The Sixteenth Century
The Ottoman Empire
By the end of the fifteenth century, the Ottoman
Empire had become an important power in the
Mediterranean. It reached its height under the rule
of the sultan Sleyman I (SOO lay mahn), who
reigned from 1520 to 1566. Under Sleyman, the
Ottoman Empire became one of the most powerful
empires in the world, spreading over parts of three
continentsEurope, Asia, and Africa. The empires
capital city was Istanbul in Turkey, which Sleyman
turned into a great Muslim cityan international
trade center and a great cultural center. By the mid-
dle 1500s, the population of Istanbul was almost half
a million.
In the Ottoman Empire, the sultan was an ab-
solute dictator. Besides the chief religious leader,
all those who worked for the sultan, including sol-
diers and political advisors, were slaves. When S-
leyman died, his son became sultan. He was not as
strong a leader as his father had been.
European powers were afraid that the Ottoman
Empire would overrun Europe. They fought with
the Turks (another name for Ottomans) for control
of important trading routes and cities, but the Turks
retained control of most of the Mediterranean.
Persia
Persia, now called Iran, had been controlled by the
Mongols since the thirteenth century. Then, in
1501, Shah Ismail, ruler of the Safavids (sah FAH
weedz), a group of Shiite (SHEE ite) Muslims in
northwest Persia, conquered the Persian city of
Tabriz (tuh BREEZ). By 1508, the Safavids con-
trolled all of Persia and most of Mesopotamia, in-
cluding parts of Iraq. They made Tabriz their capital
and converted the people to their religion, Shiism
(SHEE i zuhm).
Both the Ottomans and the Safavids were Mus-
lims, but the Ottomans were Sunni (SOO nee)
Muslims, not Shiites like the Safavids. Religious
wars between the two continued through most of
the 1500s. Shah Abbas the Great, whose rule
began in 1587, finally drove the Turks from Persia.
Shah Abbas moved the capital from Tabriz to Isfa-
han (is fuh HAHN), which became one of the
worlds finest cities, with a magnificent palace, a
mosque, and a covered marketplace around a main
91
square. Shah Abbas was known for his cruelty, but
he succeeded in making peace with the Ottomans.
EUROPE
Russia
When Ivan IV, at age seventeen, became the first
czar of Russia in 1547, Russia began to come out of
isolation by trading with Europe and trying to ex-
pand. Ivan conquered territory south of Moscow
but lost other territory to Poland and Sweden. Fi-
nally, just before he died in 1584, Ivan conquered
western Siberia.
Ivan IVs nickname, Ivan the Terrible, sums up
his ruling style: he terrorized everyone. In a fit of
anger in 1581, Ivan killed his son and heir. So after
Ivan IVs death, his mentally unstable son took
over. His reign led to civil war and then, in 1613, to
the beginning of the long-lasting Romanov dynasty.
The High Renaissance
The European nations that sent ships to Asia and
the Americas in the 1500s were experiencing major
movements in religion, politics, the arts, and sci-
ences at home. Because art and literature reached
such heights in Europe, especially in Italy, during
the 1500s, this period in European history is known
as the High Renaissance. In the High Renaissance,
as in the earlier Renaissance (see Chapter 7), Euro-
peans read and studied extensively, kindling an in-
terest in writers, artists, and thinkers from ancient
Greece, Rome, and Arabia.
Religion
By 1500, the Roman Catholic Church was the most
powerful institution in Europe. The pope claimed
authority over all the rulers of Europe and taxed all
the people. But people were beginning to speak out
against the Church. A German priest named Mar-
tin Luther did not approve of the wealthy lifestyles
of some popes and bishops. Nor did he think it was
right for the Church to excuse people from sin in ex-
change for money. In 1517, Luther nailed a docu-
ment called the Ninety-five Theses to a church
door in Wittenberg. (Here, theses means com-
plaints, arguments, or proposals for change.)
 Get Ready! for Social Studies World History
The Catholic Church put Luther on trial,
found him guilty of heresy (speaking against the
Church), and excommunicated, or cut him off,
from the Church. Luther set up the Lutheran
Church, which did not recognize the pope as its
leader. Luther translated the Latin Bible into
German so that common people could read it for
themselves rather than rely on what Catholic
priests said the Bible meant. Because Luther set
out to reform the Catholic Church, this period in
European history is called the Reformation.
Very quickly, the news of the Reformation
reached people all over Europe, and soon other
Protestant churcheschurches that protested prac-
tices of the Catholic Churchwere established.
Over the course of the century, many people in
Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland became
Protestant. Most, but not all, the people in Spain,
Italy, and France remained Catholic. In England,
King Henry VIII became angry that the pope de-
manded so much land and money from him. The
pope angered Henry further by refusing to let him
divorce his wife so that he could take another who
might give him a male heira son to become king
after him. In 1534, Henry broke with the Catholic
Church and made himself head of a Protestant
church that became known as the Church of En-
gland, or the Anglican Church.
Then the Catholic Church, in an attempt to
keep its members and find new ones, started its
own movement, the Counter-Reformation. The
Counter-Reformation sent missionaries to con-
vert people in other countries to Catholicism and
made the church service easier to understand by
using European languages rather than Latin. In
Spain, Roman Catholic leaders went so far as to
suppress, or put down, other religions. A court
called the Inquisition tortured and killed Protes-
tants, Muslims, and Jews for heresy. Today, Roman
Catholics condemn the Inquisition as cruel and
unjust.
Politics
The Holy Roman Empire was a collection of states
in western and central Europe that had been
brought together in A.D. 800 under Charlemagne
(see Chapter 5). At the beginning of the sixteenth
92
century, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V held
more land in Europe than anyone else. Charles was
from the Austrian Habsburg family, which had
long controlled the Holy Roman Empire. But
Charles realized that his empire was breaking up
because of religious and other rivalries.
Indeed, the real power in sixteenth-century Eu-
rope was held not by the emperor but by rulers of
individual cities, provinces, and countries. The pe-
riod saw civil wars and endless conflicts between
countries. For example, in France, civil war between
Catholics and Protestants began in 1562. On one
day in 1572which came to be known as the St.
Bartholomews Day Massacrethree thousand
French Protestants were killed in Paris, plus more in
the rest of France. Only in 1598, when Henry IV of
France issued the Edict of Nantes (NANTS),
granting religious freedom to the Protestants, was
there peace for a while.
One of the most famous conflicts between Eu-
ropean nations occurred in 1588, when King
Philip II of Spain set out to punish England for at-
tacks on Spanish ships and to force England to be
a Catholic country again. However, Queen Eliza-
beth I of England surprised the Spaniards. With
fewer but faster ships, England defeated the Span-
ish fleet, known as the Armada.
Another example of sixteenth-century Euro-
pean rivalry involved Spain and the Dutchthe
people of the Netherlands, a Spanish possession.
When Philip II became king of Spain, the Dutch
started a fight for independence and for the right
to be Protestant. Even though Spain and the
Netherlands reached a truce in 1609, it would
still be many years before Spain recognized
Dutch independence.
Additional wars shook Europe between 1557
and 1582, as Russia, Poland, Sweden, and Den-
mark took up arms.
Niccol Machiavelli (mah kee uh VEH lee)
wrote a book called The Prince, which described how
a state should be governed. Machiavelli stressed that
a leader should govern not on fixed rules but as
present circumstances and practicality dictated. In
other words, according to Machiavelli, it was more
important for a ruler to be successful than right.
Many see his work as the foundation of modern po-
litical thought.