A massive pyramid ... In the centre a gateway adorned with Sphinxes. ibid.
The Hittite language was written in a series of triangular shaped signs called cuniform, one of the world’s oldest writing systems. ibid.
An Indo-European language just like English .. The Hittites must have migrated to Turkey. ibid.
The population was tightly controlled by harsh penalties. ibid.
The Hittites now threatened Egypt itself ... War between the world’s two great superpowers was inevitable. ibid.
A new super-weapon ... Moving the wheels from the rear to the centre of the car made the chariot stronger. ibid.
In fact the Hittites had won the war. ibid.
This mighty empire vanished from history. ibid.
One by one the hieroglyphs were deciphered. ibid.
That could only mean civil war. ibid.
The great king was desperately suppressing a rebellion deep inside Hittite territory. ibid.
Their history died with the city. ibid.
The Templar Army began its gruesome desert march towards Tiberius without water or shelter. Weak and disorientated. That evening was when Saladin’s forces closed in to surround them. In the attack that followed ... it was the worst single military disaster in the Holy Land. The surviving Christian knights were sold into slavery. Decoding the Past: The Templar Code, History 2005
Saladin took the city a few months later. The Christians fought back under Richard the Lionheart, retaking the city in 1229. But held it only briefly. In 1244 the Turks recaptured Jerusalem, effectively bringing an end to Christian rule. ibid.
Of equal importance in the spiralling decline of the Islamic empires were external factors, in particular the growing power of Christian Europe. The last of the great Muslim empires was that of the Ottomans. The heartland of the Ottoman Empire was Turkey. It began its rise to power in the fifteenth century, and eventually its armies reached the gates of Vienna. It was here in 1683 that European forces decisively halted Islamic expansion. For two months 200,000 soldiers fought each other outside the city walls. In the end the Ottoman army was defeated. Decoding the Past: The Koran
Could the West be consigned to history? Without superior science there would be no Western superpower today. But it wasn’t always like this. A thousand years ago it was the Muslim world that was at the cutting edge of science. Niall Ferguson, Civilisation: Is the West History? II, Channel 4 2011
For the Ottoman’ empire it was the beginning of the end. A moment of imperial overstretch with disastrous consequences. It was actually the first time the Ottomans had had to accept a peace treaty from victorious Christian adversities. ibid.
In stark contrast the Ottomans’ progress was severely hampered by religion. In the words of one Muslim cleric: ‘It is rare that someone becomes absorbed in this foreign science without renouncing religion and letting go the reigns of piety within him.’ ibid.
Muslim scientists could not even access the latest research from Europe. Because their religion now prevented them from reading printed books. For the Ottomans, script was sacred. ibid.
In Ottoman schools science yielded to narrowly religious study. ibid.
Abdul [Hamid] was determined to emulate Western civilisation in every respect. ibid.
Fourteen tons of gold leaf were used to guild the palace ceilings, from which hung a grand total of thirty-six chandeliers ... This place is so wildly over the top it’s a like a cross between Grand Central Station and the Grand Paris Opera. But it shows just how far the Ottomans was prepared to go to imitate the ways of the West. ibid.
The Ottomans still didn’t really get it. Because if they were serious with catching up with the West they needed so much more than just a Western-style palace. They needed a new constitution. A new alphabet. A whole new state. And the fact they ended up getting all of these things was thanks in very large part to one man: his name was Kemal Ataturk. His mission was to be Turkey’s Frederick the Great. ibid.
For six centuries the Christian West and the Ottoman empire in the Muslim east had been locked in conflict. Now under the rule of Kemal Ataturk in the early twentieth century that conflict would finally come to an end. For centuries, Ataturk argued, Turks had been walking from the East in the direction of the West. Now under his leadership they would finally reach their destination. Here on the banks of the Bosphorus, East would meet West. Not just geographically but culturally. Central to the Western orientation of Turkey was the introduction of a secular form of government. No longer would religion be allowed to dominate the political arena. There would be secular laws for a secular state. ibid.
Here in Turkey there has been the most extraordinary backlash against Western modes of dress in recent years. Modes of dress for women that is. ibid.
This summer a remote region of Turkey hit the headlines. On the banks of the Euphrates archaeologists have discovered extraordinary examples of Roman art buried in a forgotten ancient city. But it is all about to be lost for ever under the floodwaters of a new dam. This film charts the archaeologists’ race against time. Horizon: The Secret Treasures of Zeugma, BBC 2000
The City of Zeugma: It was once the most important crossing point of the Euphrates. And the thriving centre of the great trade routes between east and west. Zeugma was founded by the Greeks in 300 B.C. and quickly grew to become a major city. ibid.
Under these trees is an entire city: streets, houses, markets and temples. It’s impossible to uncover it all in the time they have left. ibid.
It’s beginning to dawn on them that they might well at last have found one of the great villas of Zeugma ... They discover something very rare indeed. As they brush away the earth from sections of wall brightly coloured paintings emerge from beneath the crumbling mud ... Now that the paintings have been uncovered, they will have to be cleaned and removed from the site ... Over the next three days sixty-three square meters of a richly coloured and exquisitely designed mosaic are revealed ... The discovery of this extraordinary mosaic caused an international outcry ... The mosaic tells the story of a Greek myth. ibid.
There must be scores of other villas as beautiful as this buried in the lower terraces of Zeugma that will never now be found. ibid.
An ancient temple is discovered in the Middle East. It’s thousands of years older than the Egyptian pyramids. Lost Civilisation, National Geographic 2012
In a comparatively short space of time we go from the stone age to walking on the moon. What was it that made us change so dramatically? ibid.
Turkey: Here is where the find has been made – at a place called Gobekli Tepe (pot-bellied hill). ibid.
Gobekli Tepe is much more sophisticated than Stonehenge and yet is six thousand years older; it’s seven thousand years older than the Egyptian Pyramids. ibid.
How could we have built something so monumental? ibid.
The temple builders were not farmers; they were still hunter-gatherers. ibid.
The engineering skills involved must have been developed a long time before the temple is built. ibid.
To put ourselves above Nature is a huge change from how we see ourselves in earlier cave paintings. ibid.
And what motivates that cultural revolution is the new religion in which we are superior to the beasts. ibid.
Gobekli Tepe suggests that it was the urge to worship that sparked civilisation. ibid.
In the city of Istanbul the soaring domes and minarets reveal the culmination of a thousand years of empire and faith. Empires: Islam: Empire of Faith III: The Ottomans, PBS 2000
It was an age of regal splendour. ibid.
The Ottoman Turks began as a nomadic people. ibid.
They began to organise the new empire. ibid.
By the middle of the 15th century the Ottoman’ empire spread from present day Turkey, known as Anatolia, deep into the Balkans, with one critical exception: Constantinople. ibid.
The single greatest church in Christendom was now a mosque. ibid.
The Ottomans had reached the gates of the West. ibid.
The Ottoman’ empire would reach its apex under Suleiman’s reign. ibid.
During the fifteen century the Ottoman Turks ruthlessly gobbled up the Byzantine lands. Soon all that was left was the once great city of Constantinople ... On the 29th May 1543 the Ottomans poured into the city ... It was a savage end to the long Christian history of the Byzantine Empire. Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, BBC 2009
On the edge of Europe is the city that was once the heart of a mighty empire. From here in Istanbul the glories of the Ottoman’ empire came to match those of ancient Rome. Rageh Omaar, The Ottomans I: Europe's Muslim Emperors, BBC 2013
A single family ruled over huge swathes of the world. ibid.
The break-up of the Ottoman’ empire after the First World War ... The Ottomans first emerged over seven hundred years ago. ibid.
The early Ottomans matched the sophisticated infrastructure of the Romans. ibid.