The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire

A film by Mark Rudolph. Out of truths! Fatwa! Outrage! All over a film comprised of silly visual puns. In all of the angry comments, no specific refutations or sources are cited, mere outrage seems to be sufficient "fullness of truth". For those who are shocked, shocked! that armies of all kinds (especially in the middle ages) committed rape and pillage you can direct your hate mail and hopefully your fatwas to the British historian John Julius Norwich, who made this daring assertion in A Short History of Byzantium. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 380.

With some minor errata, you see, the writing is MERELY history according to the Cambridge encyclopedia of history, the encyclopedia Britannica, and other respected western sources. But perhaps they are out of truths too! Perhaps history is only written by the victors. Or the losers. News flash: everybody's shit stinks. Crusaders raped and plundered even more! Now happy?

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• mark
• rudolph
• wfmu-tv
• history
• ernie
• kovaks
• sctv
• snl
• wfmu
• silent
• movie
• controversy

[DrGull1888]

Haha, pretty clever.

[pmylrjm]

An amusing video for a while, although I think that the Ottoman pun wears thin after a few minutes! In terms of the history, it's quite accurate - the Middle Ages were a messy time and the Turks weren't a sweet innocent bunch of people. Mind you, neither were the Byzantines! The Turks did give them the chance to surrender, but Constanine XI rejected it in favour of his last stand. John Julius Norwich's books (the three book version or the abridged single book) are well worth a read.

[rade374]

turks put serbian baies in boiled water during he first serbian rebelion

[LeMousqueteerBleu]

lovely.

[ScourgeOfGodUK]

Actually all of the facts themselves are pretty much correct - the only things that make this video inaccurate are the historical events left out. But since this was all done for comedy anyway, the point is moot.

[himar2]

this has so many incorrect facts. i mean who on earth made this?

[prednisolon]

LMAO 01:40 chair humping a doll lol

HISTORY IS CLOUDED AND POLLUTED FROM THE INTERPRETATION OF THE HISTORIANS.

So believe me the Ottomans were as barbaric or as civilised as the greeks or the romans.

try to read both segments of the history you will see.

[mickeymephistopheles]

Please relax; I suspect there's a bit of cross-cultural misunderstanding here.

In vernacular American English, an "Ottoman" refers to a type of furniture, typically an upholstered seat or footstool.

This video was made for a very low budget, public access television series that aired in the 1980s in New York City, long before the Internet even existed. The director of the video is likely to be guilty of making silly puns using furniture, but probably wasn't intending a slur against Turks.

[EzgiiKa]

Why cant people get over the history ?

THIS IS VERY FUNNY BECAUSE I AM 100 PERCENT SURE THAT THE PERSON WHO MADE THIS VIDEO DOESNT INFACT KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT..."education" try getting some helps you lose ur untruee biases

[anilturk]

After the fall of this empire! a new nation came up! Fuck heads..