Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire was one of the longest-lived and most powerful states in world history, dominating the eastern Mediterranean and the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa for more than six centuries.

It originated around 1299 as a small frontier principality (beylik) in northwestern Anatolia under Osman I, one of many Turkish warrior states that emerged from the collapse of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum. Through a combination of military skill, strategic marriages, and absorption of rival beyliks, Osman's successors expanded steadily into the crumbling Byzantine world. The empire's defining moment came in 1453, when Mehmed II 'the Conqueror' captured Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire and making the city the Ottoman capital. The empire reached its zenith in the sixteenth century. Selim I doubled its territory by conquering the Mamluk Sultanate, bringing Syria, Egypt, and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina under Ottoman control and with them the prestige of the caliphate. His son Suleiman the Magnificent presided over a golden age of military conquest, legal reform, and cultural achievement, pushing Ottoman power deep into Hungary and the Balkans and across the Mediterranean. The Ottomans governed an extraordinarily diverse population of Muslims, Christians, and Jews through the millet system, which granted religious communities a degree of self-administration, and built a formidable state apparatus served by the elite Janissary infantry and a professional bureaucracy. From the late seventeenth century the empire entered a long period of relative decline as European powers grew stronger, military setbacks mounted, and the central government struggled to control its provinces. The nineteenth century brought reform efforts (the Tanzimat) alongside nationalist revolts that stripped away Balkan territories. Often called the 'sick man of Europe,' the empire allied with Germany in the First World War, and its defeat led to occupation and the rise of a Turkish nationalist movement. The sultanate was abolished in 1922 and the Republic of Turkey proclaimed in 1923, ending the dynasty's rule.

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