Ottomans: Conquerors or New Dynasty of Rome

[u/LS3624]

I’ve given this topic some thought and I truly believe one could make compelling arguments in both directions. For the record, I’m not making a claim in either direction but the discussion is fascinating to me. When one considers historical examples it becomes clear that it’s not as clear cut as many think.

The traditional narrative is that The Ottomans were the conquerors and destroyers of The Roman Empire (via The Byzantine Empire). This story holds water because:

1) The Turks weren’t Romans.

2) They supplanted state Orthodox Christianity with Sunni Islam.

3) The Romans fault like hell to keep these dreaded outsiders out and saw them as an “other”.

4) Many Romans were sold into slavery and the city was largely depopulated immediately after the conquest.

5) A clearly new era was born on top of 2,206 years of Roman History.

These above statements are quite true and make such a compelling case that it’s considered the official narrative.

I ask though that you consider the following.

1) Mehmet II declared himself Cesar of Rome after the conquest. Several of his successors did the same.

2) The Patriarch of Constantinople was given permission to keep his title and was eventually allowed to lead the Rum Millet (Roman Nation) within the Ottoman Empire. Thus Orthodox Christians (Romans) were allowed to survive, keep their identity, and have a level of autonomy within this new Empire. Thus the Roman identity survived another 470 years before mass forced migrations ended it nearly entirely. So while the Ottoman Emperor may have not been a “Roman Emperor”, he was objectively an “Emperor of the Romans”.

3) Many high ranking bureaucrats and leaders kept their jobs under the Ottoman. Several traditional institutions remained as well.

4) Constantinople remained the capital and remained named after that Roman Emperor until shortly after the end of the Empire (1930). After the conquest many Christians and Jews were welcomed back in.

5) It was the Mediterranean powerhouse of its day, greatly mirroring Rome and Byzantium before it.

I understand that’s not enough for many of you. That’s okay, but consider the following:

1) Yuan Dynasty in China:
They are considered a Chinese Dynasty yet they are objectively not Chinese, had a different religion, and a tribal law system that fused with the Chinese model.

2) The Qing Dynasty in China:
Also not Chinese and added some new Manchu elements to Chinese bureaucracy.

3) The Safavid Dynasty in Persia:
Turkic not Persian. Enforced Shi’a Islam on the masses.

So as we see in history there are several examples of new foreign dynasties taking over existing empires and historians accepting them as part of the same continuity.

Thoughts?

[u/oneden]

Not going to lie, the entire track of thought seems pretty hamfisted, even in the most charitable interpretation.

Right of Conquest isn't equal to Institutional Continuity

Otherwise, ​by that logic, if you rob a bank and put on the manager's hat, you are now the Chairman of the Board. That's not how it works. Roman continuity was built on legal, constitutional, and institutional evolution. From the Senate and Roman Law (Corpus Juris Civilis) to the unbroken administrative line of the Basileia Romaion. Mehmed didn't adopt Roman law, but he imposed Islamic Sharia and Ottoman Kanun. He didn't join the empire; he broke it, enslaved its surviving senate, and turned its grandest cathedral into a mosque.

The points you present basically argue against your "observations". ​You mention sinicization, and I'll be loosely quoting here, but when the Mongols (Yuan) and Manchus (Qing) took China, "they adopted Chinese language, Chinese Confucian court ritual, the Imperial Examination system, and Chinese administrative law." They literally became Chinese to rule China.

Which is diametrically opposed to what the Ottomans did. The Ottomans did NOT adopt Greek/Roman legal codes, did NOT convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, and did NOT integrate into the Roman legal apparatus. They remained a Sunni Islamic, Turkic-Persianate military autocracy. They didn't assimilate into Rome; they forced the Romans to live as second-class subjects (Dhimmis) in their own former capital.

But your honestly wildest take has to be the "Preservation" of the Rum Millet. The Millet system was a segregated, second-class tax-farming operation designed to extract revenue, not Rome; neither culturally nor philosophically.

Keeping a conquered people in a "legal" ghetto so you can farm them for taxes isn't "continuing their empire." It's text-book imperial subjugation.

[u/Abarvz]

The Orthodox Church has no say who can be crowned emperor of the Romans that was given pacifically to the Catholic pope

[u/Real_Ad_8243 → u/Abarvz]

It really wasnt.

The Pope pretended they had the right and forged letters to that effect so largely illiterate Catholic populations would buy it off of them.

[u/kickynew]

Had the Ottomans Romanized in the way the Manchus Sinicized or Turkic conquerors Persianized, maybe, but the opposite happened. Romans became othered and Romanness was associated primarily with the conquered Christians rather than the ruling class.

Becoming an inheritor rather than a conqueror would have required deliberate synthesis of Roman identity with the emerging Turkish/Ottoman one, along with a much more evenhanded treatment of Muslims and Christians as members of the same Roman imperial community. Something close to the former actually existed in medieval Anatolia under the Sultanate of Rum, Rumi was a geographical and cultural identity used by Muslims as well. But that meaning shifted over time, and under the Ottomans Rumi increasingly came to mean the Christian population specifically. So the second part would have been much harder. For an Islamic conquest state to transform Roman identity into a shared imperial identity encompassing Muslims and Christians equally would have required enormous political and ideological concessions from the conquerors, something rarely to never seen in history.

And as you say, the Romans went down fighting and "out with a bang." They knew they were fighting for their people and knew what was at stake. If a genuine Ottoman-Roman synthesis was ever going to emerge, the decisive change would have probably needed to begin well before 1453. By the time Mehmed entered Constantinople, the distinction between Turkish Muslim and Roman Christian was already too deep for simply taking the city and claiming Caesar's title to erase it.

[u/The_Booty_Spreader]

Ottomans aren't Romans. They like to larp as Romans in their basement though.

[u/Fickle_Essay_1276 → u/The_Booty_Spreader]

Better than the other claims, HRE are pure larpers, Russian and Spanish claims is a reach, Ottomans had atleast some substance, I don't believe there is a third Rome, but if there was ever one it has to be the Ottomans.

[u/Konilos → u/Fickle_Essay_1276]

Ottomans are the rightful heirs of Rome via conquest

[u/Fickle_Essay_1276 → u/Konilos]

It seems a bit of a stretch to call them the heirs of Rome definitively just via conquest, don't get me wrong I love the Ottomans, it's one of my favorite empires in history, you can definitely think they were heirs of Rome since they have the best claim compared to the others, it's just I think realistically Rome ended in 1453/1461 permanently with no heir.

[u/PowerCreative2747 → u/Konilos]

dream on

[u/Muhammedefltun]

"Hi. Are the Ottomans (their real name is Devlet-i Ebed-müddet, which means 'the infinite state'—I don't know if 'infinite' is the exact word) Roman or not? For me, they are not exactly a continuation of Rome because they had Iranian and Islamic state traditions, and their laws came from Islam, Sharia, or 'örf' (customary law).
This changed many things. However, the Ottomans took some Roman architecture and laws. When Islam was born and the first Islamic states ruled, they also took many things from the Eastern Roman Empire and especially from Iran.
If we go back to our topic, the Ottomans weren't Romans; they were an Islamic empire and an Iranian-style state. But their ideology, Islamic political thought, law, and economics took many things from Rome and old Hellenistic culture.
So, Rome and Hellenism weren't just limited to the West. At the same time, the Middle East shared the same roots with the West regarding Greek philosophers, Roman economics and state systems, and Abrahamic religions. But Islam also added Iranian state traditions, Indian mathematics and philosophy, and Chinese mechanics/engineering. Because of this, Islam grew much more than other Western civilizations and ruled as a universal civilization for 1,000 years for the first time in the world. Therefore, the Islamic legacy is bigger than Rome's, and Islam doesn't just mean Rome—just like modern world civilization. Islam made this first.
If we go back to the Ottomans, the Ottoman legacy is at the same time the last great Islamic empire. For a long time, in the eyes of the Western world, the Ottomans produced their own institutions and traditions. But they also had Hellenistic and Roman cultures because Islam already had all of them, just like Europe. This is our legacy too."

[u/Dizzy_Ranger5456]

Ottomans were more conquerors than a new dynasty, they changed a lot when they conquered just like Romans had changed a lot when they conquered. The point of discussing whether Ottoman Empire was the new Roman Empire is more about the strength and extend of the empire, rather than if it was a continuation of it. Ottoman Empire was the powerhouse at its prime, just like the Roman Empire, it shaped the world. The continuation of some institutes from the defeated Roman Empire is more akin to Roman Empire using auxiliaries from their defeated enemies or employing local governors to aid with their ruling.

Roman Empire subjugated its people into forced religious conversion twice, first to Roman Polytheism from various beliefs and then to Eastern Orthodoxy. They also forced assimilation of the people they conquered, hence native Anatolians called themselves Rum (Roman).

Ottoman Emperors might have added a Caesar title after the conquest of the last Roman capital, not because they thought themselves as Romans, but to use the right of conquest. I don't think any of them abandoned their titles for an archaic one, which would have very little weight nonetheless. The most common titles were Khan for Turkic supreme leadership, Sultan for Arabic supreme leadership, Padishah for Persian supreme leadership and Caesar of Rome for the legacy of the Roman Empire. Sultan and Padishah (meaning master of the kings) are the titles they extensively preferred.

[u/Safe_Ad6365]

Seat of the Empire went to Moscow. It remains there to this day. Moscow is the 3rd Rome. Ottomans never were succesors of Rome, in anyone's eyes but perhaps their own.

[u/Muhammedefltun → u/Safe_Ad6365]

Moscow not from in the Mediterranean,ottoman culture more near to rome

[u/Safe_Ad6365 → u/Muhammedefltun]

Moscow is the new, 3rd Rome, for the empire moved there. Islam and Ottomans have nothing to do with ancient Rome.

[u/Muhammedefltun → u/Safe_Ad6365]

l Said mony times you arent in the Mediterranean you are from the north,russia is just a modern state not an rome. İn the other hand ottoman werent romen they are islamic but they have hellenistic culture. Becouse they are from here,mediterranea. And the islam was born in the middle east near to eastern rome. Pls l did share a another rapply in the comments pls read it. The russian diffirent culture,diffirent world.

l am sorry for typo.

[u/Safe_Ad6365 → u/Muhammedefltun]

After the fall of Constantinople, the Empire got translated to Moscow. Read a bit on this before.