Here, and all this time I thought they just sat around all the time with their feet up kickin’ it.
The Ottoman Empire is really a part of history I know next to nothing about.
I gotta get one of those “The Ottoman Empire for Dummies” books and brush up that segment of history.
The article also didn’t mention the Battle of Cairo in 1517 in which the Ottomans overpowered the Mamluks, who had ruled Egypt since 1250 and had defeated the Mongols and the Crusaders. The Ottomans would retain Egypt—at least formally—as part of their empire until 1914.
Also failing to make the cut was the siege of Vienna in 1529, which may have been more decisive than the one in 1683, and the siege of Malta in 1565 in which the Christian Knights of Malta fought off the Ottoman attempt to seize their islands, located strategically along the Mediterranean trade route.
They also left out a little naval scuffle called Lepanto in 1571.
Let’s all just say, based on the above comments, that the article should have been about 20 battles. (You get more clicks that way, but that is just serendipitous.)
The greatest triumph of the Ottomans, I would argue, was most likely their conquest of Constantinople/Istanbul in 1453. The corresponding factor there is how weakened the Byzantine Empire became from the earlier actions by their fellow Christians of the Latin West (Europe)! While there were many enemies of Byzantium in the wet, the most effective was Venice, a burgeoning commercial and military rival.
The singular and most significant blow struck by Venice in the 4th Crusade (1202-04) when in 2004, instead of attacking Islamic Egypt to free up the Holy Land, the Crusaders instead attack and sacked Constantinople, wrecking their economy and essentially dooming that polity to the eventual Ottoman destruction. A true irony of history but typical of national and financial rivalries.