The Expansion of The Ottoman Empire

This week in class we took alot of notes about the Turks and the Ottoman Empire. There's alot of new words and language that is unfamiliar to me which seems like alot. I think it's really interesting how The Ottoman Empire was so powerful in its day yet it wasn't a nasty power. People actually did not mind the Ottoman's since they did not really enforce a certain religion or way of like on anybody. I think that the way the empire conducted itself it really different compared to what I know as "powerful" empires or groups. When I think of powerful and expanding I think of forceful, unbearable, impearializing. I was really surprised that the Ottoman Empire was a threat to most but a comfortable threat, considering there would be no chnge in the ways of life for the people of whatever area they took over.

Today in class we talked about the fall of Constantinople which only 5,000 people occupired. The Sultan Mehmet brought 250,000 people to take over the Byzantine Empire but did not succeed right away. it actually took a month for the Ottoman's to actually take over the city and this marked the fall of the Byzantine Empire. I really liked analyzing the different types of sources and looking at how credible they might be. I thihk it's an important aspect of analyzing history because if we only relied on one source then we would never get the whole story, or any story at all for that matter.