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Was the Ottoman Empire the legitimate successor of the Roman Empire?

''With the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Fatih Sultan Mehmed II  (1432 - 1481) claimed the title Kaysar-i-Rûm "Emperor of Rome" and proclaimed himself the protector of the Orthodox Church. He appointed the Patriarch of Constantinople Gennadius Scholarius, whom he protected and whose status he elevated into leader of all the Eastern Orthodox Christians. As Emperor of Rome he laid claim to all Roman territories, which at the time before the Fall of Constantinople.

Sultan Mehmed II also took the title of Pâdişah, a Persian title meaning "Master of Kings" and ranking as "Emperor", claiming superiority among the other kings. His full style was Sultan Mehmed II Khan, Fatih Ghazi 'Abu'l Fath (Victorious Conqueror, Father of Conquest), Padishah, Sovereign of the House of Osman, Emperor of Rome, Grand Sultan of Anatolia and Rumelia, Khan of Khans of the Two Lands and the Two Seas, Emperor of the three Cities of Constantinople, Edirne and Bursa...

The claim was recognized by the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, but not by Roman Catholic Western Europe. Gennadios (Georgios Scholarios), a staunch enemy of the West, had been enthroned Patriarch of Constantinople with all the ceremonial attributes of Byzantium by Mehmed himself acting as Roman Emperor and in turn Gennadios recognized Mehmed as successor to the throne. Mehmed's claim rested with the concept that Constantinople was the seat of the Roman Empire, after the transfer of its capital to Constantinople in 330 AD and the fall of the Western Roman Empire.


Mehmed also had a blood lineage to the Byzantine Imperial family


; his predecessor, Sultan Orhan I had married a Byzantine princess, and Mehmed may have claimed descent from John Tzelepes Komnenos. The Ottoman Empire also captured Otranto during that period, and Mehmed II was planning on taking Rome itself when the Italian campaign was cut short by his sudden death. The title fell into disuse after his death, but the imperial bodies created by Mehmed II lived on for centuries to come.

The Turkish historian İlber Ortaylı is a proponent of this claim, citing the multicultural make-up of the state and Sultan Mehmed's acceptance of certain Byzantine court customs. Professor Ortaylı finds Russia's claim to the title to be only nominal, and that Sultan Mehmed based his court policies and conquests on creating a third, Islamic Rome (the first Rome being polytheistic, the second one Christian).''


''When the Ottoman ruler Mehmet II captured Constantinople in 1453, this legitimized his assumption of the universalistic title Kayser-i Rum Emperor of the Roman Empire. It was more than window-dressing to appease the Christian majority among his subjects. The Roman notion of the world as empire a political unity under a single ruler and, since the 4th Century CE, a single god was a powerful political ideal that was deeply ingrained in popular belief and hadbecome associated with the possession of Constantinople, the Imperial City. Thus the capture of the ''Red Apple'' enabled the Ottoman dynasty to assume imperial pretensions, in defiance of the Mamluk rulers of Egypt and the Holy Roman Emperor in the West. This in turn allowed Mehmet's successors to appropriate also the equally universalistic titles of padishah (Great King) and khalifa (Caliph, ruler of Islam). To strengthen his claims to world dominion as well as, perhaps, for personal reasons Mehmet moreover chose Alexander the Great for a role model.''

Mehmed Caesar: de val van Constantinopel (1453) en de doorwerking van Grieks-Romeinse heerserideologie in het Osmaanse Rijk

8 Answers
Steve Theodore
Steve Theodore, tam subtilis quam plaustra
2.8k Views · Most Viewed Writer in Ancient Rome with 240+ answers
Legitimate is a loaded word here. The Ottomans were foreign conquerors; they destroyed the Byzantine state and subjugated it's people. The sultans had about the same right to the title "Caesar of Rome" as queen Victoria had to "Empress of India".

For what it's worth, the Byzantines were never completely committed to the idea of hereditary succession.  It was a rare enough phenomenon that they had a special term, porphyrigennitos, for the subset of emperors who did assume the throne as direct heirs of a reigning emperor.
Turan Birol
Turan Birol, Turkish. Probably.
1.3k Views · Turan has 30+ answers in Turkey (country)
"Legitimate" is a big word here, for there was really no international agreement at the time (neither is there one now) that regulated the process by which the titles in an empire was inherited by another. Moral legitimacy is quite irrelevant as well because, well, political ethics is way too subjective (and way too distorted by the winners) to be of any use. But here are some speculations:

In the 15th century, Ottoman Empire was (by far?) the largest one in the area. It was the determining power in politics, trade, etc. not only in the Levant, but its sphere of influence also extended quite a bit to the West. So, in some sense, the only entity that was like a Roman Empire was the Ottoman Empire.

Even before the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Ottoman State had inherited various structures of it. (Bear in mind: the Turks were still mostly nomadic people when they started chipping of Byzantine territory. So, they learned how to be an actual empire mostly from the Byzantine.) As a result, judging by the continuity of the state structure, you might argue that the Ottomans are the ones who had preserved most of what was left of the Byzantine state.

Religion is a tricky issue. If you believe that Christianity of the ruling class is an essential element of an Roman Empire, obviously, Ottomans would not qualify as Romans. But I believe the point of Ortaylı is that this is not the case. Cheap right wing bigotry, as you can see from at least one other answer to this question, often makes it seem so, but Christianity is not an essential part of being Roman. Not only that the original Roman Empire had a large number of non-christians living under its rule, its religion also evolved a lot in time. A similar situation also applies to Ottomans: For most of its lifetime, more than half of the population were not Muslims, and the variants that were favoured changed in time depending on politics. (This would include not only the anti-Shii rhetoric against the Persians, but also the treatment of Bektashis, etc.)

In any case, I totally understand that Ortaylı's case is not a undeniably strong one, and it is a matter of subjective choice to believe that the Ottomans became a Third Roman Empire on 1453. The only thing we can say with confidence is that whatever they were, they were not anti-Roman as they often are in laymen's mind.
Sorin Adam Matei
Sorin Adam Matei, Lived in the Balkans, studied medieval European history
725 Views
The house of Othman claimed the title of "Ceasar" after conquering Constantinopole and called the European part of their realm Rumelia (The Roman land). The claim did not want to mean that the Sultan saw himself as yet another Roman emperor. That would've been too small of a title for him. Sultans preferred the title of Padishah, which meant King of Kings or Overlord of all Kings. The other treasured title, however, was that of Calif, leader of the Islamic world.
Stephen Lee
Stephen Lee, Former academic historian, specialist in Modern European History, Great Brita...
527 Views

No. You may consider the Byzantine Empire as a continuation of Rome, as the Roman emperor Constantine moved his capital to present day Turkey in the 4th century and built the city of Constantinople. The Roman Empire was eventually split in two for administrative purposes. The Eastern half survived the fall of Rome and became the Byzantine Empire. The Ottomans destroyed the Byzantine Empire in 1453 and created their own in its place.

Dave Riley
Dave Riley, Professional amateur dilettante. Brooklyn, NY.
656 Views
I'd give Imperial Russia a stronger claim as the "Third Rome"... Religious and hereditary ties to Constantinople put them ahead of the Turks in my book.

But neither is really all that "legitimate"... People liked to slap the name "Roman" on cheap imitation products and pass it off as the real deal e.g. "The Holy Roman Empire".

Closest thing to a new Roman Empire is the Catholic Church. It's a worldwide religious empire headed by a monarch based in the actual city of Rome.

Anyway, I think The Turks should just be the Turks, and the Russians should just be the Russians, and drop all the lame poserhood of national identity just to sound cool.
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