5 Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire (/ˈɒtəmən/; Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِيّهٔ عُثمَانِیّه‎, Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmâniyye; Modern Turkish: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti), also known as the Turkish Empire,^[9][10] Ottoman Turkey,^[11][12]or simply Turkey, was an empire founded in 1299 by Oghuz Turks underOsman I in northwestern Anatolia.^[13] After conquests in the Balkans byMurad I between 1362 and 1389, the Ottoman sultanate was transformed into a transcontinental empire and claimant to the caliphate. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople byMehmed the Conqueror.^[14][15][16]

During the 16th and 17th centuries, in particular at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was a multinational, multilingual empire controlling much of Southeast Europe,Western Asia, the Caucasus, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa.^[17] At the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.^{[dn 4]}

With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around theMediterranean basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. Following a long period of military setbacks against European powers, the Ottoman Empire gradually declined into the late nineteenth century. The empire allied withGermany in the early 20th century, with the imperial ambition of recovering its lost territories, joining in World War I. While the Empire was able to largely hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent, especially with the Arab Revolt in its Arabian holdings. Starting before the war, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities, such as the Armenian Genocide of 1915, were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks.^[18] The Empire's defeat and the occupation of part of its territory by the Allied Powers in the aftermath of World War I resulted in the emergence of a new state, Turkey, in the Ottoman Anatolian heartland following the Turkish War of Independence, as well as the founding of modern Balkan and Middle Eastern states^[19] and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.

Origins of the Ottoman Empire

Pressured out of their homes in the Asian steppes by the Mongols, the Turkishnomadic tribes converted to Islam during the eighth and ninth centuries. By the tenth century, one of the Turkish tribes, the Seljuk, had become a significant power in the Islamic world and had adopted a settled life that included Islamicorthodoxy, a central administration, and taxation. However, many other Turkish groups remained nomadic and, pursuing the gazi tradition, sought to conquer land for Islam and to acquire war booty for themselves. This led them into conflict with the Seljuk Turks, and to pacify the nomadic tribes, the Seljuks directed them to the eastern domain of theByzantine Empire, Anatolia. The tribe known as the Ottomans arose from one of the smaller emirates established in northwestern Anatolia after 1071. The dynasty was named for Osman (1259-1326), who began to expand his kingdom into the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor, moving his capital to Bursa in 1326

The political and geographical entity governed by the MuslimOttoman Turks. Their empire was centered in present-day Turkey, and extended its influence into southeastern Europe as well as the Middle East. Europe was only temporarily able to resist their advance: the turning point came at the Battle of Varna in 1444 when a European coalition army failed to stop the Turkish advance. Only Constantinople (Istanbul) remained in Byzantine hands and its conquest in 1453 seemed inevitable after Varna. The Turkssubsequently established an empire in Anatolia and southeastern Europe which lasted until the early twentieth century.


Although the Ottoman Empire is not considered a European kingdom per se, Ottoman expansion had a profound impact on a continent already stunned by the calamities of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the Ottoman Turks must, therefore, be considered in any study of Europe in the late Middle Ages. The ease with which the Ottoman Empire achieved military victories led Western Europeans to fear that ongoing Ottoman success would collapse the political and social infrastructure of the West and bring about the downfall of Christendom. Such a momentous threat could not be ignored and the Europeans mounted crusades against the Ottomans in 1366, 1396, and 1444, but to no avail. The Ottomans continued to conquer new territories.


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The Ottoman Empire was founded by Osman I. As sultan Mehmed II conqueredConstantinople (today named Istanbul) in 1453, the state grew into a mighty empire. The Empire reached its apex under Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century when it stretched from the Persian Gulf in the east to Hungary in the northwest; and from Egypt in the south to the Caucasus in the north. After its defeat at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, however, the empire began a slow decline, culminating in the defeat of the empire by the Allies in World War I. The empire was dismantled by the Allies after the war ended in 1918

The empire comprised all or majority population centers of 38 modern independent nations, though all not at the same time: Algeria, Tunisia, Libya,Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait,Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Cyprus, Azerbaijan,Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia,Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary,Israel and Turkey as well as disputed nations that declared independence such as Kosovo and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Ottoman military forces occupied temporarily parts of the modern nations of Iran, Russia, Italy,Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Djibouti, Somalia and Malta. Several nations, such as Morocco, which never received Ottoman forces acknowledged its supremacy.

With the demise of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum (c. 1300), Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent states, the so-called Ghazi emirates. By 1300, a weakened Byzantine Empire had lost most of its Anatolian provinces to ten Ghazi principalities. One of the Ghazi emirates was led by Osman I (1258^[1] – 1326), from which the name Ottoman is derived, son of Ertuğrul, around Eskişehir in western Anatolia. In the foundation myth expressed in the medieval Turkish story known as "Osman's Dream", the young Osman was inspired to conquest by a prescient vision of empire (according to his dream, the empire is a big tree whose roots spread through three continents and whose branches cover the sky).^[2] According to his dream the tree, which was Osman's Empire, issued four rivers from its roots, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile and the Danube.^[2] Additionally, the tree shaded four mountain ranges, the Caucasus, the Taurus, the Atlas and the Balkan ranges.^[2] During his reign as Sultan, Osman I extended the frontiers of Turkish settlement toward the edge of the Byzantine Empire.

In this period, a formal Ottoman government was created whose institutions would change drastically over the life of the empire. The government used the legal entity known as the millet system, under which religious and ethnic minorities were allowed to manage their own affairs with substantial independence from central control.

In the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans. Osman's son, Orhan, captured the city of Bursa in 1324 and made it the new capital of the Ottoman state. The fall of Bursa meant the loss of Byzantine control over Northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from theVenetians in 1387. The Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. The Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, widely regarded as the last large-scale crusadeof the Middle Ages, failed to stop the advance of the victorious Ottoman Turks. With the extension of Turkish dominion into the Balkans, the strategic conquest of Constantinople became a crucial objective. The Empire controlled nearly all formerByzantine lands surrounding the city, but the Byzantines were temporarily relieved when Timur invaded Anatolia in the Battle of Ankara in 1402. He took Sultan Bayezid I as a prisoner. The capture of Bayezid I threw the Turks into disorder. The state fell into a civil war that lasted from 1402 to 1413, as Bayezid's sons fought over succession. It ended when Mehmed Iemerged as the sultan and restored Ottoman power, bringing an end to the Interregnum.