# Ottoman Empire

| The Sublime Ottoman StateOttoman Empire Osmanlı İmparatorluğu دولت عالیه عثمانیه *Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmâniyye* |
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| 1299–1923 |
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Flag

Coat of arms

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| '*Motto: 'دولت ابد مدتDevlet-i Ebed-müddet* ("The Eternal State") |
| **Anthem:(various)* |
| Ottoman Empire at its peak in 1683. |
| Capital | Söğüt (1299–1326) Bursa (1326–1365) Edirne (1365–1453) Constantinople (1453–1922) |
| Government | * Absolute monarchy (1299–1876; 1920–1922) and caliphate (1517–1924)
* Absolute monarchy under an autocratic totalitarian dictatorship (1878–1908)
* Constitutional parliamentary monarchy (1876–1878; 1908–1913; 1918–1920)
* Parliamentary monarchy under a one-party totalitarian military dictatorship (1913–1918)
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| Sultans |   |
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| • 1281–1326 (first)  | Osman I |
| • 1918–22 (last)  | Mehmed VI |
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| Grand Viziers |   |
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| • 1320–31 (first)  | Alaeddin Pasha |
| • 1920–22 (last)  | Ahmed Tevfik Pasha |
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| History |   |
|  |
| • Founded  | 1299 |
| • Civil war  | 1402–1413 |
| • 1st Constitutional  | 1876-1878 |
| • 2nd Constitutional  | 1908-1918 |
| • Succeeded  | July 24 1923 |
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| Area |
| 1680 | 5,500,000 km2 (2,100,000 sq mi) |
| Population |
|  |
| • 1856  | 35350000 |
| • 1906  | 20884000 |
| • 1914  | 18520000 |
| • 1919  | 14629000 |
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| Currency | Akçe, Kuruş, Lira |
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| **Preceded by** | **Succeeded by** |
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| --- | --- |
|  | Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm |

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| --- | --- |
| Turkey |  |

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| Today part of |  Turkey |

The **Ottoman Empire** (/ˈɒtəmən/ (listen)), also called the **Turkish Empire**, and sometimes, **Turkey** (Türkiye) was a country in the Middle East between 1299 and 1923. Its most important city was Constantinople, in Anatolia. At its best years, it controlled a very big part of the Middle East, including Balkans, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula. The empire was founded by Osman I in 1299. It was highly successful between 1400 and 1600 and it controlled trade and politics in Southeastern Europe, Southwest Asia, and Northern Africa.

In the Ottoman Empire, there was a system called "millet". This meant that different religious groups were allowed to follow the rules of their own religion, and they could have their own leader. These leaders talked to the Sultan for them. This system helped people live more peacefully together, especially in big cities like Constantinople.

The empire was a group of conquered countries. The Sultan sent governors to manage these countries, or cities. These governors were called Pasha or Bey. The most famous one in the early 19th century was Muhammad Ali Pasha. The empire also had tributary states, which were states that gave money to the Ottoman Empire.

In the 1800s, other countries in Europe, like England, were becoming rich by following the Industrial Revolution: their machines could make a product faster and cheaper than a human could. On the other hand, the merchants of the Ottoman Empire did not have these machines, so they could not compete with the Europeans. Also, because of the nationalism movement, some people in the Empire wanted to have their own country. Since it had lots of war ships and guns from Germany, the Empire decided to support Germany in World War I, and it attacked Russia. It was defeated in the war, and the Ottoman Empire ended. After that, a modern republic was created by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and it was called the Republic of Turkey.

## Rise

The Ottoman Empire was started in 1299 by Osman I. His son, Orhan, took over the empire's first capital, Bursa, from the Byzantine Empire after a battle. In the late 1300s, the Ottomans began combining territories, especially in the Balkans. There, Serbia was defeated in 1389 at the Battle of Kosovo Polje by Sultan Murad I. He died during the battle, and Bayezid I took control. At the 1396 Battle of Nicopolis, a large European Crusader army was defeated in Bulgaria by the military led by Bayezid. Even though he won this important battle, Bayezid was later defeated and taken prisoner by Tamerlane at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. His absence led to a civil war, called the *Ottoman Interregnum* where his sons fought each other for the Ottoman throne. Mehmed Çelebi won and became Mehmed I. His son, Murad II had to fight pretenders to the throne who were supported by the Byzantine Empire. He fought back with an attack on Constantinople, where an army from Venice helped the Byzantines. Murad defeated them at a battle in Thessaloniki. At the Battle of Varna in 1444, he defeated a large European Crusader army made up of soldiers from the Karamanid state, Hungary, Poland, and Wallachia. In 1448, Hungarian general John Hunyadi tried to defeat the Ottomans with his own military. But he lost.

## Peak

Mehmed the Conqueror started a time of military expansion, and conquered the Byzantine capital ofConstantinople on May 29, 1453. He later took over Albania, and allowed Orthodox Church to operate more freely throughout the empire. Mehmed's son Bayezid II continued this expansion. In early 1517, Selim I conquered Egypt and the Levant, which were ruled by the Mamluks. He also defeated the Safavid Persians at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514. The Ottomans fought with Portugal over their expansion as well. Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim's son, captured Belgrade and most of Hungary after the Battle of Mohács in 1526. His Siege of Vienna in 1529 failed to capture the Hapsburg Empire's capital, and was repulsed by the Holy Roman Empire despite the Protestant Reformation's deep divisions. Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia became tributary states to the Ottoman Empire soon afterwards.

In the East, the Ottomans captured Baghdad from the Safavids and partitioned the Caucasus with them. Meanwhile, Suleiman allied Francis I of France over their mutual hatred of the Habsburgs. That led to Ottoman activity in the Mediterranean, where Rhodes, Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli would eventually be captured. Barbarossa Hayreddin led the Ottoman advance. In 1566, Suleiman died, and many historians consider that to be the start of the Ottoman stagnation.

The Ottomans lost the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 by Philip II of Spain and his Holy League. The Ottomans quickly recovered by capturing Cyprus from the Republic of Venice. However, the defeat shattered the myth of Ottoman invincibility. The Ottomans suffered many defeats under Murad III in the next 30 years. The Long War with the Austrian Empire ended a in stalemate, and the Safavids invaded the eastern Ottoman provinces. Murad IV recaptured Iraq and the Caucasus from Persia. The "Sultanate of Women" became an nickname for the Ottoman Empire after the consorts Kösem Sultan and Turhan Sultan became important in the empire and sometimes made even economic decisions in the Sultan's place. The Grand Vizier also took a greater role under the leadership of the Köprülüs. Crete was captured from Venice, and southern Ukraine was captured from Poland.

However, Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha carelessly opened up the empire to attack when he attacked Vienna and laid siege to the city. The Austrians, Poles, Russians, and Venetians all attacked the Ottomans back in the Great Turkish War. Austria and Poland attacked the overstretched Turks in Hungary and Transylvania while Russia hammered Crimea and eventually captured it from the Turks. Venice settled to attack Greece, which was entirely under Ottoman Turkish occupation. The warring sides signed the Treaty of Karlowitz, which ceded Hungary and Transylvania to Austria, Podolia (southern Ukraine) to Poland, Morea (southern Greece) to Venice, and Azov (a Black Sea port) to Russia.

Russia and Sweden went to war, and the Ottomans got involved by retaking Azov and then making peace. Austria, Russia, Venice, and the Ottomans would go to war several times. By 1739, the Ottomans had actually retaken the Morea and Serbia. In the 1740s and the 1750s, the Ottomans began to modernize their military, but in the 1760s, the Ottomans went to war with Russia again. Russia took over Crimea in 1783 and claimed that Orthodox Christians living in the Ottoman Empire were under Russian protection. Selim III continued modernising the military, but the elite Janissary corps troops revolted. Napoleon attacked Egypt but was repulsed by the British.

Serbia revolted and gained nominal independence in 1815, but it was still a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. Greece won its independence after a long war of independence from 1821 to 1829. The al-Saud family revolted in 1811 with the support of the Wahhabi sect. Egypt under Muhammad Ali then almost captured Constantinople, but the Russians repulsed them. The Egyptians settled with the Levant, and the Ottomans tried to retake it but were soundly defeated. The Ottomans was dubbed the "sick man of Europe" because of their incompetence in international affairs.

## Decline and fall

The Ottoman Tanzimat period brought political reform, from 1839 to 1876. This included starting conscription to the military, creating a new central bank, allowing homosexuality, overall secularisation of laws, and the use of factories instead of guilds for manufacturing. The Christian part of the empire became much more industrialised than the Muslim part, and that divide created tension. In the 1850s, the British and the French helped the Ottomans during the Crimean War. The Ottoman owed a lot of money to European countries and banks, which led to a state of bankruptcy. European countries began providing loans and controlling the finances of the empire. The Ottomans also began wars against Russia over Bulgarian independence. At the 1878 Congress of Berlin, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro gained complete independence. Bulgaria remained a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. The British took Cyprus, followed by Egypt in 1882.

In 1908, the Ottomans underwent a revolution by the Young Turks. Due to the revolution, Abdul Hamid II abdicated, and Mehmed V was instated. Bulgaria gained independence, and Austria invaded and conquered Bosnia that same year. In 1912, the Ottomans lost Libya to the Italians. The ensuing Balkan Wars saw the Ottomans lose all of their European territories except eastern Thrace to a coalition of Balkan Christian states which included the combined forces of Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria. The newly independent Bulgaria managed to conquer Edirne and reach a few kilometres from the capital Istanbul which they threatened. The Second Balkan War allowed the Ottomans to attack Bulgaria in conjunction with Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece and therefore recover Edirne and most of eastern Thrace. Their victory meant little since the unrest continued, with a 1909 countercoup to the Young Turk coup, followed by three countercoups.

Although the Ottoman Empire had signed a secret alliance with Germany in July 1914 it stayed at first neutral after the outbreak of World War I. The turning point came when two German warships, the Goober and the Breslau, escaped British forces and arrived in Istanbul, still under German command. These warships attacked Russian ports in the Black Sea by which Russia responded with a declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in October 1914, and soon Britain and France did the same. Thus the Ottoman Empire had now officially joined the war on the side of the Central Powers. The European allies of the Ottomans were Bulgaria and Germany. Its African allies were mostly Lij Iyasu, the Abyssinian emperor and Garad Diiriye Guure, the king of the Dervish Kingdom. Their ally Diiriye Guure's kingdom was destroyed in February 1920 in the first ever air raids on Africa in Taleh, Khatumo.

The Ottomans performed better than had been expected early in the war. They won the Battle of Gallipoli, partly because of the incompetence of the British and French commanders. However, they did not do so well against the Russians in the Caucasus sector and the majority of eastern Anatolia was conquered by Russia who installed an Armenian puppet state to rule the eastern parts of Anatolia. The Ottomans however won the Battle of Kut against the British during the Middle Eastern campaign though Iraq was lost later. In 1915, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and others were targeted, and many as 1.5 million people were killed. The Ottoman Empire fell soon after the Arabs revolted in 1916 with British help. The empire fell after the Sinai, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and eventually Anatolia itself fell. The Ottomans surrendered in 1918. After the official surrender of the Ottoman Empire during the end of World War I, the capital Istanbul began to be occupied by British, French, Italian and Greek troops who began entering the city in November 1918. Many parts of the Ottoman Empire in western Anatolia were occupied by Greece meanwhile southeast Anatolia was occupied by France and southwest was occupied by Italy. The First Republic of Armenia was also occupying the majority of eastern Anatolia during this time. Due to the desperate situation, one Ottoman military commander Mustafa Kemal Pasha decided to resign from the Ottoman army and gathered up a Turkish resistance force to push the occupying Allied armies out of Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal decided to set up his base of operations in Ankara.

The Turkish War of Independence was military campaign by the Turkish National Movement under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which led to the foundation of the modern Republic of Turkey.

In 1923, the Ottoman Empire formally ceased to exist.

## Succession policies

Rukiye Sabiha Sultan’s wedding day in 1920, left to right: Fatma Ulviye Sultan, Ayşe Hatice Hayriye Dürrüşehvar Sultan, Emine Nazikeda Kadınefendi, Rukiye Sabiha Sultan, Mehmed Ertuğrul Efendi, Şehsuvar Hanımefendi.
The empire was a hereditary monarchy and followed a Turco-Mongol tradition in which all men in the leader's family could become rulers. The ruler's title was *Sultan* and was used in front of the name (for example, "*Sultan* Süleyman"). The title of *Sultan* was also used for the wives and the daughters of the monarchs. In this case, it was used at the end of the name (for example, Hürrem *Sultan*"). In the early years of the empire, shahzadahs, the sons of the Sultan, were sent to different parts of the empire (Sanjaks) to get experience of governing. Later, they might be candidates for the Sultanate and the Caliphate.

After Ahmed, the system changed. In the new system, the Sultan would keep his male family members locked in a small apartment called a *kafes* from which they would never be able to see the outside world and take power from him. Sometimes, a new Sultan would kill his male family members to make sure that no one else could be leader.

### Role of mothers

However, the women in his harem often sought greater status and influence, and the Sultan's mother might become a powerful political force in the Empire. Each mother in the harem would try to make her own son the next Sultan since they knew that he would probably be killed otherwise.

## Capital

Bursa was the first capital of the Ottoman Empire. Edirne, in Thrace, became the capital of the Ottoman Empire in 1365. Constantinople became to last capital after the city was conquered by the empire in 1453.

## Vassal states

Many places were vassal states to the empire, meaning they were not directly ruled by it. They were Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia (all of which later joined to form Romania), and the Caucasus region (Georgia, Dagestan, and Chechnya). Their rulers received some freedom to rule themselves. However, they had to pay more money (tax or tribute) to the sultan.

## Other websites

* The Ottoman Empire: A Chronogical Outline
* The Ottoman Empire: The Eternal State Archived 2009-10-25 at the Wayback Machine
* Ottoman Website
* History of Turkish Empire—gives detailed timetable.
* Turkish Oral Narrative
* Information about Ottomans
* Forced population transfers in early Ottoman imperial policy - covers the period 1300-1600
* Turkey in Asia is an old book in English from 1920
* Ottoman Empire Citizendium