WI: Osman I converts to Eastern Orthodoxy

The possibility of this forum's favorite polity surviving to see another millennium is a doable thing, suddenly, though reduced. Mostly though I think you'd see the Turks rip themselves apart over a "heretic" ruler.

I doubt it. The Byzantines are pretty much a dead empire walking after 1204. If Osman dies, some other Turkish ruler likely comes out on top after a civil war and is still better armed than the Romans. Or Venice could try to incorporate Byzantine territory into her empire, or the Serbs or Hungarians start getting land hungry and see the weak empire to the south...
 
I doubt it. The Byzantines are pretty much a dead empire walking after 1204. If Osman dies, some other Turkish ruler likely comes out on top after a civil war and is still better armed than the Romans. Or Venice could try to incorporate Byzantine territory into her empire, or the Serbs or Hungarians start getting land hungry and see the weak empire to the south...

If this is the case, then how come the state lasted another two and a half centuries after that date? There's no point in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries where the Empire could have turned its fortunes around?
 
I doubt it. The Byzantines are pretty much a dead empire walking after 1204. If Osman dies, some other Turkish ruler likely comes out on top after a civil war and is still better armed than the Romans. Or Venice could try to incorporate Byzantine territory into her empire, or the Serbs or Hungarians start getting land hungry and see the weak empire to the south...

1204? Certainly not. A bad year to be a Roman but not irrecoverable. As it goes 'forum's favorite', not mine, as I've audibly said elsewhere, even. Further, this detracts from the topic. I gave my opinion, such as it is, that if Osman I converted to Orthodoxy, his followers would usurp or assassinate him, at the very least attempt to do so, and then likely end up in a civil war as they try to vie for top position between themselves, an office they just opened up.
 
I doubt it. The Byzantines are pretty much a dead empire walking after 1204. If Osman dies, some other Turkish ruler likely comes out on top after a civil war and is still better armed than the Romans. Or Venice could try to incorporate Byzantine territory into her empire, or the Serbs or Hungarians start getting land hungry and see the weak empire to the south...
It's only after the Palaeologos came to power that the empire was a walking corpse.The Nicaean Empire was a significant regional power that was highly capable of not only defeating the crusaders,but the Seljuks.
 
Talk of the Ottoman ascendancy necessarily involves the Byzantine death-spiral, so this is good discussion. However, I'll ward against fatalist thinking with regard to either 'empire'. Neither was 'doomed' to succeed or fail.

Byzantium post-1204 was not nearly as mortally wounded as a superficial understanding of their history often conveys. The lands of the imposter [Latin] Empire were retaken by the Palaiologid Nicaean Empire, Constantinople restored as capital, and the other despotates subdued and, if not re-conquered outright, at least made subject to the Emperor in Constantinople. For a while---indeed, until the rise of the house of Osman---it seemed as though the 'Byzantines' would regain much of their former glory and reconstitute into a modern feudal state.

I'm not sure what the conversion of Osman I to either Christianity or a different Muslim sect would do to the Byzantine decline. Probably, not much. But that, I think, is where the conversation should focus---because the main effect of the rise of the 'Ottomans' was the downfall and supplanting of the defunct Empire with their own. The region (Balkans + Anatolia) would have had a dominant 'empire' either way. The geography and demographics of the time created a gravity well toward which the various polities spiraled; a race to the bottom, so to speak, toward Empire.

I'm interested to hear what suggestions others have as to which existing polity at the time could have filled the role played historically by the house of Osman, if the latter is taken out of the equation. Would the Palaiologids have ever gotten their shit completely together, as they started to in the 1260s? Was the existence of a strong, self-sustaining Christian Empire in this region a nonstarter after the 13th century? As a follow-up, was a Muslim Empire in the region an inevitability?
 
Just to play devils advocate, explaining ISIS and Al-Queda aren't all just there for religious fanaticism

You had drought stricken poor farmers who are being displaced due to poor economic conditions and imperial interventions destroying their homeland; if the guy offering you land and wealth happens to be all about recreating gods caliph does it really matter all that much? Marxist theory just presents things in class struggle terms and ISIS or Al-Queda fit the bill as lower class struggles vs the world imperial capitalist system.... communist no, but class oriented, yes
Some are people who are just doing it from an economic perspective,but many others,especially ISIS and Al-Qaeda's foreign supporters are largely people who are not victims of 'imperial' interventions and poor economic conditions.Bin laden was a wealthy man prior to forming Al-Qaeda.Some of those from these terrorist groups are purely just psychopaths who are joining it for the lulz.A lot of foreign ISIS and Al-Qaddafi supporters however are clearly true believers in the cause,as they seem quite willing to give the ultimate sacrifice without actually benefiting much from it--at least not from a material perspective that we can fully comprehend.
 
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