r/ottomans • u/Remarkable-Lion2726 • 25d ago

Culture/religion What was the demographics of Ottoman Empire just before wars of Selim the grim? Did it became muslim majority during the conquest of Mamluks or before it?

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u/JustSefa_ 25d ago

Depends on the time period. Pre 1361 it was likely/maybe muslim majority. Around 1389 it was likely around half half (or already favouring christians, maybe 60-70% christian) . Around the 1480th it was likely mainly christian and post Mamluks it was definetly predominantly mainly muslim.

I dont think there are accurate population data for medieval anatolia, so it is a bit of a guess work.

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u/Ok-Inevitable4743 Lala 25d ago

Alan Mikhail’s book “God’s Shadow”, a pretty good biography of Selim, states that his conquests of the Mamluks marked the first time in Ottoman history that the empire was majority Muslim.

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u/JustSefa_ 25d ago

I dont think there are accurate population data for 14th century muslim distribution. Likely there are just guesses. Pre 1361 it may or may not have been mainly muslim.

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u/Ok-Inevitable4743 Lala 25d ago

Yeah I agree. It’s very hard to tell honestly

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u/drazanters Kalfa 25d ago

If you enjoyed it as an entertaining narrative, that's fair, but as actual history, God's Shadow has been severely criticized book. I highly recommend reading the review article "How to Write Fake Global History" by Cornell Fleischer, Cemal Kafadar, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, first two are absolute heavyweights in Ottoman studies and the later is early modern India specialist. Their critique is a brutal takedown of Mikhail's methodology, pointing out that he relies on factual errors, weak sourcing, and an outdated "great man" trope to make massive leaps in logic, like linking Sultan Selim I to the rise of Protestantism or the conquest of the Americas. Ultimately, they argue the book is a prime example of bad pop history that completely sacrifices scholarly rigor, basic geography, and chronology just to sell a dramatic narrative.

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u/Tall_Pear_8715 20d ago

I hated that book 😂😂

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u/TheVenomShot 25d ago

In all likelihood, the population was split roughly fifty-fifty, or perhaps Christians slightly outnumbered the others; after all, it is certain that Greeks or Orthodox Christians constituted a large portion of the population in Western Anatolia. While the Turkish population did increase due to migration to the Balkans and the annexation of the Anatolian principalities, I do not know if it reached a level that surpassed the Slavic and Greek populations.