"The Ottomans" on Netflix now.

my choice for the TV series that will never be made would be entitled "Maesa" and told by Julia Maesa. The first season would have her watching as her sister Domna and Septimius Severus solidified their power. The second would have her watching her nephews growing in hate and murder. Third would see her arranging her grandson Elagabalus' rise, fall and replacement with another grandson. The series would end with her death at the peak of his power but show a giant Thracian lurking in the background just in case the first three did well enough that there was demand for a fourth. It could never be made due to problems casting without offending half the audience.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Watched it all. Nice. I like that historians’ comments interleaved the story.

 

I’m enjoying it. It’s interesting how it is a drama as well as a documentary. Makes it seem much more alive, AND I learn something.

Being an ignoramus about the subject, I cannot vouch for the veracity of the content. It’s fun to watch though

 

Its way more historically accurate then most...all Hollywood films, that deal with the past events.

 

Well, the recommendation seems to be that this show is worth a watch. I'll have to check it out!

 

It's a great little series, one of the best I've seen. I have to disagree with the gentleman on the melting down of religious artifacts episode, where he stated coins of Constantine XI were inferior to John VIII. Maybe one of the only areas of the series I am familiar in. He showed a Stavraton, similar to mine below, from John and boasted on it's size and that it was made from silver. Then he showed a thin base metal coin claiming it to be from Constantine. Both emperors minted silver in multiple denominations and the base coin actually should belong to John (follaro). Makes me question what else they got wrong. Besides that, it would be very difficult to tell if a coin was minted in December of 1449 or May 1453.

John VIII Palaeologus
Constantinople mint
1425-1448
AR Stavraton, 23x24mm, 7.08g
Obvs: Facing bust of Christ Pantokrator; barred IC XC across field; sigla: blank | Λ. 12 pellets in outer border.
Revs: +ωAHCΔϵCΠOTHCO +XAPITHBACIΛϵVCTOиPOMϵO in two lines around crowned facing bust of John; sigla: pellet | pellet
DOC 1663-4; Bendall 348.14, sigla 12; SB 2564

 

It seems Mehmet would have trouble with Vlad III of Wallachia/ aka "Vlad the Impaler"
This guy took the cake as the most sadistic ruler of all time, it was a shame he did not end up getting impaled himself, or sawn in half/ another Wallachian execution method.

 

I've seen the whole series twice. I liked it a lot. Great to see a series about an empire that kicked a lot of European rear ends for once. I found it rather refreshing.

 

Your right about that. I have seen three Hollywood movies/
in one the dreadfull Vald Tepes routed the Ottomans, who are shown as the bad guys/
another had the Hungarians embarrass Suliemans army/ depicted the Sultan as a fat ogre.
Third one had the Poles come to the aid of Leopold I in 1683/ again Turks made to look like buffoons.
This Turkish made production followed the real events.

 

I finished watching a couple nights ago. Enjoyed it quite a bit, even if there were a few bits that seemed a little corny. The historian talking about coins annoyed me because of how wrong he got it.

A bit of a tangent, but I didn't mind that some of the visual things weren't wholly accurate, such as Constantine XI's dress. That used to bother me, but the more I've learned about visual storytelling, the more I understand why it's done. It really emphasizes that Byzantium was the last vestige of the Roman Empire and shows that to audiences who are less familiar with the subject. In that way, it harkens back to Constantine XI's last speech, which I went and looked up after watching, wherein he reminds the defenders of the legacy of Rome. Accurate in spirit, if not in fact.

 

..well, i wasn't going to watch it, but seeing all the positive feedback here, i reckon i'll give it shot...

 

I've just finished watching the series...
Thoroughly enjoyed it although not enough sex
Great how they entwined the film with historians giving back up to the historical events portrayed in the series...I actually learnt a great deal about the demise of the Roman empire........Paul

 

I haven't watched it yet but will do so.

 

They failed to mention how brutal the sacking of Constantinople was...

 

Yeah, that was the only real weakness. I can forgive some of the visuals due to the needs and constraints of the production, and overall they did a magnificent job with what they had.

However, the one area that also troubled me was the lack of mention that the city was looted for 3 days and thousands of civilians were killed, enslaved, or raped. It was only at the end of the 3rd day that the Sultan gave a general pardon to anyone still hiding in the city, and put an end to the looting.

Still, as brutal as it sounds (and I wish the series would have mentioned it) this was not an uncommon practice back in ancient or medieval times, so in that sense the Ottomans weren't any more brutal than any of their contemporaries or predecessors.

 

I just remembered something. For awhile (Not sure it's still listed), there was a Turkish drama series based on Mehmed II's famous descendant, Suleiman the Magnificent.

 

Mehmet II was way more successfull in expanding the Ottoman Empire then Sulieman I. The only guy he had a bit of trouble with was the sadistic Wallachian Prince, Vlad III "the Impaler". But he got him eventually.

 

I know of one particular exception to the brutality of the times. Going a few centuries back, in 1187, during the Third Crusade, Saladin, demonstrated mercy by sparing Jerusalem without bloodshed and offered generous terms upon it's surrender. Not that Saladin showed such mercy in all his conquests, though. Also, in 1187, after the Battle of Hattin, he spared the life of Raynald, Guy of Lusignan.

 

The historian who showed those 2 coins was Marios Philippides, who has written extensively on the Ottomans and Byzantium during the Palaeologan period. His was a very misleading explanation. He was trying to contrast the “abundant” silver coinage of Constantine’s brother and predecessor, John VIII, with the poverty of Constantine’s “base metal coinage”. The earlier coin was certainly a stavraton, presumably of John, but the smaller coin had no detail I could see. But from what we know of the coinage of Constantine XI, it was limited to silver stavrata, half stavrata, and eighth stavrata. See Simon Bendall's article in Revue Numismatique 1991, pp. 134-142 and plates XIII-XVII. If one were to guess at the attribution of that small coin, if would be likely a follaro of one of Constantine's predecessors. For comparison, below are examples of a John VIII stavraton, a follaro of John VII, and 2 of my eighth stavrata of Constantine XI.

John VIII. Stavraton. 7.09 gr. 25 mm. 12 hr. Sear 2564; DO 1636-38 var.



John VII. Follaro. 0.44 gr. 13.1 mm. 7 hr. Sear 2568 (as John VIII); DO 1391-92. (a poor photo - sorry)


Constantine XI. Eighth Stavrata. Top: 0.63 gr. 12.7 mm. 11 hr. Sear -; DO 1789; Bendall 110 (this coin). Bottom 0.63 gr. 13 mm. 12 hr. Sear -; DO 1789; Bendall 129 (this coin).


What Philippides also fails to sufficiently express is the overall poverty of the imperial court and “empire”, which by the 15th c. was limited to what was inside the walls of Constantinople, as well as to isolated outposts in the Morea and a few islands. The reality is further distorted by the computer generated images of the city, which show a Greco-Roman polis in all its glory; but by the 15th c. money had been lacking for centuries to maintain the city’s infrastructure, the court was so impoverished that cheap pottery vessels had to serve for silver or gold plate, and even the “jewels” in the imperial regalia were made of glass. An even more distorting view of these events is offered by the 2012 Turkish film Fetih 1453 (English: The Conquest 1453). This movie caused outrage in Greece, and I can see why. I’ll say no more about that, but check it out for yourself!

As far as the question of “Roman” vs. “Byzantine”, there have been some great comments by other list members, so I will add nothing to them. But I would like to make interested persons aware of a recent book that treats this dichotomy very fully. Its details are below, and is followed by a publisher’s brief description of the book’s scope.

Kaldellis, Anthony. Romanland : ethnicity and empire in Byzantium
Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019.
ISBN 9780674986510





"Was there ever such a thing as the Byzantine Empire and who were those self-professed Romans we choose to call "Byzantine" today? At the heart of these two interlinked questions is Anthony Kaldellis's assertion that empires are, by definition, multiethnic. If there was indeed such a thing as the Byzantine Empire, which rules bounded majority and minority ethnic groups? The labels for the minority groups in Byzantium are clear - Slavs, Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, Muslims. What was the ethnicity of the majority group? Historical evidence tells us unequivocally that no card-carrying Byzantine ever called himself "Byzantine." He would identify as Roman. This line of identification was so strong in the eastern empire that even the conquering Ottomans saw themselves as inheritors of the Roman Empire. In Western scholarship, however, there has been a long tradition of denying Romanness to Byzantium. In the Middle Ages, people of the eastern empire were made "Greeks," and by the nineteenth century they were shorn of their distorted Greekness and turned "Byzantine." In Romanland, Kaldellis argues that it is time for historians to take the Romanness of Byzantines seriously so that we can better understand the relations between Romans and non-Romans, as well as the processes of assimilation that led to the absorption of foreign groups into the Roman genos"