Contemporaries overestimated Ottoman strength even as the empire was declining

Evidence

To Busbecq and his contemporaries it may well have seemed that Europe was doomed. Yet how wrong they were. Though the Ottoman power was still to survive for some time, it had already passed its peak. The Turks did not in fact settle with Persia but continued to fight wars against them until the eighteenth century, after which both Turkey and Persia ceased to pose a serious threat. The great age of the Eastern empires was past; the great age of Christian Europe was just beginning. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 721

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Perceived Ottoman power positioned moriscos between inferiority and superiority