大象传媒

On September 12 1683, an army led by Kara Mustafa Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman empire, lined up on a hill just outside Vienna. The Ottomans had been besieging the city for almost two months. This wasn鈥檛 the first time they鈥檇 threatened Vienna. Europe鈥檚 fate appeared to hang in the balance once again.

Misha Glenny - who now lives in Vienna - traces the rise and fall of the Ottoman empire with location recordings from the two palaces of Topkapi and Dolmabahce on the Bosphorus in Istanbul.

Contributors to the series include Hannah Lucinda Smith, author Erdogan Rising; Professor Marc David Baer, author of The Ottomans; the Istanbul based writer Kaya Genc; Martyn Rady, author of books on the Habsburgs and The Middle Kingdoms; and Christopher de Bellaigue, former Tehran correspondent and author of The Lion House.

Misha Glenny is rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and author of McMafia. The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde

Further reading:

Suzy Hansen, Notes on a Foreign Country
Norman Stone, Turkey (a short history)
Elif Shafak, The Bastard of Istanbul
Martyn Rady, The Middle Kingdoms
Christopher de Bellaigue, The Lion House
Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans
Soli Ozel, The History of Turkey's Future (in progress)
Kaya Genc, The Lion and the Nightingale
Hannah Lucinda Smith, Erdogan Rising
Mark Mazower, Salonica, city of ghosts