Researchers
The Ottomans and the Gunpowder Empires
The Ottomans and the gunpowder empires: from Osman's small Anatolian beylik to a three-continent empire. In 1453 Mehmed took Constantinople with Urban's great cannons and it became Istanbul; under Süleyman the Lawgiver the state peaked: Baghdad, Cairo, Belgrade and Budapest under one banner. It is a gunpowder state — the musket and cannon carried by the Janissaries in Safavid and Hungarian wars — but also a state of knowledge and building: Sinan built it, its schools taught law and medicine. In India the sister Mughal state ran the same equation: gunpowder, architecture and Islam. It holds the modern age's lesson: whoever owns the technology and organises the state rules — or whoever relies only on technology fades. Its legacy stays today: the Balkan and Middle Eastern map in its provinces is the Ottoman map, and Istanbul stays its beating heart until now.