New Book on Ottoman Rise Is an Engaging, Bloody Journey

Si Sheppard’s ‘Crescent Dawn’ explains how the Ottomans dominated through warfare and how the Christendom fought to curtail its expansion.

Si Sheppard’s new book (L) and “The Battle of Nicopolis,” one of the last Crusades of the Middle Ages, in 1396. A cropped Ottoman miniature, 1523, from “Torok miniaturak” by Geza Feher. Public Domain

War. War. War. The Ottomans became an imperial power by way of the sword. Si Sheppard, in his new book “Crescent Dawn: The Rise of the Ottoman Empire and the Making of the Modern Age,” makes that point very clear. This exhaustive volume takes readers through the origins, rise, and plateau of the Ottoman Empire, covering its conflicts with European powers, from Hungary to the Holy Roman Empire to Spain and Portugal over, approximately, a 200-year period.

The book explains the origin of the Ottomans, or Osmanlis as they were called after their founder Osman, the warrior. Osman expressed a dream of global expansion to a sheikh. Impressed and inspired, the sheikh gave Osman his daughter’s hand in marriage in the belief that the dream was a prophecy. The dream, if it did actually occur, proved prophetic over the following centuries. It was, however, no straight and clear path.