Author Description

"The early-sixteenth century saw the simultaneous rise of two empires in the Mediterranean: one Christian, the Habsburgs, based in Spain and Austria, and one Muslim, the Ottomans, centered in the Balkans and Anatolia. With their ascendency came a fierce rivalry for world domination to unite Christendom and Islam under one rule and one faith. Considering the Ottoman-Habsburg imperial competition from the Ottoman point of view, this book constructs a new political narrative recounting the main aspects and confrontations of the rivalry during its most contentious years of 1516--when the Ottoman Empire solidified its hold on the Middle East--and 1526--when the Ottoman Empire first invaded Hungary--by situating it within the larger dynamics of Mediterranean politics and culture. Drawing on Ottoman and European sources, it argues that the late medieval crusading context, infused with apocalyptic and universalist expectations in both the Muslim and Christian parts of the Mediterranean, enabled the two empires to ascend to power and informed their imperial ideologies, which sought to unite Islam and Christendom under a world empire in which war and conflict would be eliminated and peace and harmony established"-- Provided by publisher.