Following Orders

[Lord Clisto of York]

Yea, brother Marcus and his brother are closer in journey. Wish it were the same for me. Journeying across the desert to get there was at least uneventful. It was great I could meet up and continue the crusade with them. Bloody 5 hours... Next time you need to make it as well, Warrior Monk.

[Sir William Marcus]

[Lord Clisto of York]

Now thats funny..

[Monsignor de Beaumanoir]

Consulting the "Rule"....



Giving alms to the "demanding".....

[Just Jesse]

I know i know, i need to repent...

[Sir William Marcus]

A day of mourning & remembrance is upon us once again

[Lady Christina de Pond]

I'm home!!!!

[Monsignor de Beaumanoir]

[Sir William Marcus]

[Marcus of Ibelin]

This is a transcript of an editorial article in the newspaper here yesterday.  It has a bit of a link to the history we all love, and I wanted to share it all with you.

The Last Ottoman

What was the longest-lived Muslim empire?  The Ottoman Empire.
It lasted more than six centuries and, with the magisterial city of Istanbul (the former Constantinople) as its center, served as a key geopolitical factor affecting both East and West.
Historian James Belich writes that in addition to maintaining their hold on territories in the Middle East and North Africa, the Ottoman Turks carried out a thunderous conquest in the Balkans and thereby created "a 450,000 square mile Asian Empire in Europe."
Belich points to one of the dramatic high points in European history by noting that the Ottomans "besieged Vienna in 1683 and came so close to taking it that the Holy Roman emperor fled his capital."
Ottoman strength waned over the centuries, eventually earning the empire the title of the "sick man of Europe."  In the early 1920s, the imperial edifice collapsed amid the upheaval following World War I.  One result was the creation of Turkey.
Last month, the last Ottoman prince born under the old empire died at age 97 - in an apartment over a restaurant in New York City.  Comfortable in both Islamic and Western cultures, he had great praise for how Turkey has adapted itself to modern times.
Thus passed the "last Ottoman" - the 21st century's tenuous link to what once was a world-historical empire shaping the course of Middle Eastern and European development.  What curious twists the lives of empires, and the lives of individuals, can take.

I was surprised by this article.  We all have read about the Ottoman Turks, and probably have looked on it as something very old and in the distant past, but to learn its last true link only died this year, 2009, was amazing.  I did a little looking and found his name was Ertugrul Osman and he was a descendant of Osman I, the Anatolian ruler who in 1299 established the kingdom, and he was also the last surviving grandson of an Ottoman emperor; his grandfather, Abdul Hamid II, ruled from 1876 to 1909.

[Sir William Marcus]

Thanks for sharing brother Marcus. Most interesting indeed.

[Lord Magnus]

Thank you Marcus of Ibelin for sharing this with us.

[Lord Clisto of York]

Ok, this settles it. I believe I told you of this Sir Marcus.



ENOUGH SAID!!!

[Monsignor de Beaumanoir]

Ok, this settles it. I believe I told you of this Sir Marcus.

ENOUGH SAID!!!

M'lord.......I beg to differ...

[Monsignor de Beaumanoir]

New Book alert!

God's Battalions

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061582615/Gods_Battalions/index.aspx



Also......

My order of the book: Leper Knights: The Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem in England, c.1150-1544  arrived while I was at the hospital with Lady LeFay.

http://www.amazon.com/Leper-Knights-Jerusalem-c-1150-1544-Medieval/dp/1843830671