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A 16th-century engineer whose work almost defeated the Ottomans

arstechnica.com

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Re: A 16th-century engineer whose work almost defeated the Ottomans

#21

Post by bricksmart »

bricksmart wrote: post #8

Interesting subject, but why does it feel like I'm reading a passage from a standardized test?

Followup: why the downvote? This article has a bizarre and amateurish ending:

  "Despite Tadini's losses, his methods have continued to 
  influence combat into the present. Mining and 
  countermining, with all their attendant surveillance and 
  engineering, are still staples of warfare."
This is actually worse than a passage from a test -- it sounds like a student essay written in response. It's little better than:

  In conclusion, Tadini's mining is still influential today.
which is vague, abrupt and unsubstantiated -- the article makes no mention of mining in the current day. Am I the only one who finds this odd?

Re: A 16th-century engineer whose work almost defeated the Ottomans

#22

Post by sillysaurus3 »

bricksmart wrote: post #21
bricksmart wrote: post #8

Interesting subject, but why does it feel like I'm reading a passage from a standardized test?

Followup: why the downvote? This article has a bizarre and amateurish ending: "Despite Tadini's losses, his methods have continued to influence combat into the present. Mining and countermining, with all their attendant surveillance and engineering, are still staples of warfare." This is actually worse than a passage from a test -- it sounds like a student essay written in response. It's little better than: In conclu…

I notice you're new to HN. Welcome! https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

To understand what makes HN different from other sites, you may want to familiarize yourself with the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In particular, we try to write comments that are interesting to read. That rules out swipes and one-line dismissals: calling something amateurish, or complaining about downvotes.

HN has a lot to offer as a community, and we started out as a tight-knit group of refugees from sites like Reddit. This place has grown up a lot since then, but those fundamentals were the reason for HN's success.

Your second comment was better than your first -- a substantive dismissal is always preferable. And you can write comments like that if you really want to. I usually find it's more productive to focus on what's cool about a piece. There's usually something.

However if an article is mistaken, that's worth calling out. Some of the best HN comments are refutations. Though you'll want to be certain you're correct, or else you'll get called out yourself. :)

Re: A 16th-century engineer whose work almost defeated the Ottomans

#23

Post by timcamber »

bane wrote: post #17
feral wrote: post #13

A personal anecdote from a non-historian: Some years back I took a holiday in Malta. Taking the ferry to Valletta, climbing the ramp up from the dock, I was shocked to see the scale of the fortifications. I knew it was a strategically important place, but what surprised me was how obviously the entire walled peninsula of Valletta seemed to have been constructed first and foremost as a fortress. It's easy to forget th…

By pure happenstance, my wife and I took a tour of the Eastern Mediterranean and ended up in both Rhodes and then Malta where we learned about the Knights of St. John, the seiges by the Ottomans and the rest. The fortress of Rhodes, now much restored by the fascist regimes of the early 20th century as a showpiece, is indomitable. The recorded histories say that Suleiman the Magnificent brought nearly a quarter millio…

Thanks for sharing. While searching for more, I found a higher-resolution photo of your first image:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gate_d%27Amboise_01.jpg

And there are several more great photos on the rest of the Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortifications_of_Rhodes

Re: A 16th-century engineer whose work almost defeated the Ottomans

#24

Post by bricksmart »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #22
bricksmart wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Followup: why the downvote? This article has a bizarre and amateurish ending: "Despite Tadini's losses, his methods have continued to influence combat into the present. Mining and countermining, with all their attendant surveillance and engineering, are still staples of warfare." This is actually worse than a passage from a test -- it sounds like a student essay written in response. It's little better than: In conclu…

I notice you're new to HN. Welcome! https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html To understand what makes HN different from other sites, you may want to familiarize yourself with the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In particular, we try to write comments that are interesting to read. That rules out swipes and one-line dismissals: calling something amateurish, or complaining about downvot…

Thank you for the reply. Having lurked on HN for a while, I'm used to some negativity, or at least very critical, comments. So when most of the comments for this piece appeared positive something seemed off.

Anyway, I appreciate the environment on HN and the steps users like you take to preserve it.

Re: A 16th-century engineer whose work almost defeated the Ottomans

#25

Post by mordant »

azernik wrote: post #7
Kenji wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd wager that everyone back then who made a name for himself with intellectual pursuits was a polymath. Simply because knowledge was hard to come by and you couldn't specialise so much that you remained ignorant about the grand scheme of things of everything else, like it is possible today.

Or alternatively, the breadth of human knowledge was small enough that one person could hold most of it in their head.

One of my favorite party questions is, "Who was the last man who knew everything?"

Re: A 16th-century engineer whose work almost defeated the Ottomans

#26

Post by kodfodrasz »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #19

But I'm sure, by the scale of successful conquests on the ottoman side; there are several successful engineering innovations at their end as well. What makes Tadini's work note-worthy is the usual 'David vs Goliath' emphasis and also Ottoman Empire did not survive; history is written (mostly re-written) by the victors !

Usually a claim is most effective if it has some substance, for example some proof. Could you please provide some references to those innovations instead of shaming another culture, who is remembering one of its lost ones?

Also the knight orders have not survived. Should I blame the victors (whoever they are, as in this story the Ottomans won, for example), for writing history?

Re: A 16th-century engineer whose work almost defeated the Ottomans

#28

Post by aedron »

jballanc wrote: post #4

Suleyman was not only a great military mind, but an extremely astute politician as well. One thing the article fails to mention is that Suleyman didn't just let the people of Rhodes "go free" after their defeat, the Knights Hospitaler had to hand over their fortresses in Kos and Bodrum as part of the deal. This was a smart move as the castle in Bodrum was much better fortified, and Suleyman got it without, in essence…

I liked this part of the article:

"Suleiman was respectful and generous in victory. The citizens of Rhodes were to be exempt from both taxation and conscription for the next five years. Tadini was allowed to leave. He went to the colonies of Genoa, where he again fought invading Ottoman forces and again lost.

The Order of St. John was allowed to leave in peace and build a new fortress elsewhere. They did so on Malta, where their walls could be built on stone and therefore could not be undermined. Toward the end of his life, Suleiman sent a force to conquer Malta. This time the siege failed, in part because he was not there to keep order or impose his implacable will."

This kind of graciousness in warfare does not seem to exist in modern times. Weird, considering how brutal war in those times looks compared with today.

Re: A 16th-century engineer whose work almost defeated the Ottomans

#29

Post by lucio »

Interesting note. It's a funny thing that in the current climate nobody mentions the underpinning of the conflict depicted in the article, hundred of years of struggle between Christianity and Islam.

Wikipedia: >According to Ottoman understanding, the state's primary responsibility was to defend and extend the land of the Muslims and to ensure security and harmony within its borders within the overarching context of orthodox Islamic practice and dynastic sovereignty

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