What if: Orthodox Ottomans? (Orthodoxomans?)

[Odinson]

In OTL, the Turkish, nomadic groups that would become Ottomans converted to Islam around the 8th and 9th century AD after continued interaction with the Abbasid Caliphate. These Turks would go on to become the Ottoman Empire, capture Constantinople, and conquer the Balkans.

But lets take a step back. Islam was not the only major religion in Anatolia. The Byzantine Empire was also a major power for a time, and was Orthodox Christian. What if the Turks who migrated to Anatolia embraced Orthodox faith, rather than Islam? What affects does this have on the eastern Mediterranean?

 

[Lothal]

In OTL, the Turkish, nomadic groups that would become Ottomans converted to Islam around the 8th and 9th century AD after continued interaction with the Abbasid Caliphate. These Turks would go on to become the Ottoman Empire, capture Constantinople, and conquer the Balkans.

But lets take a step back. Islam was not the only major religion in Anatolia. The Byzantine Empire was also a major power for a time, and was Orthodox Christian. What if the Turks who migrated to Anatolia embraced Orthodox faith, rather than Islam? What affects does this have on the eastern Mediterranean?

Tzachas/Çaka Bey is a good POD, OTL he was a Turkish raider who found service under the Byzantine Empire and later revolted against the Emperor and seized Smyrna and a large portion of the Eastern Aegean before being murdered in 1093. Keep him alive and winning and he can realistically declare himself emperor

 

[Sevarics]

Tzachas/Çaka Bey is a good POD, OTL he was a Turkish raider who found service under the Byzantine Empire and later revolted against the Emperor and seized Smyrna and a large portion of the Eastern Aegean before being murdered in 1093. Keep him alive and winning and he can realistically declare himself emperor

Do we have any evidence that he converted ?

 

[Gwyndolin]

Through whatever means, either through Tzachas (difficult) or some earlier method created by prior butterflies, the orthodox Turks would continue to perpetuate the Byzantine Roman Empire as a new dynasty but with an additional element. I do not think it’s realistic for the rural Turks to assimilate into Greek language, so aside from Turkish being written in Greek inner Anatolia remains Turkified. If this dynasty has the same amount of success as OTL Ottomans (which I don’t think seeing as the harem system which worked for quite awhile until it didn’t doesn’t exist ITTL) then the Romans have a new zenith. Either way I see the Orthodox Ottomans realistically reconquering Syria and Egypt (how long this lasts depends on the relative power of whoever is in Iran, but the Ottoman Byzantines certainly won’t be as violent toward Muslims as the crusaders initially were).

The biggest effect this has is that Orthodox nations in Russia and the Balkans now have a direct line of culture, economic, and social communication that will improve the development of especially Russia in the future. If this dynasty lasts into the early modern period then you now have a potential line of trade running from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, eastern Mediterranean, and all the way up into the Black Sea onward to Eastern Europe.

 

[Ogrelord420]

The House of Osman would just become another dynasty of the Byzantine Empire.

 

[Ursogulos]

The House of Osman would just become another dynasty of the Byzantine Empire.

Attamonoi dynasty

 

[AlexanderDragon]

Not totally orthodox, but to go another way to kinda fufil the prompt, there  was a movement of city dwelling ottomans who very firmly considered themselves as Romans in the late 15th century. Mehmed the Conqueror was one of them, he quite famously consciously revived the city of Constantinople in a way to bring back the Roman times and appointed the Orthodox Patriarch with all the ancient pomp, he even wrote letters describing himself as(transliterated) Caesar and Autocrat of Rome and Augustus.

That movement died out as the Ottomans became more outwardly Islamic, but if the Ottomans say, fail to conquer Egypt(leaving the Abassid Caliph in place) but do conquer large bits of Italy, you might seem the empire shift more totally into the mindset of being a continuation of Rome. Keep that further and you might have further conversions or at least widespread syncretism from your isolated from the rest of Islam Ottomans.

 

[Mirza Khan]

Ottoman tradition has it that the ancestors of the Ottoman dynasty didn't convert to Islam until after arriving in Anatolia, and furthermore Anatolia pre-1923 had significant populations of Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians (such as the Karamanlides) who may have been the descendants of pagan Turks who converted to Orthodoxy rather than Islam. So its certainly possible for Ertugrul (the founder of the house of Osman) to covert to Orthodoxy instead of Islam, though he'd be going against the grain of 13th-century Anatolian Turkish society, which was already very highly Islamized.

That said, an Orthodox Ertugrul's dynasty would not be called the "Ottomans" ("Ottoman" is a corruption of the dynasty's Turkish name, "Osmanli", which comes from "Osman", the Turkish pronunciation of "Uthman", the third Islamic caliph. A Christian family will not have a Muslim name). If the dyansty takes Constantinople, they 'll probably just declare themselves Byzantine Emperors, and be recorded by Byzantine chroniclers as the "Turkish Dynasty" (similar to the OTL Isaurian and Macedonian dynasties)

 

[Zireael]

Do we have any evidence that he converted ?

I don't expect we do (Google says very little is known about him).

 

[Odinson]

So I'd like to broaden this question a little bit, because I think I left it too narrow: What if most of the Turkic people who migrated from Central Asia who settled in Anatolia, not just those who followed Osman, converted to Orthodox Christianity instead of Islam? That way Osman's house are not the only Orthodox group of Turks. This has ramifications of the Byzantines, of course. But despite being fellow Orthodox, I could see both the Turks and the ERE fighting in Anatolia over land and resources. Could the Turks still have a reputation as raiders?

 

[Jakobus]

So I'd like to broaden this question a little bit, because I think I left it too narrow: What if most of the Turkic people who migrated from Central Asia who settled in Anatolia, not just those who followed Osman, converted to Orthodox Christianity instead of Islam? That way Osman's house are not the only Orthodox group of Turks. This has ramifications of the Byzantines, of course. But despite being fellow Orthodox, I could see both the Turks and the ERE fighting in Anatolia over land and resources. Could the Turks still have a reputation as raiders?

I think that an Eastern Orthodox Turkic Anatolia has massive repercussions really, really quickly. You could definitely have the Turks and the ERE fighting over resources in Anatolia, but I really don't see the West sending resources to aid Constantinople against fellow Christians, especially after the schism. In this situation, I think it's just a matter of time before a Turk ends up as Byzantine emperor, even if just temporarily. Assuming all, or at least most, of the Turkic nomads covert, you certainly won't see anything resembling the Crusades. That's probably the biggest butterfly (No Crusades means probably no, or fewer, Military Orders), and I honestly couldn't predict what may come from that.

 

[Janprimus]

I think that an Eastern Orthodox Turkic Anatolia has massive repercussions really, really quickly. You could definitely have the Turks and the ERE fighting over resources in Anatolia, but I really don't see the West sending resources to aid Constantinople against fellow Christians, especially after the schism. In this situation, I think it's just a matter of time before a Turk ends up as Byzantine emperor, even if just temporarily. Assuming all, or at least most, of the Turkic nomads covert, you certainly won't see anything resembling the Crusades. That's probably the biggest butterfly (No Crusades means probably no, or fewer, Military Orders), and I honestly couldn't predict what may come from that.

Not quite sure, but that depends on the treatment of Christian Pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. The OTL request for support from Constantinople to their Western Christian brethren helped a lot, but given the OTL enthusiasm, not much is needed for something else to spark the desire to liberate (from their perspective) the Holy Land.
It will be harder, more by sea for the Holy Land, OTOH it might speed up the Reconquistas in Spain and Italy. The West, though a long way to go, was on the rise again and had a lot of military potential by that period.

 

[Jakobus]

Not quite sure, but that depends on the treatment of Christian Pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. The OTL request for support from Constantinople to their Western Christian brethren helped a lot, but given the OTL enthusiasm, not much is needed for something else to spark the desire to liberate (from their perspective) the Holy Land.
It will be harder, more by sea for the Holy Land, OTOH it might speed up the Reconquistas in Spain and Italy. The West, though a long way to go, was on the rise again and had a lot of military potential by that period.

Of course, in a realistic timeline with a POD in the 8th or 9th century, by the time of OTL's First Crusade none of the players from our world would even exist, so really anything is on the table. Jerusalem fell to a Muslim army in 637, and pilgrims were generally unimpeded until the Turkish invasions. If the status quo remains unchanged, there is far less reason to start a war. That said, you could be right that an ascendent Europe would have launched a holy war regardless. I do think that any effort would probably be more likely against the Muslims in other parts of Europe, but I could definitely see something in Palestine being possible, if not necessarily probable.

 

[Eivind]

In OTL, the Turkish, nomadic groups that would become Ottomans converted to Islam around the 8th and 9th century AD after continued interaction with the Abbasid Caliphate. These Turks would go on to become the Ottoman Empire, capture Constantinople, and conquer the Balkans.

But lets take a step back. Islam was not the only major religion in Anatolia. The Byzantine Empire was also a major power for a time, and was Orthodox Christian. What if the Turks who migrated to Anatolia embraced Orthodox faith, rather than Islam? What affects does this have on the eastern Mediterranean?

Probably they would not try to conquer Anatolia, but go for the Caliphate/Islamic countries instead.