Ottomans

Ezio: "A magnificent sight."

Suleiman: "It is a work in progress."

Ezio: "No city in Europa has a skyline quite like this."

Suleiman: "Well, to be precise, that is Europa... that is Asia."

Ezio: "Ah... some borders even the Ottomans cannot move."

—Ezio Auditore and Suleiman I, upon Ezio's arrival in Constantinople

The Ottomans were the leading faction of the Ottoman Empire, who formed the base of the state's military and ruling classes. They were named after Sultan Osman I, the founder of the dynasty which ruled the Ottoman Empire during its 620-year history.

By 1453, the Ottomans had conquered the city of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and locked all of the land routes to Europe, forcing the Europeans to find other ways to trade with Eastern countries. At the height of their power in the 16th and 17th century under the leadership of the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificient, the Ottomans were comprised of diverse, multinational and multilingual citizens.

History

Rise of the Ottomans

The Ottomans first came into light to the West in 1227 when they migrated westward into the Seljuk Empire, in Anatolia, where the Ottomans created a state along with establishing a principality in Western Anatolia, under Ertugrul.

His son Osman I expanded the principality, after whom both the empire and its people were named as "Ottomans". Along the way, the Ottomans created enemies from conquered states, such as Shahkulu, who was a Turkmen from Eastern Anatolia. However, the Ottoman Empire came into its own when Mehmed II captured the city of Constantinople from the Byzantines on 29th May, 1453, deposing the Byzantine Empire's last Emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos.

War with Wallachia

In 1476, the Ottomans under the Grand Vizier Ishak Pasha participated in the Ottoman military crackdown on a Hungrarian uprising, entering a war with Wallachia and defeating the rebel prince, a Templar named Vlad Tepes.

During the later half of the 15th century, they brokered a truce with the Assassins, via their leader Ishak Pasha, who was also a secret Assassin himself. This act led Vali cel Tradat to defect to the Templars, after he had served the Assassins for nearly a decade, as he considered the truce with the Ottomans and Assassins as a betrayal of his Wallachian heritage.

Internal rifts

Sultan Bayezid II led the Ottomans into a war with the remnants of the Byzantine Empire, led by Manuel Palaiologos, a Templar, who was trying to take the empire back and restore it to its Byzantine roots. While Bayezid had originally chosen his son Ahmet as the next Sultan, he soon faced fierce opposition from the Ottoman Janissaries, who supported his other son, Selim, and aiding him in his ascension to the throne. Selim then begun a tough war against his father in order to dethrone him from the title of Sultan. In 1512, Bayezid eventually handed over the throne to Selim instead of Ahmet, and Selim became the new Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

Selim, pushing Ahmet off of a cliff.

As soon as he became the Sultan, Selim marched over to Constantinople to find his brother Ahmet facing off against the Assassin Ezio Auditore da Firenze. As he approached his brother, Selim revealed to Ahmet that their father had ultimately chosen him as his successor, before he began to strangle Ahmet and eventually pushed him off a nearby cliff, killing him. It was his reasoning that Ahmet, who was secretly a high-ranked member of the Templars, had betrayed of the Ottomans when he formed an alliance with the Byzantine Templars.

Under Suleiman

In 1520, a tragedy robbed Selim of the Sultanate, and Suleiman, at 26, succeeded him. His reforms greatly improved the Empire's bureaucratic system, which would later be described as a "well-oiled engine," despite its significant size.

During his rule, Suleiman expanded his Empire to its furthest points, stretching it from Algeria to the Persian Gulf, and from Austria down to Egypt. Respecting the diversity of those under his authority, he was always careful to honor their cultures, traditions, and religions.

Ottoman Janissaries

Main article: Janissaries

File:ACR STORY 18.png

A group of Janissaries.

The Ottoman Janissaries were specially trained elite soldiers who served as the private guard to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. They were also the first standing Ottoman army, and the mainstay of the Ottoman army during the 1453 invasion of Constantinople, led by Sultan Mehmet II.

During 16th century Constantinople, the citizens greatly feared the Janissaries, as they were prone to mistreating them. The Janissaries also patrolled the city, looking for any Byzantine guards, in order to drive them out of the city. As such, Ezio used this to his advantage by creating tension between the two factions, by using bombs or dead bodies to provoke conflict between them.

Ottomans and the Assassins

Main article: Turkish Assassins

Levantine Assassin Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad journeyed to Constantinople in 1204, while the city was under Byzantine rule, in order to establish an Assassin Order there, but he was proved unable to do so in the face of the Fourth Crusade. Later on in time, the Polo brothers, Niccolò and Maffeo, were able to establish the Constantinople Assassins Guild.

Following this, Ishak Pasha brokered a truce between the Ottomans and the Assassins and began recruiting Ottoman citizens to the Brotherhood. After he died, the task fell to the Master Assassin Yusuf Tazim, himself a recruit of Pasha.

When Sultan Bayezid II gave refuge to escaped Jews from the Inquisition of Queen Isabella I in Spain and King Manuel I in Portugal, realizing the people will make his own empire stronger, the King of Spain, Ferdinand II – under the influence of the Templars – tried to send his own agents with the refugees to infiltrate Constantinople. This was foiled by the Italian Assassins, who killed the agents and took their places, before working to establish the guild there further.

Yusuf also successfully led the Turkish Assassins, alongside the Venetian Assassins, to help end the Venetian-Ottoman war. Rodrigo Borgia tried to disrupt this peace by sending his mercenaries to Constantinople. However, the Assassins, in constant vigil of such tactics by the Borgia, attacked the ship which headed for Constantinople and thwarted this attempt.

Initially, the Assassins had stolen maps from the famed Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis, in order to keep up with Templars' expedition of the New World. Despite this, Reis later joined the Assassin Order as a scholar and a technician, eventually becoming a Master Assassin who specialized in bomb crafting.

Ezio being introduced to the Ottoman Assassins.

In 1511, the Mentor of the Italian Assassins, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, journeyed to the Ottoman Assassins' headquarters in Constantinople with the intention of finding the five keys needed to open Altaïr's library, underneath the fortress of Masyaf. Greeted by Yusuf Tazim, Ezio was quickly taken in and introduced to various techniques that the Ottoman Assassins used, including bombs and the Hookblade, a modification made to the Hidden Blade by the Ottoman Assassins themselves. From there, Ezio, along with Yusuf and a handful of his high-ranked subordinates, led the Ottoman Assassins against the Byzantine Templars and Shehzade Ahmet, who was a Templar himself that aspired to earn the title of Sultan.

Trivia

• On the mini-map displayed within the Animus, the Ottoman guards showed up as yellow dots in the mini-map, while the Byzantines showed up as red.

Gallery

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  An in-game image of a 16th century Ottoman soldier.
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  An in-game image of an Ottoman Janissary.
• Artwork of an Ottoman soldier.
  Artwork of an Ottoman soldier.
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  Agile Ottoman fighter.
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  Artwork of an Ottoman Janissary.
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  Concept artwork of an Ottoman Rifleman.