How did the "Ottomans were tolerant" meme start?
Furthermore, why is Vlad given a shitty reputation for impaling Turks when the Turks infamously impaled women and babies during the sacking of Constantinople ?
>>602538
They killed less Christians than other Christians did in late antiquity/early middle ages
Just like there were American/British/Roman/Greek/Chinese warmongers and American/British/Roman/Greek/Chinese peacemakers, there were also Ottoman warmongers and Ottoman peacemakers.
Whoa, ruling class behaves differently when given 400 years to evolve. Shocking!
>>602538
>Turks infamously impaled women and babies during the sacking of Constantinople
Source?
>>602959
They did the same in Austria btw
>>602538
They won their war of Independence.
>>602538
>How did the "Ottomans were tolerant" meme start?
For a very long time Europe was an incredibly intolerant, violent place where being a Christian heretic or a Jew was a very dangerous thing to be.
The Ottoman Millet System allowed for the existence of a primitive form of multiculturalism, where religious minorities were allowed to partially govern themselves and live their lives more freely than they would have done in the West.
Jews and Christians were disproportionately represented in the Ottoman middle classes (i.e. merchants, artisans, etc.) while the Muslim Turks mostly remained uneducated, rural peasants. The word Turk was even used as a pejorative in the Empire as a way to refer to an ignorant villager.
This is why it's so funny when Turks act so proud of the Ottoman Empire and its accomplishments - the cosmopolitan urban elites saw the vast majority of Turks as unwashed peasant scum that were useful only as a source of dumb manpower.
The Millet System wasn't perfect by any means and anyone trying to point to the Ottoman Empire as a bastion of progressive values is an idiot; a lot of shit that went on was absolutely disgusting by modern standards. But for a long time it was considerably more pluralistic than what was happening in large swathes of the West.
>Furthermore, why is Vlad given a shitty reputation for impaling Turks when the Turks infamously impaled women and babies during the sacking of Constantinople ?
Do you have a source for the impaling of women and babies during the sack of Constantinople?
My understanding was that there was a great deal of rape and wanton murder/destruction during the conquest but I never read anything about impaling.
>>603856
>>602959
They were well-advised to do so, for that fate was horrible indeed. By noon the streets were running red with blood. Houses were ransacked, women and children raped or impaled, churches razed, icons wrenched from their golden frames, books ripped from their silver bindings. The Imperial Palace at Blachernae was left an empty shell. In the church of St Saviour in Chora the mosaics and frescos were miraculously spared, but the Empire's holiest icon, the Virgin Hodegetria, said to have been painted by St Luke himself,1 was hacked into four pieces and destroyed. The most hideous scenes of all, however, were enacted in the church of the Holy Wisdom. Matins were already in progress when the berserk conquerors were heard approaching. Immediately the great bronze doors were closed; but the Turks soon smashed their way in. The poorer and more unattractive of the congregation were massacred on the spot; the remainder were lashed together and led off to the Turkish camps, for their captors to do with as they liked. As for the officiating priests, they continued with the Mass as long as they could before being killed at the high altar; but there are among the Orthodox faithful those who still believe that at the last moment one or two of them gathered up the most precious of the patens and chalices and mysteriously disappeared into the southern wall of the sanctuary. There they will remain until the day Constantinople becomes a Christian city once again, when they will resume the liturgy at the point at which it was interrupted.
>>602538
>Furthermore, why is Vlad given a shitty reputation for impaling Turks
It's because merchants from Transylvania disliked him as he taxed them, so they destroyed his reputation by making up the stories about how he is a vampire and shit.
Similar thing as what happened with Elisabeth Bathory,
>>602538
Wait people hate Vlad?
I thought he was seen as a badass
>>602538
That was historical injustice. Any fighter for human right do painting, do music-making, do sculpturing, do boozing, do smoking, should be marked as righteous man
>>604529
Great leader - 1st leader victorious above thefting
>>604555
Communist nationalistic propaganda bullshit, Shit leader.
>>602538
>Furthermore, why is Vlad given a shitty reputation for impaling Turks when the Turks infamously impaled women and babies during the sacking of Constantinople ?
Because Vlad created forests of impaled corpses. He was known to impale tens of thousands of people at once. One account talks of 20,000 impaled corpses outside Targoviste for example.
The Turks were certainly cruel but they were more prone to behead their enemies en masse rather than impale them. There's no indication that the Turks impaled more than a couple hundred people during the conquest of Constantinople. Vlad operated on a whole other scale.
>>604252
source?
>>604750
A Short History of Byzantium - John Julius Norwich (1998)
>>602538
Cruelty during a siege and sacking was the order of the day, especially in Eastern Europe. The orgy of violence that follows the conquest of a city or castle was always written off as the right of the conquerors.
Vlad stands out because he specifically impaled a lot of noncombatants - diplomats, merchants, captives, and civilians.
>>602538
>How did the "Ottomans were tolerant" meme start?
With protestantism. The Great Turk tolerated and protected protestants (who were not a threat for him) while the first monarch of christianity, the Emperor, didn't (because they were a threat for him).
>>602538
>Turks infamously impaled women and babies during the sacking of Constantinople
This is a lie and Ottoman Tolerance is not a meme. While Europeans were strangling thousands of civilians in sake of muh luther or muh pope, every religion could be practiced in Ottoman Empire freely as long as they paid their taxes. They even let christians and jews apply their own religious law.
>>604729
>20,000 impaled corpses outside Targoviste
An entire Ottoman army.
The Sultan who was leading his men into Vlad's country, upon seeing the horror became physically ill and turned around home.
>>605765
That is shit from Jimmy Donal Wales
>>604596
Actually I'm Romanian and he was horseshit. 0 diplomacy, a murdering psycho that sided with whom he found most fitting. Then he turned round and started impaling Christian merchants from Brasov and Sibiu, so Matei Corvin decided to remove him instead. Fuck him.
Oh, and on a side note: the fucking faggot Muhamed never intended to conquer Wallachia, he was perfectly content with replacing him with a more pliant ruler.
>>606273
>every religion could be practiced in Ottoman Empire freely as long as they paid their taxes
Not true, what the ottomans perceived as islamic heresies were persecuted because they were seen as a threat. Exactly the same reason that made europeans slaughter each other for religion. Ottomans tolerated protestants, catholics, jews... but not shi'ites.
>>606273
"freely"
As long as you didn't want a government job or didn't care about moving up the social ladder.
>>604529
>Shit leader
>stopped an invasion through psychological warfare
>>606273
What a joke is this? It's stupid to mix those things that way.
And it's such a meme to call that tolerance. It is just a solution to avoid rebellions when a great part of your population doesn't follow your religion.
>>604729
Yeah, because it's the same being the conqueror with an overwhelming army and being the defender with less effectives.
>>606273
>While Europeans were strangling thousands of civilians in sake of muh luther or muh pope, every religion could be practiced in Ottoman Empire freely as long as they paid their taxes
They literally charged them extra if they wanted to stay a Christian or a Jew, and just killed the rest
>>604729
hey, talk shit all you want but you can't deny it wasn't effective
>>606632
There were high officials at court who were consistently Jewish or Orthodox Christian like the translators, and up until the late 17th century the Ottoman noble cavalry of Rumelia province was about 20-30% Christian.
>>606758
The Ottomans were also immensely corrupt. As has been pointed out, Christians and Jews ended up forming the majority of the middle classes in the empire. Huge numbers of them were exempted from the jizya, meaning that they paid the same taxes as impoverished Turkish peasants. According to Gibb and Bowen, about two-thirds of all eligible Dhimmis were exempted from the jizya.
>>602538
The Ottomans welcomed diversity because they thought it would build a stronger empire. For example, when Spain started to exile Jews, the Ottomans welcomed them.
>>606684
He got wrecked though and his head was put on a pike in istanbul.
I don't get this non-impalement meme.
Turks have a well known reputation for being master impliers in the balkans and there's examples of impalement from raids into austrian lands, to dealing with criminals, to implying rebels to death...
Sure, it probably wasn't something on the scale of Vlad, but it was a thing and it was constant.
Here, some bosnian rebels get impaled as late as 1810s
https://books.google.no/books?jtp=74&id=qg83AAAAYAAJ&hl=no#v=onepage&q&f=false
