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Distinctive Facts About The Mighty Ottoman Empire

Khalid Elhassan August 13, 2020 35 min

Battle of Ankara - Timurid Empire — Tamerlane gloating over the captured Bayezid I. Wikimedia

2. The Ottoman Army Fell For a Reprisal of the Ancient Battle of Megiddo

Pharaoh Thutmose III at the Battle of Megiddo. War History Online

Pharaoh Thutmose III realized that the central route to Megiddo was so obviously dangerous, that no reasonable commander would risk his army in its ravines. He also guessed that the rebels would leave it unguarded because they would not expect the Egyptians to be so foolhardy as to court disaster by running such an obvious risk. So Thutmose took the central route. As he had guessed, it was unguarded, and the Egyptians arrived at Megiddo sooner than expected, caught the Canaanites off guard, and won a decisive victory that secured Egyptian hegemony for centuries.

Ottoman army carriages and equipment destroyed in the 1918 Battle of Megiddo. Imperial War Museum

3375 years later, in WWI, General Allenby, an avid student of ancient history, was confronted with the same choice as Thutmose III as he led a British army against entrenched Ottomans and Germans entrenched in the Jezreel Valley. He stole a march upon them and burst unexpectedly in front of Megiddo with an advance through the central route via Aruna.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.