The film looks at the wider Ottoman world, taking in superb merchants’ houses in Birgi (Anatolia) and Damascus. At the edge of empire, on the Persian border near Mt Ararat, we discover how the Ottoman’s controlled the extremities of Empire at Ishak Pasha’s magnificent palace. The programme then explores the growing European fascination with ‘The Orient’ throughout the 19th century, both as a place of culture and also as a trading partner and market for mass produced western goods. We end by tracing the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the dying days of the19th century, a time when the Sultans still managed to achieve great feats, including the building of the great Hejaz Railway across the Arabian desert.
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