At its greatest extant under the rule of Suleyman the Magnificent in the 1500s, the Ottoman Empire ran from the walls of Vienna (to which it laid siege in 1529 all the way across eastern Europe and the Middle East to Baghdad and Basra. From Algiers the tughra of the...
Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Pathways to Tolerance
Viewing the history of the Ottomans as part and parcel of European history allows us to understand the origins and meaning of concepts and practices such as religious tolerance, secularism, modernity, and even genocide in a different light. We recognise that they...
AoH Book Club – Giles Milton on Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922
The destruction of Smyrna in 1922, for which we’ve just seen the centenary, was an event that not only shamed the Turkish forces that carried it out, but also the allied navies that looked on as tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children were killed, and...
AoH Book Club: Roger Crowley on Constantinople 1453
A gripping work covering the siege of Constantinople 1453, Roger Crowley’s history of this momentous event was published in 2011. Both a critical and commercial success, it was described as “hugely readable, well-written and informative” by the Daily Telegraph and the...
Porphyry & Bones, by Peter Sandham
Porphyry & Bones In 1463, the Bosnian town of Jajce lies in a pile of smouldering rubble. From the wreckage, a young queen flees, carrying in her arms some of the most valuable possessions in all of Christendom: the relics of St Luke. It is here that Peter Sandham...