Rethinking the Ottoman "Decline": Military Technology Diffusion in the Ottoman Empire, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
In the field of Ottoman history, scholars have often advanced an int rpretation of decli e. Traditionally, the argument states that the Ottoman empire reached its peak in the sixteenth century under Suley man the Magnificent, and thereafter began an inexorable stagnation and decline lasting until the twentieth century. Historians often point to the Ottoman naval defeat at Lepanto in 1571 or the failure of the second siege of Vienna in 1683 as events marking the waning fortunes of Ottoman power and the beginning of the "decline."1 The use of the term decline as it has been applied by Middle East scholars to the Ottoman case presents several problems. Implicit in any notion of "decline" is some kind of comparison. After all, an empire