A few hundred horsemen on a dusty hill in Anatolia built one of the largest empires in history — and it was run, again and again, by men who were born Christian. 🏛️

The entire history of the Ottoman Empire in one animated documentary: the legend of Osman's dream, the Byzantine lord who switched sides, the earthquake that opened the road to Europe, the devshirme — the blood tax that took boys from Balkan villages and turned them into janissaries and grand viziers, Timur and eleven years of civil war, Mehmed the Second, Orban's giant cannon and the ships dragged over a hill in 1453, the Jews of Spain welcomed into the empire, Suleiman the Magnificent, Ibrahim, Hurrem, Sinan and Sokollu, nineteen brothers killed in one night, the janissaries who overturned their soup kettles, Vienna in 1683, nationalism, the Auspicious Incident, the sick man of Europe, bankruptcy, the Young Turks, Gallipoli, the Armenian genocide, and the last sultan leaving on a British warship. See how the Ottomans rose by turning strangers into their own — and fell when strangers no longer wanted to join.

Chapters:
0:00 — The chief nobody knew
1:24 — Osman's dream
2:37 — Bursa and the road to Europe
3:10 — The blood tax
4:18 — Kosovo and the Thunderbolt
4:45 — Timur breaks the empire
5:24 — 1453: the fall of Constantinople
6:40 — A patriarch and Spain's exiles
7:25 — Suleiman the Magnificent
8:05 — Christian-born boys at the top
9:00 — The machine starts to rust
10:13 — Vienna, 1683
11:03 — Russia and nationalism
11:55 — The Auspicious Incident
12:41 — The sick man of Europe
13:43 — Young Turks and the Great War
14:19 — 1915
14:39 — The last sultan
15:19 — What is still standing
16:04 — The secret of the Ottomans

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