History of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire developed from a small principality in northwestern Anatolia around the end of the thirteenth century into a state that ruled parts of southeastern Europe, West Asia and North Africa. Its history, conventionally dated from about 1299 to the abolition of the sultanate in 1922, was shaped by repeated expansion, the incorporation of diverse populations, competition with neighbouring empires and continuing attempts to adapt institutions to changing military and economic conditions. Ottoman power was never uniform across this wide territory. Some regions were directly administered, while others retained local rulers who accepted Ottoman supremacy, paid tribute or provided military support.

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From an Anatolian frontier principality to a regional power

The Ottoman dynasty emerged as the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum weakened and Anatolia divided among competing principalities. Osman I led a beylik, or small principality, in the Bithynian frontier zone beside the Byzantine Empire. His early followers included Turkic groups and Byzantine renegades. Raiding, alliances, migration and the weakness of Byzantine authority all contributed to the growth of the principality.

Osman’s son Orhan captured Bursa in 1326 and made it the capital. This was more than a military victory: Bursa became a centre from which the new state could organize administration, religious institutions and commerce. The Ottomans also absorbed neighbouring Anatolian powers. The incorporation of the Karesi principality in 1345 gave them access to ships and positions useful for crossing into southeastern Europe.

Ottoman forces first established a lasting foothold in Europe during the Byzantine civil wars. In 1352 they obtained Çimpe Castle on the Gallipoli Peninsula, and in 1354 they took Gallipoli. From these bases they expanded through Thrace. Edirne, known in European sources as Adrianople, was captured in the 1360s and became the Ottoman capital. The move placed the main centre of power closer to the Balkan frontier and to Constantinople, which the Ottomans increasingly surrounded.

Expansion in the Balkans involved more than battlefield victories. Campaigns could devastate an area without producing lasting rule, while durable control required garrisons, taxation, agreements with local elites and the integration of towns into provincial administration. Ottoman victories at Kosovo in 1389 and Nicopolis in 1396 weakened regional opponents, but resistance continued in several areas. The empire therefore grew through a mixture of conquest, tribute relationships and negotiated submission rather than through one uninterrupted advance.

Interruption and consolidation before 1453

Sultan Bayezid I expanded rapidly in both Anatolia and the Balkans, but his defeat and capture by Timur at the Battle of Ankara in 1402 brought the state close to dissolution. Timur restored several Anatolian rulers whose territories Bayezid had absorbed. Bayezid’s sons then fought for control in the Ottoman Interregnum, which lasted from 1402 to 1413.

Mehmed I reunited the territories that could be recovered and restored the dynasty’s authority. Murad II continued this work, recovering Ottoman possessions in the Balkans during the 1430s and 1440s. His victories at Varna in 1444 and the Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448 prevented a major Christian coalition from reversing Ottoman expansion.

The conquest of Constantinople and imperial expansion

Mehmed II reorganized the army and state before capturing Constantinople on 29 May 1453. The conquest ended the Byzantine Empire and transformed the Ottoman state. Constantinople became the imperial capital, later widely known as Istanbul, and Mehmed claimed the title Kayser-i Rûm, or Roman Emperor. The city had to be repopulated and rebuilt after the conquest, while its churches, institutions and communities were incorporated into the new imperial order.

Mehmed recognised Gennadios Scholarios as patriarch of Constantinople. Orthodox ecclesiastical institutions continued under Ottoman sovereignty, while the conquest also brought conversion of major churches, confiscation and redistribution of property. Christian and Jewish subjects retained religious institutions but faced special taxes and legal restrictions. The arrangements between rulers and religious authorities developed over subsequent centuries.

After 1453, Ottoman armies expanded in several directions. Mehmed conquered the Morea in 1460 and the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, while Ottoman power grew around the Black Sea and the Aegean. In the early sixteenth century, Selim I defeated the Safavid ruler Shah Ismail at Chaldiran in 1514 and then conquered the Mamluk territories of Syria and Egypt. Ottoman rule consequently extended over the Levant, Egypt and the Hejaz, bringing Mecca and Medina within the sultan’s sphere of protection after the defeat of the Mamluk Sultanate in 1517.

Under Suleiman I, known in Europe as Suleiman the Magnificent, the empire reached its classical period. Belgrade fell in 1521, and the victory at Mohács in 1526 opened a prolonged struggle over Hungary; direct Ottoman provincial rule centred on Buda followed in 1541. Suleiman’s armies reached Vienna in 1529 and again campaigned in the region in 1532, but neither attempt captured the city. In the east, Baghdad was taken in 1534. Transylvania, Wallachia and, at times, Moldavia remained tributary principalities, acknowledging Ottoman supremacy while retaining their own rulers.

Naval power supported this expansion. Ottoman fleets contested Venetian and Habsburg interests in the Mediterranean, while Ottoman commanders also operated in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean against Portuguese expansion. The victory at Preveza in 1538 strengthened Ottoman influence in the Mediterranean. The naval defeat at Lepanto in 1571 damaged the fleet’s experienced personnel and its reputation, but ships were rebuilt rapidly and the empire soon recovered much of its position. Military setbacks therefore did not automatically produce territorial collapse.

How conquest became provincial rule

Ottoman expansion depended on converting campaigns into regular government. Provinces were divided into smaller districts, and governors, judges and military officials connected local society to the centre. In many areas, rulers and notables retained influence as long as they accepted the sultan’s authority and met obligations of taxation and military service. Tributary principalities could therefore remain distinct from directly governed provinces while still forming part of the Ottoman political system.

The classical military system combined permanent troops attached to the sultan with provincial forces. The Janissaries formed a central infantry corps that increasingly used firearms, while cavalrymen supported by land revenues served in provincial armies. The timar system assigned the right to collect revenues from specified lands in return for service, linking cultivation, taxation and military provision. It was not a simple system of private ownership, and its operation changed over time. By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, inflation, prolonged warfare and the increased importance of firearms placed pressure on this arrangement.

Recruitment also changed. The devşirme system took Christian boys from some Balkan communities, converted them to Islam and trained selected recruits for the Janissaries or the palace administration. This practice supplied the central government with soldiers and officials whose careers depended on the sultan, though it imposed a heavy burden on affected families and communities. The empire’s military and administrative elite was therefore created through several channels, including dynastic service, religious education, provincial notables and coerced recruitment.

War, fiscal pressure and adaptation after 1566

The later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought new pressures rather than an immediate collapse. Inflation associated with the wider European price revolution reduced the value of established revenues. Long wars against the Habsburgs and Safavids required more infantry equipped with firearms, while irregular soldiers recruited for wartime service sometimes turned to banditry after demobilization. The Celali rebellions in Anatolia between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries disrupted villages, cultivation and movement.

At the same time, the empire continued to adapt. The political influence of women of the imperial household was especially visible between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when mothers and consorts of sultans could shape appointments and policy. From 1656, grand viziers of the Köprülü family restored central authority and directed renewed military campaigns. Ottoman forces completed the conquest of Crete in 1669 and expanded in parts of Polish Ukraine. These successes ended neither the empire’s problems nor its capacity for recovery.

The second siege of Vienna in 1683 ended in defeat, followed by fifteen years of war against the Holy League. The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 forced the empire to surrender substantial European territories, including most of Ottoman Hungary. The settlement marked a major change in the balance of power. Ottoman governments increasingly defended existing possessions and negotiated from a weaker position, although they remained capable of military recovery in particular theatres.

Reform and the changing balance of power

Russia became the most persistent northern rival during the eighteenth century. Ottoman victories, such as the Pruth campaign of 1710–1711, alternated with territorial losses. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774 ended the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 and allowed Russia to claim a role in protecting the Christian inhabitants of Wallachia and Moldavia. It also marked the independence of the Crimean Khanate from Ottoman authority, opening the way for Russian expansion around the Black Sea.

Military defeats encouraged experiments with European methods. During the Tulip Era, from 1718 to 1730, the government strengthened fortifications and expanded diplomatic and cultural contact with Europe. Ibrahim Müteferrika’s printing press began publishing non-religious works in 1729. Technical schools and artillery instruction were established, though reform could meet opposition from established institutions and religious authorities.

Selim III created the Nizam-i Cedid, or New Order, to build a trained army equipped along European lines. Janissaries and their allies resisted changes that threatened their privileges, and Selim was deposed. Mahmud II eventually abolished the Janissary corps in 1826 and built new military and administrative structures. The change removed a powerful obstacle to reform but also demonstrated that modernization could be achieved through violent political confrontation.

National movements and provincial autonomy posed another challenge. Serbia revolted between 1804 and 1815, and Greece fought for independence from 1821. Egypt under Muhammad Ali Pasha became effectively autonomous and even defeated Ottoman forces in the 1830s before European intervention in 1840-1841 forced him to relinquish Syria while recognising his family’s hereditary government of Egypt under Ottoman sovereignty. These crises showed that the government increasingly needed diplomacy and the assistance of European powers to preserve its territorial position.

The Tanzimat and constitutional experiments

The Tanzimat reforms, beginning with the Edict of Gülhane in 1839 and continuing through the nineteenth century, sought to strengthen the state by reorganizing the army, taxation, courts, education and provincial administration. The reformers aimed to provide greater security for life, honour and property and to create a more uniform relationship between the government and its subjects. The 1856 reform edict promised equality to Ottoman subjects regardless of religion, although practical equality remained incomplete.

New institutions changed everyday administration. The first post office opened in 1840, telegraph networks expanded from the Crimean War in the 1850s and railways began to connect selected regions after 1856. Steam ferries altered movement around Istanbul, while modern schools trained military officers, teachers and civil officials. These innovations made communication and state intervention faster, but they also increased the government’s financial dependence on foreign loans. After the Crimean War, borrowing grew, and in 1881 European creditors gained control over important Ottoman revenues through the Ottoman Public Debt Administration.

The reforms also reshaped social expectations. Christian communities expanded their schools, and educated groups used new newspapers, associations and political ideas to demand greater rights or autonomy. The First Constitutional Era began with the promulgation of the Kanûn-u Esâsî in 1876. The parliament was suspended after two years, but constitutional politics returned with the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. The Committee of Union and Progress then became the dominant political force, especially after its 1913 coup.

Territorial contraction and the end of the empire

Reform did not stop territorial losses. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 led to the independence or enlarged autonomy of several Balkan states, while the Congress of Berlin revised the settlement. France occupied Tunisia in 1881, and Britain occupied Egypt in 1882 while Egypt remained formally Ottoman until 1914. Algeria, Tunisia and Libya were lost in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Muslim refugees from the Balkans, Crimea and the Caucasus moved into the empire’s remaining lands.

Nationalism intensified conflicts among the empire’s communities, while governments combined constitutional promises with centralisation and coercion. Armenians suffered mass violence in the Hamidian massacres of 1894-1896. During the First World War, Ottoman authorities directed the deportation and mass killing of Armenians, particularly in 1915-1916. Forced marches, executions, starvation and deliberately lethal conditions formed the Armenian genocide.

The Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 removed almost all remaining Ottoman territory in Europe except eastern Thrace and caused the displacement and death of large numbers of civilians. The losses strengthened Turkish nationalism within the Committee of Union and Progress and narrowed the political basis for a common Ottoman identity.

The empire entered the First World War on the side of the Central Powers in 1914. Ottoman forces defended the Dardanelles during the Gallipoli campaign and won the siege of Kut in Mesopotamia, but they suffered severe defeats in the Caucasus and later lost ground in the Arab provinces. The Arab Revolt, which began in 1916 with British support, helped remove Ottoman forces from much of the Hejaz and Transjordan. The Armistice of Mudros, signed on 30 October 1918, ended Ottoman participation in the war.

After the armistice, Allied forces occupied Istanbul and other parts of the empire. The Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 proposed a partition of Ottoman territories, but the nationalist movement based in Ankara rejected the settlement. The Turkish War of Independence led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha resulted in the abolition of the sultanate by the Grand National Assembly on 1 November 1922. Mehmed VI left the country later that month. The Treaty of Lausanne recognized the new Turkish state in 1923, and the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed on 29 October. The caliphate, which had continued separately from the sultanate, was abolished on 3 March 1924.