkish Language

Ottoman Turkish was a Turkis language highly influenced by Persian and Arabic. The Ottomans had three influential languages: Turkish, spoken by the majority of the people in Anatolia and by the majority of Muslims of the Balkans except in Albania and Bosnia, Persian, only spoken by the educated and Arabic, spoken mainly in Arabia, North Africa, Iraq, Kuwait and the Levant. Throughout the vast Ottoman bureaucracy Ottoman Turkish language was the official language, a version of Turkish, albeit with a vast mixture of both Arabic and Persian grammar and vocabulary.

Modernization of Turkey under Ottoman Era

Mahmud started the modernization of Turkey by paving the way for the Edict of Tanzimat 1839 which instituted European-style clothing, uniforms, weapons, architecture, education, legislation, banking, institutional organization, agricultural and industrial innovations, new technologies in transport and communications, and land reform. During the Tanzimat period from Arabic tanzīm, meaning "organization" the government's series of constitutional reforms led to a fairly modern conscripted army, banking system reforms, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the replacement of religious law with secular law and guilds with modern factories. In 1856, the Hatt-Humayan promised equality for all Ottoman citizens regardless of their ethnicity and religious confession; which thus widened the scope of the 1839 Hatt-e Gulhane. Overall, the Tanzimat reforms had far-reaching effects.

Why was Ottoman Empire Successful?

There were many reasons why the Ottoman Empire was so successful:

• · Highly centralized.
• · Power was always transferred to a single person, and not split between rival princes.
• · State-run education system.
• · Religion was incorporated in the state structure, and the Sultan was regarded as "the protector of Islam".
• · State-run judicial system.

Ottoman Institutions and Reasons behind Success of This Empire

The administrative institutions characteristic of the late Ottoman Empire had already taken shape in the fourteenth century during the reigns of the first sultans. At the apex of the hierarchical Ottoman system was the person of the sultan, who acted in a number of capacities, political, military, judicial, social, and religious--under a variety of titles. Officially the sultan was called padishah. Among the Turks he was, as his nomadic warrior forebears had been, the khan, a master of the tribal ruling class. For his Christian subjects he was the "emperor"; later, among the Arabs under Ottoman rule, he was the imam, the protector of Islam. He was theoretically responsible only to God and God's law, the Islamic seriat , of which he was the chief executor. All offices were filled by his authority, and all legislation was issued by him in the form of a fireman. He was supreme military commander, and he had basic title to all land.