The dawn of 1821 set up the Ottoman Empire stretched to its limits. Sultan Mahmud II, hardened by times of conspiracy and rebellion, believed he'd eventually gained a measure of stability after suppressing the Serbs and defying the rebellious Ali Pasha of Ioannina. Yet the conglomerate’s internal sins, its decaying service, and the restless intentions of its subject peoples were about to enkindle a disagreement that would burn for nearly a decade. thoroughfares of Istanbul, and judged the Ottoman state to be on the point of collapse.

The dears of the Sublime Porte had slightly failed when Mahmud II mounted the throne as the sole surviving heir at law of the Ottoman dynasty. He was only twenty- three, yet formerly he carried the scars of a continuance of bloodshed. His kinsman Selim III had been boggled before his eyes. His family Mustafa IV, who tried to kill him, had been executed at his command. His protection, the potent Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, had decomposed in a storm of fire. Istanbul lay in remains, its thoroughfares filled with ashes, and the Janissaries, though crippled, still strutted with arrogance through the capital. This was the conglomerate Mahmud inherited — a realm in extremity, torn between the history and the future.

The achievement of May 1807 had torn the Ottoman Empire from the hands of a utopian and placed it in the grip of men who knew only fear and tradition. Sultan Selim III, deposed after nearly two decades of struggle for reform, now sat in confinement within the Topkapı Palace. His lyrical soul still rumored of renewal, but his hands were bound, his vision shattered. In his place, the throne passed to Mustafa IV, a whoreson of Selim, chosen not for his strength but for his weakness.

The dawn of the nineteenth century set up Sultan Selim III both hopeful and uneasy. He'd survived storms that would have broken numerous autocrats — the French irruption of Egypt, the Janissaries’ growling, the endless wars on the conglomerate’s borders. His reforms, the Nizam- ı Cedid or New Order, had survived long enough to take root. But like youthful saplings in a harsh wind, they were fragile, their survival uncertain. In Istanbul, whispers swirled through the stores, the coffeehouses, and the barracks whispers of treason, of foreign influence, of a sultan who no longer heeded to his dogfaces. The megacity breathed with pressure, though its thoroughfares brimmed as ever with the commerce of conglomerate.

The death of Sultan Abdulhamid I in April 1789 left the Ottoman Empire sick, wounded, and uncertain of its future. On the battlegrounds of the Danube and the Black Sea, the conglomerate was at war with both Russia and Austria, and master sounded ineluctable. In Istanbul, the people mourned the loss of a pious and humble sultan, but at the same time, they looked anxiously toward the horizon, wondering who would now steer the boat of state through similar stormy waters. The answer came fleetly the throne passed to his youthful whoreson, Selim III, a man slightly in his twenties, whose ideas, disposition, and determination would mark him as one of the most remarkable liberals in Ottoman history. Selim III was born in 1761,

The death of Sultan Mustafa III in January 1774 left the Ottoman Empire in a state of grief and query. His family, Abdulhamid I, mounted the throne at the age of nearly fifty. Unlike some of his forerunners, Abdulhamid was n't raised in the luxury of immature power. He'd spent utmost of his life confined within the palace,

The Ottoman Empire stood on the threshold of a new age. The tulips of the former period had faded, the horselaugh of Sa’dabad’s auditoriums had been replaced by the stern meter of dogfaces’ thrills and the whispers of courtiers stewing rebellion. Yet the conglomerate endured, vast and complex, stretching from the comeuppance of Arabia to the plains of Hungary, from the Black Sea to the Nile. It was 1750, and the Ottoman story entered a chapter defined by struggle, conservative reform, and the uneasy shadow of Europe’s rising powers.

The dawn of the 18th century brought to Istanbul a delicate shimmer of change, one that pulsated through its palaces, amphitheaters, expressways, and coffeehouses like the soft petals of a tulip extending at first light. The Ottoman Empire had endured centuries of war, domination, and upheaval, but by 1700 a new spirit sounded to stir within the heart of the empire. This spirit was n't born on the battlefield but in the yards of palaces, in the verses of muses, in the laughter of merrymakers,