During the eight and ninth centuries, the Mongol people forced hundreds of Turkish tribes to leave their homes and their way of life in Anatolia. These tribes soon found refuge in the Islam religion and it didn’t take long for one of the Turkish tribes by the name of Seljuk to quickly gain a substantial amount of power. They adopted the Islamic settled life, their religion, their government and their way of taxation. However, many of the other tribes didn’t appreciate how the Seljuk was able to easily adapt, they felt as though the Seljuk had forgotten where they came from. These tribes didn’t want the Islamic way of life they wanted their old way of life, so they began to conquer land for Islam but they would keep all the riches for themselves. …show more content…
For the next six hundred years this Empire conquered land, including Hungary, the Balkan region, Greece and parts of the Ukraine. Nonetheless, like all rulers before and after the Ottoman, it too failed, but it didn’t go down without a fight by the Tanzimat Reform (Sansal, 2016). Prior to the eighteenth century the Ottoman Empire was said to be at least if not more powerful as the great European powers. They had the strongest military, they had the most land, they were experts in the trade business and most importantly other countries feared them. However, by the mid-1750s, the Empire began rapidly declining, trading in Europe ended and for the first time in history their military was loosing battle after battle. The Empire was no longer able to compete against the Russians and the Hapsburg Empire (Daily History.org, 2016). By 1812 the Ottoman Empire had lost everything, they had no land and hardly any money. In hopes of again being one of the strongest powers in the world, they began to reconstruct. Two sultans by the name of Abdulmecit I and Abdulaziz’s father, Mahmud II began a reform, they called it Tanzimat-I Hayriye (Auspicious Reorgainzation). The Tanzimat period is usually associated …show more content…
Their education system had become completely laical, creating a new elite group through their new schools. Luckily the economic reforms ended the religious regulation of the Ottoman Empire. These changes brought a degree of prosperity to the population. This was all because of the trading with the Europeans; the Turks finally had access to new technologies this in turn helped to modernize the economy. Banks were at last being established and modern economic practices were introduced. But surprisingly enough these changes had little impact on the majority of those who lived in the Empire. Of course the rights of individual citizens were improved but in actuality the Sultan remained to have almost unlimited power over his people. Furthermore, since the Sultan never gave up his power he remained the absolute rule of the Empire crippling his country. The reform did in fact change the Empire but it failed at modernizing the territory. Since the Ottomans failed to modernize their entire country they remained behind their European neighbors, and they continued to lose territory, in the Balkans. While the effort of the Tanzimat was to centralize administration, all of the legal authority became too focused in the sultan. As a result, nothing could be done when Abdulaziz began to abuse his powers by adopting revisionary policies. By the mid 1870s,