Did the Ottomans do anything good, or did they invent anything useful? How beneficial was the Ottoman Empire to the world?

Well, I will list some of the good things i remember only, so do not comment about how bad Ottoman Empire was etc. You are free to question the correctness of my list. There are for sure many that i miss here, i tried to list the most popular ones.

When Muslims and Sepharadic Jewish population of Spain were expelled, Ottoman Fleet did their best to save as many lives as possible.

When Jews were accused of Blood libel in all over Europe, Ottomans strictly banned the accusation of Blood libel. Greeks were in more contact with Europeans so they accused of Jews occasioanally, but Ottomans protected their Jewish subjects.

Protected the protestant population of Hungary, when Ottomans hold Hungary and Transilvania around %50 of all Hungary was protestants. After Ottomans lost the control their numbers in the region decreased to around %5.

Ottomans accepted Polish migrations to Istanbul and protected them when they suffered from Russian and Austrian invasions. There is still a big village in Istanbul where Polish people live.

Ottoman Empire accepted and organized the migration of Crimean Tatars to Turkey to protect them from a Russian genocide. Millions of Tatars migrated to Anatolia.

Ottoman Empire, saved and accepted Circassians who were the remnants of the genocide by Russians. There are millions of Circassian-rooted people in Turkey.

Many Albanians and Bosnians migrated to Anatolia to escape from ethnic cleansing of muslims in Balkans. There are more than millions of Albanians and Bosnians in Turkey now.

For Islam world, Ottoman Empire protected Mekke and Medine for sure. Before the Ottoman conquest Portugese fleet sieged Cidde two times and Memeluks struggled to defend. This struggle inspired Ottomans that they could beat Egyptian Army.

Ottoman Empire applied the Merit System when it was impossible to become an elite from scratch in the European States. This inspired European powers when they established their democracies. If you were a genius you had the chance to be a grand visier even if you were a simple peasant. This chance was more obvious for Christian converts but either Muslims were able to take high positions. Interestingly when westernes hugged merit system Ottomans completely forgot it.

Scientifically:

Steam power was invented and first used by Takiyuddin an Ottoman sky observer, mathematician and inventor 200 years before the Europeans. However they couldn’t combine steam power with industry. He used steam for several purposes. Here is a mechanism he invented for doner kebap lol.

In 1719 the first submarine Tahtelbahir was built by Ottoman Empire.

The first map of world including America and Australia was drawn by an Ottoman Amiral Piri Reis. Ottomans didn’t explore the new world themselves but its fleet was multinational and open to Spanish and Portuqeese captains to join. Therefore Ottomans were the only power to be able to combine new information.

Ottomans established the first Animal Hospital of the world. Gurabahane-i Laklakan was built to take care of storks and migratory birds.

Edit: Another controversial contribution of Ottoman-era was inoculation which was the predecessor of modern vaccination. Turks learnt this from Chinese people and applied it for a thousands of year. They were simply weakening a real smallpox virus in a wallnut, but keeping it alive. And then they were infecting children in small amounts of weakened virus. English Poet Lady Montagu introduced this technique to UK by a letter. It later became a trend in U.K. "There is a set of old women [here], who make it their business to perform the operation, every autumn…when then great heat is abated…thousands undergo this operation. There is not one example of anyone that has died in it." Edward Jenner than invented scientific and safer version of smallpox vaccination by being inspired by this application.

Akşemsettin who is famous for being the most prominent teacher of Sultan Mehmed 2- The Conquerer, hinted about existence of live organisms causing diseases in his book “Maddet’ül Hayat” that he wrote in 15th century. In this book he stated that “Diseases are alive just like humans and plants, to think that the disease occur individually in the human body is wrong. The disease passes from person to person by infection. This transmission occurs by not visible but live small seeds”

Akshamsaddin - Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Ottoman scholar and scientist (1389–1459) Akshamsaddin (Muhammad Shams al-Din bin Hamzah, Turkish : Akşemseddin ) (1389, Damascus – 16 February 1459, Göynük , Bolu ), was an influential Ottoman Arab Sunni Muslim scholar , poet , and mystic saint . Biography [ edit ] He was the grandson of Shahab al-Din al-Suhrawardi and a descendant of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq . [1] He was an influential tutor and adviser to Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror . [2] [3] After completing his work with his master Sheikh Hacı Bayram-ı Veli , he founded the Shamsiyya- Bayramiyya Sufi order. He discovered the lost grave of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari (the companion of Muhammad ) in Constantinople preceding the Siege of Constantinople . [4] [5] [6] In addition to his fame in religious sciences and Tasawwuf , Akshemsaddin was popular in the fields of medicine and pharmacology . There is not much reference to how he acquired this knowledge, but the Orientalist Elias John Wilkinson Gibb notes in his work History of Ottoman Poetry that Akshamsaddin learned from Haji Bayram Wali during his years with him. [7] Akshamsaddin was also knowledgeable in the treatment of psychological and spiritual disorders . [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] Akshamsaddin mentioned the microbe in his work Maddat ul-Hayat (The Material of Life) about two centuries prior to Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 's discovery through experimentation: It is incorrect to assume that diseases appear one by one in humans. Disease infects by spreading from one person to another. This infection occurs through seeds that are so small they cannot be seen but are alive. [13] [14] Different sources claim that Akshemsaddin had seven or twelve sons; the youngest was the noted poet Ḥamd Allāh Ḥamdī . [15] Risalat an-Nuriya Khall-e Mushkilat Maqamat-e Awliya Kitab ut-Tib Maddat ul-Hayat References [ edit ] ^ "Sheikh Aq Shams Al-Din (Akshamsaddin)" . sijjada-bakria.com . Sijjada Bakria. Archived from the original on 19 May 2022. ^ A Part of the Eyoub (i.e., Uyüp) Cemetery, I, Constantinople, Turkey ^ "Sûfîlere Yöneltilen Tenkitlere Bir Cevap: Akşemseddin ve Def'U Metâini's-Sûfiyye İsimli Eseri" . Archived from the original on 2017-09-11 . Retrieved 2015-07-07 . ^ Murtaza Gürsoy: Meşhur Eyüp Sultan (The famous Ayyub Sultan), pp. 179-180 ^ Ibn Athir: Usudul Ghaba (Lions of the Jungle), v. 2, p. 90 ^ Al-Istiab, v. 1, p. 151 ^ Elias John Wilkinson Gibb: History of Ottoman Poetry . London, 1900-1909, v. 3, p. 138 ^ Taşköprülüzâde: Şakayık-ı Nûmâniye , v. 1, p. 147. ^ Nezihe Araz: Anadolu Evliyaları ^ Nişancızâde Muhammed bin Ahmed: Mirat-ı Kâinat , p. 556 ^ Emir Hüseyin Enîsî: Menâkıb-ı Akşemseddin , p. 12 ^ İslam Ansiklopedisi, v. 1, p. 320 ^ Taşköprülüzâde: Shaqaiq-e Numaniya , v. 1, p. 48 ^ Osman Şevki Uludağ: Beş Buçuk Asırlık Türk Tabâbet Tarihi (Five and a Half Centuries of Turkish Medical History). Istanbul, 1969, pp. 35-36 ^ Fahi̇r İz, 'Ḥamdī, Ḥamd Allāh', in Encyclopaedia of Islam , ed. P. Bearman and others, 2nd edn, 1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akshamsaddin

As taking the comments I have learned new information. First of all let me correct a few things, Australia was not on the map of Piri Reis, in reality, that right part of the map is lost, however, there are people who claim that it included Antarctica.

Apparently, Steam power was invented in Ancient Greece however its usage was completely forgotten. That takes nothing from Takiyuddin’s invention. Takiyuddin was a very special talent, borns a few in a century.

It seems Tahtelbahir was not the first submarine; however, it was one of the first.

The problem with Ottoman inventions is the lack of a system to store information. When even a small advance in Britain was recorded systematically, we very probably miss many in Ottoman era.

For example, Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi is a candidate of the man who flew for the first time in history. However, the only source is Evliya Çelebi’s seyahatname. Which is itself very controversial just like Marco Polo.

Or Lagari Hasan Çelebi who is rumored to be the first man to fly with a rocket in history again according to Evliya Çelebi.

The problem is there are even no remnant books and studies about the trustability of Seyahatname among contemporary sources. Very probably there were many reviews but they didn’t survive.

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Especially scientific contributions of such a strong and long-lasting Empire should be far more than those, However one should note that Ottoman Empire was not a technology and science first Empire. They applied already existing technologies perfectly however they were not just supportive to the “new”. Takiyuddin was a very special talent, once in a century, however you should also know that his scientific studies ended with the bombing of the Ottoman Fleet accusing of Takiyuddin a recent plague epidemic.