The Last Muslim Conquest

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

The course explores the significance of the Ottoman Empire in the history of Europe and the Middle East. It examines how the Ottoman wars of expansion in the Middle East, the Balkans, central Europe, and the Mediterranean led to imperial rivalries with the Mamluks of Syria and Egypt, the Safavids of Iran, and the Habsburgs of Austria and Spain and shaped the early modern world. The course studies the main political, military, and diplomatic events from the empire’s emergence in the early fourteenth century until the late seventeenth and early eighteenth, when a series of wars against the Habsburgs, Poland-Lithuania, Venice, and Russia ended the Ottoman expansion in Europe. In addition to military power and warfare, the course explores the role of soft power and lawfare, examining how alliances, diplomacy, and intelligence gathering across the Muslim-Christian divide influenced the fate of empires.