Talk:Classical Age of the Ottoman Empire

Chronological mess
I moved this from a section about one of the 16th century rulers, as the text speaks about two not very related battles of the 17th century.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 00:30, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

''With the Selim II the Ottomans occupied after the battle of Cecora 1620 and the battle of Chocim 1673 against Poland Moldova and Podolia. In 1672 they conquered with the help of the Tatars for 27 years the biggest Polish stronghold in Ukraine Kamianets-Podilskyi.''


 * Actually it would be impossible for Selim II to see an event which took place in 1620 because he had been already dead since 1574. I started to think that people are editing while they are drunk. Deliogul 14:52, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Curzolaris/Lepanto!! Malta yok!
What does this sentence in the middle of the article mean? 82.102.134.199 (talk) 08:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Growth doesn't end by 1683
This article claims that Growth of the empire was between 1453 to 1683. I have no objection to 1453. But 1683 is not the end of the Growth era. Growth era had already ended by the death of Sokollu Mehmet Pasha in 1579. Some historians prefer a document to mark the end of the Growth era. They consider the Peace of Zsitvatorok in 1606 as the end of the Growth era. In any case, 17th century is not a part of the Growth era. It was the Stagnation of the Ottoman Empire. The article should be changed as such. Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 05:50, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Is Ottoman history nothing but war and battles?
This article is little more than a long list of wars, battles, and sieges. There's no social, economic, religious, intellectual etc. history here. This is a serious problem - it makes it seem as though the Ottoman Empire was nothing but a warmongering state with no internal history of its own. I'm tagging the article as having too narrow of a focus and needing to generalize. History is about more than wars and geopolitics. Editors should aim also to summarize trends in economic and social history, cultural and intellectual developments, et cetera.

Also, the period 1453-1683 is not really a coherent one in Ottoman historiography. Historians generally separate the period into two, commonly 1453-1566 and 1566-1703. It would be good to split this article into two, and expand both to include non-political and non-military history. Chamboz (talk) 03:00, 6 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I have carried this out, and removed the segments of this article which overlap with the article Transformation of the Ottoman Empire, which I think provides a much more balanced view of that period of Ottoman history. Chamboz (talk) 03:39, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

The Name
"Growth of the Ottoman Empire" is not a term of periodization generally used by historians. This period is most commonly referred to as the "Classical Age," a term originally coined by Halil İnalcık for his book The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age (1973) and subsequently brought into general use. You can see this in innumerable books on the Ottomans. I'd like to change the title of the article to "Classical Age of the Ottoman Empire". Chamboz (talk) 22:36, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
 * To quote from a recent historian:

"The Ottoman sixteenth century is widely accepted as a formative stage in the empire’s organization and cultural production. Apologetic approaches portray the reigns of Selim and Süleyman as the culmination of a march from tribe to empire... These approaches have the merit of realizing that the first half of the sixteenth century is a critical period; however, they fail to explain its specificity. They refrain from developing more comprehensive models within which the sudden imperial expansion would become more meaningful. There is a “classical age obsession” among Ottoman historians. At the same time, there is a conspicuous absence of works studying the “classical age” with a critical eye."

-Şahin, Kaya (2013). Empire and Power in the reign of Süleyman: Narrating the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman World. Cambridge University Press. pp. 4–5.

Now, of course, Şahin is arguing that the term "Classical Age" is problematic (and I agree with him, his book is very much worth reading). But nevertheless the very fact that he has to make this argument shows that this term is the one used by most Ottomanist historians and is the one that should be used here as well, until a consensus among historians appears to change it. But "Growth of the Ottoman Empire" is certainly not a periodization generally used by Ottomanists. For this reason I'm renaming the page. Chamboz (talk) 05:02, 28 October 2016 (UTC)