Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire (/ˈɒtəmən/; Ottoman Turkish: دولت عليه عثمانيهDevlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿOsmānīye, literally "The Sublime Ottoman State"; Modern Turkish: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti; French: Empire ottoman)[note 5][13] was a state and caliphate that controlled much of Southeastern Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt (modern-day Bilecik Province) by the Turkoman[14][15] tribal leader Osman I.[16] Although initially the dynasty was of Turkic origin, it was Persianised in terms of language, culture, literature and habits.[17][18][19][20] After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe and with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror.[21]

The Sublime Ottoman State

دولت عليه عثمانیه
Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿOsmānīye
Flag of Ottoman Empire
Coat of arms
Motto: دولت ابد مدت
Devlet-i Ebed-müddet
("The Eternal State")
Anthem: various
Common languages
GovernmentAbsolute monarchy
(1299–1876; 1878–1908; 1920–1922)
and Caliphate (1517–1924[8])
Constitutional monarchy
(1876–1878; 1908–1920)
• c.1299–1323/4 (first)
Osman I
• 1918–1922 (last)
Mehmed VI
• 1517–1520 (first)
Selim I[9][note 2]
• 1922–1924 (last)
Abdülmecid II
Grand Vizier 
• 1320–1331 (first)
Alaeddin Pasha
• 1920–1922 (last)
Ahmet Tevfik Pasha
LegislatureGeneral Assembly
• Unelected upper house
Chamber of Notables
• Elected lower house
Chamber of Deputies
• Founded
c. 1299
23 January 1913
1 November 1922
• Republic of Turkey established[note 4]
29 October 1923
3 March 1924
1451[10]690,000 km2 (270,000 sq mi)
1521[10]3,400,000 km2 (1,300,000 sq mi)
1683[10][11]5,200,000 km2 (2,000,000 sq mi)
• 1912[12]
GDP (PPP)1913 estimate
• Total
£220 million
CurrencyAkçe, Para, Sultani, Kuruş, Lira
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Sultanate of Rum
Anatolian beyliks
Byzantine Empire
Kingdom of Bosnia
Second Bulgarian Empire
Serbian Despotate
Kingdom of Hungary
Kingdom of Croatia
Mamluk Sultanate
Hafsid dynasty
Hospitallers of Tripolitania
Kingdom of Tlemcen
Empire of Trebizond
Principality of Samtskhe
Despotate of the Morea
Hellenic Republic
Caucasus Viceroyalty
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Revolutionary Serbia
Kingdom of Romania
Principality of Bulgaria
Eastern Rumelia
Emirate of Asir
Kingdom of Hejaz
Mandatory Iraq
French Algeria
British Cyprus
French Tunisia
Italian Tripolitania
Italian Cyrenaica
Kingdom of Yemen
Sultanate of Egypt

During the 16th and 17th centuries, at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was a multinational, multilingual empire controlling most of Southeastern Europe, Central Europe, Western Asia, parts of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Northern Africa, and the Horn of Africa.[22] 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 over the course of centuries.[note 6]

With Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean Basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. While the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians.[23] The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society and military throughout the 17th and for much of the 18th century.[24] However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian empires.[25] The Ottomans consequently suffered severe military defeats in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which prompted them to initiate a comprehensive process of reform and modernisation known as the Tanzimat. Thus, over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organised, despite suffering further territorial losses, especially in the Balkans, where a number of new states emerged.[26]

In the early 20th century, the empire allied with Germany, hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation which had contributed to its recent territorial losses, and thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers.[27] 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. During this time, genocide was committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks.[28]

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 its partitioning and the loss of its Middle Eastern territories, which were divided between the United Kingdom and France. The successful Turkish War of Independence led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk against the occupying Allies led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in the Anatolian heartland and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy.[29]


A map from the official Ottoman Atlas in 1907. Referring the empire as The Well-Protected Domains


The Turkish word for "Ottoman" (Turkish: Osmanlı) originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century. The word subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" (Türk) was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population and was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals.[31] In the early modern period, an educated, urban-dwelling Turkish-speaker who was not a member of the military-administrative class would often refer to himself neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk, but rather as a Rūmī (رومى‎), or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia. The term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond.[32] As applied to Ottoman Turkish-speakers, this term began to fall out of use at the end of the seventeenth century, and instead the word increasingly became associated with the Greek population of the empire, a meaning that it still bears in Turkey today.[33]

In Western Europe, the names Ottoman Empire, Turkish Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. At present, most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", and "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character.[34]


Rise (c. 1299–1453)

As the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I (d. 1323/4), a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived.[35] Osman's early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, with many but not all converts to Islam.[36] Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River. A Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Bapheus in 1302 contributed to Osman's rise as well. It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the lack of sources surviving from this period. The Gaza Thesis theory popular during the twentieth century credited their success to their rallying of religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, but it is now highly criticised and no longer generally accepted by historians, and no consensus on the nature of the early Ottoman state's expansion has replaced it.[37]

The Battle of Nicopolis in 1396; painting from 1523

In the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osman's son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326, making it the new capital of the Ottoman state and supplanting Byzantine control in the region. The important port city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387 and sacked. The Ottoman victory in Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe.[38] The Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, widely regarded as the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Ages, failed to stop the advance of the victorious Ottoman Turks.[39]

Part of a series on the
History of the
Ottoman Empire
Historiography (Ghaza, Decline)



Expansion and peak (1453–1566)


The son of Murad II, Mehmed the Conqueror, reorganized both state and military, and on 29 May 1453 conquered Constantinople. Mehmed allowed the Orthodox Church to maintain its autonomy and land in exchange for accepting Ottoman authority.[43] Due to tension between the states of western Europe and the later Byzantine Empire, the majority of the Orthodox population accepted Ottoman rule as preferable to Venetian rule.[43] Albanian resistance was a major obstacle to Ottoman expansion on the Italian peninsula.[44]


Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) dramatically expanded the Empire's eastern and southern frontiers by defeating Shah Ismail of Safavid Iran, in the Battle of Chaldiran.[46] Selim I established Ottoman rule in Egypt by defeating and annexing the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and created a naval presence on the Red Sea. After this Ottoman expansion, competition began between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire to become the dominant power in the region.[47]

Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566) captured Belgrade in 1521, conquered the southern and central parts of the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Ottoman–Hungarian Wars,[48][49]‹See TfM›[failed verification] and, after his historic victory in the Battle of Mohács in 1526, he established Turkish rule in the territory of present-day Hungary (except the western part) and other Central European territories. He then laid siege to Vienna in 1529, but failed to take the city.[50] In 1532, he made another attack on Vienna, but was repulsed in the Siege of Güns.[51][52] Transylvania, Wallachia and, intermittently, Moldavia, became tributary principalities of the Ottoman Empire. In the east, the Ottoman Turks took Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, gaining control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf. In 1555, the Caucasus became officially partitioned for the first time between the Safavids and the Ottomans, a status quo that would remain until the end of the Russo-Turkish War (1768–74). By this partitioning of the Caucasus as signed in the Peace of Amasya, Western Armenia, western Kurdistan, and Western Georgia (incl. western Samtskhe) fell into Ottoman hands,[53] while southern Dagestan, Eastern Armenia, Eastern Georgia, and Azerbaijan remained Persian.[54]

In 1539, a 60,000-strong Ottoman army besieged the Spanish garrison of Castelnuovo on the Adriatic coast; the successful siege cost the Ottomans 8,000 casualties,[55] but Venice agreed to terms in 1540, surrendering most of its empire in the Aegean and the Morea. France and the Ottoman Empire, united by mutual opposition to Habsburg rule, became strong allies. The French conquests of Nice (1543) and Corsica (1553) occurred as a joint venture between the forces of the French king Francis I and Suleiman, and were commanded by the Ottoman admirals Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha and Turgut Reis.[56] A month before the siege of Nice, France supported the Ottomans with an artillery unit during the 1543 Ottoman conquest of Esztergom in northern Hungary. After further advances by the Turks, the Habsburg ruler Ferdinand officially recognized Ottoman ascendancy in Hungary in 1547. Suleiman I died of natural causes in his tent during the Siege of Szigetvár in 1566.

By the end of Suleiman's reign, the Empire spanned approximately 877,888 sq mi (2,273,720 km2), extending over three continents.[57] In addition, the Empire became a dominant naval force, controlling much of the Mediterranean Sea.[58] By this time, the Ottoman Empire was a major part of the European political sphere. The Ottomans became involved in multi-continental religious wars when Spain and Portugal were united under the Iberian Union, the Ottomans as holders of the Caliph title, meaning leader of all Muslims worldwide, and Iberians, as leaders of the Christian crusaders, were locked in a worldwide conflict, with zones of operations in the Mediterranean Sea[59] and Indian Ocean[60] where Iberians circumnavigated Africa to reach India, and on their way, wage wars upon the Ottomans and their local Muslim allies. Likewise, the Iberians passed through newly-Christianized Latin America and had sent expeditions that traversed the Pacific in order to Christianize the formerly Muslim Philippines and use it as a base to further attack the Muslims in the Far East.[61] In this case, the Ottomans sent armies to aid its easternmost vassal and territory, the Sultanate of Aceh in Southeast Asia.[62][63] During the 1600s the worldwide conflict between the Ottoman Caliphate and Iberian Union was a stalemate since both powers were at similar population, technology and economic levels. Nevertheless, the success of the Ottoman political and military establishment was compared to the Roman Empire, by the likes of Italian scholar Francesco Sansovino and the French political philosopher Jean Bodin.[64]

Stagnation and reform (1566–1827)

Revolts, reversals, and revivals (1566–1683)


In the second half of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire came under increasing strain from inflation and the rapidly rising costs of warfare that were impacting both Europe and the Middle East. These pressures led to a series of crises around the year 1600, placing great strain upon the Ottoman system of government.[65] The empire underwent a series of transformations of its political and military institutions in response to these challenges, enabling it to successfully adapt to the new conditions of the seventeenth century and remain powerful, both militarily and economically.[23][66] Historians of the mid-twentieth century once characterized this period as one of stagnation and decline, but this view is now rejected by the majority of academics.[23]


Under Ivan IV (1533–1584), the Tsardom of Russia expanded into the Volga and Caspian region at the expense of the Tatar khanates. In 1571, the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray, commanded by the Ottomans, burned Moscow.[68] The next year, the invasion was repeated but repelled at the Battle of Molodi. The Ottoman Empire continued to invade Eastern Europe in a series of slave raids,[69] and remained a significant power in Eastern Europe until the end of the 17th century.[70]

The Ottomans decided to conquer Venetian Cyprus and on July 22, 1570, Nicosia was besieged; 50,000 Christians died, and 180,000 were enslaved.[71] On September 15, 1570, the Ottoman cavalry appeared before the last Venetian stronghold in Cyprus, Famagusta. The Venetian defenders would hold out for 11 months against a force that would come to number 200,000 men with 145 cannons; 163,000 cannonballs struck the walls of Famagusta before it fell to the Ottomans in August 1571. The Siege of Famagusta claimed 50,000 Ottoman casualties.[72] Meanwhile, the Holy league consisting of mostly Spanish and Venetian fleets won a victory over the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), off southwestern Greece; Catholic forces killed over 30,000 Turks and destroyed 200 of their ships.[73] It was a startling, if mostly symbolic,[74] blow to the image of Ottoman invincibility, an image which the victory of the Knights of Malta against the Ottoman invaders in the 1565 Siege of Malta had recently set about eroding.[75] The battle was far more damaging to the Ottoman navy in sapping experienced manpower than the loss of ships, which were rapidly replaced.[76] The Ottoman navy recovered quickly, persuading Venice to sign a peace treaty in 1573, allowing the Ottomans to expand and consolidate their position in North Africa.[77]

By contrast, the Habsburg frontier had settled somewhat, a stalemate caused by a stiffening of the Habsburg defences .[78] The Long Turkish War against Habsburg Austria (1593–1606) created the need for greater numbers of Ottoman infantry equipped with firearms, resulting in a relaxation of recruitment policy. This contributed to problems of indiscipline and outright rebelliousness within the corps, which were never fully solved.[79][obsolete source] Irregular sharpshooters (Sekban) were also recruited, and on demobilization turned to brigandage in the Jelali revolts (1590–1610), which engendered widespread anarchy in Anatolia in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.[80] With the Empire's population reaching 30 million people by 1600, the shortage of land placed further pressure on the government.[81][obsolete source] In spite of these problems, the Ottoman state remained strong, and its army did not collapse or suffer crushing defeats. The only exceptions were campaigns against the Safavid dynasty of Persia, where many of the Ottoman eastern provinces were lost, some permanently. This 1603–1618 war eventually resulted in the Treaty of Nasuh Pasha, which ceded the entire Caucasus, except westernmost Georgia, back into Iranian Safavid possession.[82] The treaty ending the Cretan War (1645–1669) cost Venice much of Dalmatia, its Aegean island possessions, and Crete. (Losses from the war totaled 30,985 Venetian soldiers and 118,754 Turkish soldiers.)[83]

Map of the Ottoman Empire from 1654

During his brief majority reign, Murad IV (1623–1640) reasserted central authority and recaptured Iraq (1639) from the Safavids.[84] The resulting Treaty of Zuhab of that same year decisively parted the Caucasus and adjacent regions between the two neighbouring empires as it had already been defined in the 1555 Peace of Amasya.[85][86] The Sultanate of women (1623–1656) was a period in which the mothers of young sultans exercised power on behalf of their sons. The most prominent women of this period were Kösem Sultan and her daughter-in-law Turhan Hatice, whose political rivalry culminated in Kösem's murder in 1651.[87] During the Köprülü Era (1656–1703), effective control of the Empire was exercised by a sequence of Grand Viziers from the Köprülü family. The Köprülü Vizierate saw renewed military success with authority restored in Transylvania, the conquest of Crete completed in 1669, and expansion into Polish southern Ukraine, with the strongholds of Khotyn and Kamianets-Podilskyi and the territory of Podolia ceding to Ottoman control in 1676.[88]

This period of renewed assertiveness came to a calamitous end in 1683 when Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha led a huge army to attempt a second Ottoman siege of Vienna in the Great Turkish War of 1683–1699. The final assault being fatally delayed, the Ottoman forces were swept away by allied Habsburg, German, and Polish forces spearheaded by the Polish king John III Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna. The alliance of the Holy League pressed home the advantage of the defeat at Vienna, culminating in the Treaty of Karlowitz (26 January 1699), which ended the Great Turkish War.[89] The Ottomans surrendered control of significant territories, many permanently.[90] Mustafa II (1695–1703) led the counterattack of 1695–96 against the Habsburgs in Hungary, but was undone at the disastrous defeat at Zenta (in modern Serbia), 11 September 1697.[91]

Military defeats

Aside from the loss of the Banat and the temporary loss of Belgrade (1717–39), the Ottoman border on the Danube and Sava remained stable during the eighteenth century. Russian expansion, however, presented a large and growing threat.[92] Accordingly, King Charles XII of Sweden was welcomed as an ally in the Ottoman Empire following his defeat by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava of 1709 in central Ukraine (part of the Great Northern War of 1700–1721).[92] Charles XII persuaded the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III to declare war on Russia, which resulted in an Ottoman victory in the Pruth River Campaign of 1710–1711, in Moldavia.[93]

Austrian troops led by Prince Eugene of Savoy capture Belgrade in 1717


Educational and technological reforms came about, including the establishment of higher education institutions such as the Istanbul Technical University.[96] In 1734 an artillery school was established to impart Western-style artillery methods, but the Islamic clergy successfully objected under the grounds of theodicy.[97] In 1754 the artillery school was reopened on a semi-secret basis.[97] In 1726, Ibrahim Muteferrika convinced the Grand Vizier Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha, the Grand Mufti, and the clergy on the efficiency of the printing press, and Muteferrika was later granted by Sultan Ahmed III permission to publish non-religious books (despite opposition from some calligraphers and religious leaders).[98] Muteferrika's press published its first book in 1729 and, by 1743, issued 17 works in 23 volumes, each having between 500 and 1,000 copies.[98][99]

Ottoman troops attempting to halt the advancing Russians during the Siege of Ochakov in 1788

In Ottoman North Africa, Spain conquered Oran from the Ottoman Empire (1732). The bey received an Ottoman army from Algiers, but it failed to recapture Oran; the siege caused the deaths of 1,500 Spaniards, and even more Algerians. The Spanish also massacred many Muslim soldiers.[100] In 1792, Spain abandoned Oran, selling it to the Ottoman Empire.




The Serbian revolution (1804–1815) marked the beginning of an era of national awakening in the Balkans during the Eastern Question. In 1811, the fundamentalist Wahhabis of Arabia, led by the al-Saud family, revolted against the Ottomans. Unable to defeat the Wahhabi rebels, the Sublime Porte had Mohammad Ali the Great, the vali (governor) of Egypt tasked with retaking Arabia, which ended with the destruction of the Emirate of Diriyah in 1818. The Suzerainty of Serbia as a hereditary monarchy under its own dynasty was acknowledged de jure in 1830.[102][103] In 1821, the Greeks declared war on the Sultan. A rebellion that originated in Moldavia as a diversion was followed by the main revolution in the Peloponnese, which, along with the northern part of the Gulf of Corinth, became the first parts of the Ottoman Empire to achieve independence (in 1829). In 1830, the French invaded Ottoman Algeria, which was lost to the empire; between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Algerians were killed,[104][105] while French forces suffered only 3,336 killed in action.[106] In 1831, Mohammad Ali revolted with the aim of making himself sultan and founding a new dynasty, and his French-trained army under his son Ibrahim Pasha defeated the Ottoman Army as it marched on Constantinople, coming within 320 km (200 mi) of the capital.[107] In desperation, the Sultan Mahmud II appealed to the empire's traditional archenemy Russia for help, asking Emperor Nicholas I to send an expeditionary force to save him.[108] In return for signing the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi, the Russians sent the expeditionary force, which deterred Ibrahim from taking Constantinople.[108] Under the terms of Peace of Kutahia, signed on 5 May 1833 Mohammad Ali agreed to abandon his claim to the throne, in exchange for which he was made the vali of the vilayets (provinces) of Crete, Aleppo, Tripoli, Damascus and Sidon (the latter four comprising modern Syria and Lebanon), and given the right to collect taxes in Adana.[108] Had it not been for the Russian intervention, it is almost certain Mahmud II would have been overthrown and Mohammad Ali would have become the new sultan, marking the beginning of a recurring pattern where the Sublime Porte needed the help of outsiders to save itself.[109]


In 1839, the Sublime Porte attempted to take back what it lost to the de facto independent vilayet of Egypt, and suffered a crushing defeat, leading to the Oriental Crisis as Mohammad Ali was very close to France, and the prospect of him as Sultan was widely viewed as putting the entire empire into the French sphere of influence.[108] As the Sublime Porte had proved itself incapable of defeating the Egyptians, Britain, and Austria intervened to defeat Egypt.[108] By the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire was called the "sick man" by Europeans. The suzerain states – the Principality of Serbia, Wallachia and Moldavia – moved towards de jure independence during the 1860s and 1870s.

Decline and modernization (1828–1908)

During the Tanzimat period (1839–1876), the government's series of constitutional reforms led to a fairly modern conscripted army, banking system reforms, the decriminalization of homosexuality, the replacement of religious law with secular law[110] and guilds with modern factories. The Ottoman Ministry of Post was established in Istanbul in 1840. American inventor Samuel Morse received an Ottoman patent for the telegraph in 1847, which was issued by Sultan Abdülmecid who personally tested the new invention.[111] The reformist period peaked with the Constitution, called the Kanûn-u Esâsî. The empire's First Constitutional era was short-lived. The parliament survived for only two years before the sultan suspended it.


The Christian population of the empire, owing to their higher educational levels, started to pull ahead of the Muslim majority, leading to much resentment on the part of the latter.[112] In 1861, there were 571 primary and 94 secondary schools for Ottoman Christians with 140,000 pupils in total, a figure that vastly exceeded the number of Muslim children in school at the same time, who were further hindered by the amount of time spent learning Arabic and Islamic theology.[112] Author Norman Stone further suggests that the Arabic alphabet, which Turkish was written in until 1928, was very ill-suited to reflect the sounds of the Turkish language (which is a Turkic as opposed to Semitic language), which imposed a further difficulty on Turkish children.[112] In turn, the higher educational levels of the Christians allowed them to play a larger role in the economy, with the rise in prominence of groups such as the Sursock family indicative of this shift in influence.[113][112] In 1911, of the 654 wholesale companies in Istanbul, 528 were owned by ethnic Greeks.[112] In many cases, Christians and also Jews were able to gain protection from European consuls and citizenship, meaning they were protected from Ottoman law and not subject to the same economic regulations as their Muslim counterparts.[114]

The Bulgarian martyresses (1877) by Konstantin Makovsky, a Russian propaganda painting which depicts the rape of Bulgarian women by the bashi-bazouks during the April Uprising, with the purpose of mobilizing public support for the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78).[115][116] Unrestrained by the laws that governed regular soldiers in the Ottoman Army, the bashi-bazouks became notorious for preying on civilians.[117]

The Crimean War (1853–1856) was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining Ottoman Empire. The financial burden of the war led the Ottoman state to issue foreign loans amounting to 5 million pounds sterling on 4 August 1854.[118][119] The war caused an exodus of the Crimean Tatars, about 200,000 of whom moved to the Ottoman Empire in continuing waves of emigration.[120] Toward the end of the Caucasian Wars, 90% of the Circassians were ethnically cleansed[121] and exiled from their homelands in the Caucasus and fled to the Ottoman Empire,[122] resulting in the settlement of 500,000 to 700,000 Circassians in Turkey.[123][page needed][124][125] Some Circassian organisations give much higher numbers, totaling 1–1.5 million deported or killed. Crimean Tatar refugees in the late 19th century played an especially notable role in seeking to modernize Ottoman education and in first promoting both Pan-Turkism and a sense of Turkish nationalism.[126]

In this period, the Ottoman Empire spent only small amounts of public funds on education; for example in 1860–61 only 0.2 percent of the total budget was invested in education.[127] As the Ottoman state attempted to modernize its infrastructure and army in response to threats from the outside, it also opened itself up to a different kind of threat: that of creditors. Indeed, as the historian Eugene Rogan has written, "the single greatest threat to the independence of the Middle East" in the nineteenth century "was not the armies of Europe but its banks".[128] The Ottoman state, which had begun taking on debt with the Crimean War, was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1875.[129] By 1881, the Ottoman Empire agreed to have its debt controlled by an institution known as the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, a council of European men with presidency alternating between France and Britain. The body controlled swaths of the Ottoman economy, and used its position to ensure that European capital continued to penetrate the empire, often to the detriment of local Ottoman interests.[129]


British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli advocated for restoring the Ottoman territories on the Balkan Peninsula during the Congress of Berlin, and in return, Britain assumed the administration of Cyprus in 1878.[131] Britain later sent troops to Egypt in 1882 to put down the Urabi Revolt – Sultan Abdul Hamid II was too paranoid to mobilize his own army, fearing this would result in a coup d'état – effectively gaining control in both territories. Abdul Hamid II, popularly known as "Abdul Hamid the Damned" on account of his cruelty and paranoia, was so fearful of the threat of a coup that he did not allow his army to conduct war games, lest this serve as the cover for a coup, but he did see the need for military mobilization. In 1883, a German military mission under General Baron Colmar von der Goltz arrived to train the Ottoman Army, leading to the so-called "Goltz generation" of German-trained officers who were to play a notable role in the politics of the last years of the empire.[132]


As the Ottoman Empire gradually shrank in size, some 7–9 million Muslims from its former territories in the Caucasus, Crimea, Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands migrated to Anatolia and Eastern Thrace.[134] After the Empire lost the First Balkan War (1912–13), it lost all its Balkan territories except East Thrace (European Turkey). This resulted in around 400,000 Muslims fleeing with the retreating Ottoman armies (with many dying from cholera brought by the soldiers), and with some 400,000 non-Muslims fleeing territory still under Ottoman rule.[135] Justin McCarthy estimates that during the period 1821 to 1922, 5.5 million Muslims died in southeastern Europe, with the expulsion of 5 million.[136][137][138]

Defeat and dissolution (1908–1922)


Young Turk movement




World War I

The war began with the Ottoman surprise attack on the Russian Black Sea coast on 29 October 1914. Following the attack, Russia and its allies, France and Britain declared war on the Ottomans. There were several important Ottoman victories in the early years of the war, such as the Battle of Gallipoli and the Siege of Kut.

Armenian genocide

In 1915 the Ottoman government started the extermination of its ethnic Armenian population, resulting in the death of up to 1.5 million Armenians in the Armenian Genocide.[141] The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labor, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and systematic massacre.[142][143] Large-scale massacres were also committed against the Empire's Greek and Assyrian minorities as part of the same campaign of ethnic cleansing.[144]

Arab Revolt

The Arab Revolt began in 1916 with British support. It turned the tide against the Ottomans on the Middle Eastern front, where they seemed to have the upper hand during the first two years of the war. On the basis of the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, an agreement between the British government and Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, the revolt was officially initiated at Mecca on June 10, 1916.[note 8] The Arab nationalist goal was to create a single unified and independent Arab state stretching from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen, which the British had promised to recognize.

The Sharifian Army led by Hussein and the Hashemites, with military backing from the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force, successfully fought and expelled the Ottoman military presence from much of the Hejaz and Transjordan. The rebellion eventually took Damascus and set up a short-lived monarchy led by Faisal, a son of Hussein.

Following the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Middle East was later partitioned by the British and French into mandate territories. There was no unified Arab state, much to the anger of Arab nationalists.

Treaty of Sèvres and Turkish War of Independence

Defeated on every front, the Ottoman Empire signed the Armistice of Mudros on 30 October 1918.


The partition of the Ottoman Empire was finalized under the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres. This treaty, as designed in the conference of London, allowed the Sultan to retain his position and title. The status of Anatolia was problematic given the Allied occupation of Constantinople and İzmir. There arose a nationalist opposition in the Turkish national movement. It won the Turkish War of Independence (1919–23) under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (later given the surname "Atatürk"). The sultanate was abolished on 1 November 1922, and the last sultan, Mehmed VI (reigned 1918–22), left the country on 17 November 1922. The Republic of Turkey was established in its place on October 29, 1923, in the new capital city of Ankara. The caliphate was abolished on 3 March 1924.[146]

Historiographical debate on the Ottoman state

Several historians such as British historian Edward Gibbon and the Greek historian Dimitri Kitzikis have argued that after the fall of Constantinople, the Ottoman state took over the machinery of the Byzantine (Roman) state and that in essence, the Ottoman Empire was a continuation of the Eastern Roman Empire under a thin Turkish Islamic guise.[147] Kitzikis called the Ottoman state "a Greek-Turkish condominium".[148] The American historian Speros Vryonis wrote that the Ottoman state was centered on "a Byzantine-Balkan base with a veneer of the Turkish language and the Islamic religion".[149] Other historians have followed the lead of the Austrian historian Paul Wittek who emphasized the Islamic character of the Ottoman state, seeing the Ottoman state as a "Jihad state" dedicated to expanding the world of Islam.[149] Many historians led in 1937 by the Turkish historian M. Fuat Koprulu championed the Ghazi thesis that saw the Ottoman state as a continuation of the way of life of the nomadic Turkic tribes who had come from East Asia to Anatolia via Central Asia and the Middle East on a much larger scale. They argued that the most important cultural influences on the Ottoman state came from Persia.[150] More recently, the American historian Heath Lowry called the Ottoman state a "predatory confederacy" led in equal parts by Turks and Greeks converted to Islam.[151][152]


Most of the Ottoman Sultans adhered to Sufism and followed Sufi orders, and believed Sufism is the correct way to reach God.[154] Because the matters of jurisprudence and shariah were state matters, the state sponsored Sufi religious dominance came into play. Non-Sufi Muslims and Arabs were neglected and not given any position in the Hejaz.[155]


Ambassadors at the Topkapı Palace

Before the reforms of the 19th and 20th centuries, the state organisation of the Ottoman Empire was a system with two main dimensions, the military administration, and the civil administration. The Sultan was the highest position in the system. The civil system was based on local administrative units based on the region's characteristics. The state had control over the clergy. Certain pre-Islamic Turkish traditions that had survived the adoption of administrative and legal practices from Islamic Iran remained important in Ottoman administrative circles.[156] According to Ottoman understanding, the state's primary responsibility was to defend and extend the land of the Muslims and to ensure security and harmony within its borders in the overarching context of orthodox Islamic practice and dynastic sovereignty.[157]


Bâb-ı Âlî, the Sublime Porte








The Ottoman legal system accepted the religious law over its subjects. At the same time the Qanun (or Kanun), a secular legal system, co-existed with religious law or Sharia.[164] The Ottoman Empire was always organized around a system of local jurisprudence. Legal administration in the Ottoman Empire was part of a larger scheme of balancing central and local authority.[165] Ottoman power revolved crucially around the administration of the rights to land, which gave a space for the local authority to develop the needs of the local millet.[165] The jurisdictional complexity of the Ottoman Empire was aimed to permit the integration of culturally and religiously different groups.[165] The Ottoman system had three court systems: one for Muslims, one for non-Muslims, involving appointed Jews and Christians ruling over their respective religious communities, and the "trade court". The entire system was regulated from above by means of the administrative Qanun, i.e., laws, a system based upon the Turkic Yassa and Töre, which were developed in the pre-Islamic era.[citation needed]

An Ottoman trial, 1877


An unhappy wife complains to the Qadi about her husband's impotence as depicted in an Ottoman miniature


In the late 19th century, the Ottoman legal system saw substantial reform. This process of legal modernization began with the Edict of Gülhane of 1839.[166] These reforms included the "fair and public trial[s] of all accused regardless of religion", the creation of a system of "separate competences, religious and civil", and the validation of testimony on non-Muslims.[167] Specific land codes (1858), civil codes (1869–1876), and a code of civil procedure also were enacted.[167]



Ottoman pilots in early 1912





However, the collapsing Ottoman economy could not sustain the fleet's strength for long. Sultan Abdülhamid II distrusted the admirals who sided with the reformist Midhat Pasha and claimed that the large and expensive fleet was of no use against the Russians during the Russo-Turkish War. He locked most of the fleet inside the Golden Horn, where the ships decayed for the next 30 years. Following the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, the Committee of Union and Progress sought to develop a strong Ottoman naval force. The Ottoman Navy Foundation was established in 1910 to buy new ships through public donations.

The establishment of Ottoman military aviation dates back to between June 1909 and July 1911.[172][173] The Ottoman Empire started preparing its first pilots and planes, and with the founding of the Aviation School (Tayyare Mektebi) in Yeşilköy on 3 July 1912, the Empire began to tutor its own flight officers. The founding of the Aviation School quickened advancement in the military aviation program, increased the number of enlisted persons within it, and gave the new pilots an active role in the Ottoman Army and Navy. In May 1913, the world's first specialized Reconnaissance Training Program was started by the Aviation School, and the first separate reconnaissance division was established.[citation needed] In June 1914 a new military academy, the Naval Aviation School (Bahriye Tayyare Mektebi) was founded. With the outbreak of World War I, the modernization process stopped abruptly. The Ottoman aviation squadrons fought on many fronts during World War I, from Galicia in the west to the Caucasus in the east and Yemen in the south.

Administrative divisions

Eyalets in 1795



The Vilayets were introduced with the promulgation of the "Vilayet Law" (Teskil-i Vilayet Nizamnamesi)[176] in 1864, as part of the Tanzimat reforms.[177] Unlike the previous eyalet system, the 1864 law established a hierarchy of administrative units: the vilayet, liva/sanjak, kaza and village council, to which the 1871 Vilayet Law added the nabiye.[178]


Ottoman government deliberately pursued a policy for the development of Bursa, Edirne, and Istanbul, successive Ottoman capitals, into major commercial and industrial centres, considering that merchants and artisans were indispensable in creating a new metropolis.[179] To this end, Mehmed and his successor Bayezid, also encouraged and welcomed migration of the Jews from different parts of Europe, who were settled in Istanbul and other port cities like Salonica. In many places in Europe, Jews were suffering persecution at the hands of their Christian counterparts, such as in Spain, after the conclusion of Reconquista. The tolerance displayed by the Turks was welcomed by the immigrants.


The Ottoman economic mind was closely related to the basic concepts of state and society in the Middle East in which the ultimate goal of a state was consolidation and extension of the ruler's power, and the way to reach it was to get rich resources of revenues by making the productive classes prosperous.[180] The ultimate aim was to increase the state revenues without damaging the prosperity of subjects to prevent the emergence of social disorder and to keep the traditional organization of the society intact. The Ottoman economy greatly expanded during the early modern period, with particularly high growth rates during the first half of the eighteenth century. The empire's annual income quadrupled between 1523 and 1748, adjusted for inflation.[181]

The organization of the treasury and chancery were developed under the Ottoman Empire more than any other Islamic government and, until the 17th century, they were the leading organization among all their contemporaries.[162] This organization developed a scribal bureaucracy (known as "men of the pen") as a distinct group, partly highly trained ulama, which developed into a professional body.[162] The effectiveness of this professional financial body stands behind the success of many great Ottoman statesmen.[182]

The Ottoman Bank was founded in 1856 in Constantinople in August 1896, the bank was captured by members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.


By developing commercial centres and routes, encouraging people to extend the area of cultivated land in the country and international trade through its dominions, the state performed basic economic functions in the Empire. But in all this, the financial and political interests of the state were dominant. Within the social and political system they were living in, Ottoman administrators could not see the desirability of the dynamics and principles of the capitalist and mercantile economies developing in Western Europe.[184]




A population estimate for the empire of 11,692,480 for the 1520–1535 period was obtained by counting the households in Ottoman tithe registers, and multiplying this number by 5.[186] For unclear reasons, the population in the 18th century was lower than that in the 16th century.[187] An estimate of 7,230,660 for the first census held in 1831 is considered a serious undercount, as this census was meant only to register possible conscripts.[186]

Smyrna under Ottoman rule in 1900

Censuses of Ottoman territories only began in the early 19th century. Figures from 1831 onwards are available as official census results, but the censuses did not cover the whole population. For example, the 1831 census only counted men and did not cover the whole empire.[81][186] For earlier periods estimates of size and distribution of the population are based on observed demographic patterns.[188]

However, it began to rise to reach 25–32 million by 1800, with around 10 million in the European provinces (primarily in the Balkans), 11 million in the Asiatic provinces, and around 3 million in the African provinces. Population densities were higher in the European provinces, double those in Anatolia, which in turn were triple the population densities of Iraq and Syria and five times the population density of Arabia.[189]


Towards the end of the empire's existence life expectancy was 49 years, compared to the mid-twenties in Serbia at the beginning of the 19th century.[190] Epidemic diseases and famine caused major disruption and demographic changes. In 1785 around one-sixth of the Egyptian population died from plague and Aleppo saw its population reduced by twenty percent in the 18th century. Six famines hit Egypt alone between 1687 and 1731 and the last famine to hit Anatolia was four decades later.[191]


Economic and political migrations made an impact across the empire. For example, the Russian and Austria-Habsburg annexation of the Crimean and Balkan regions respectively saw large influxes of Muslim refugees—200,000 Crimean Tartars fleeing to Dobruja.[194] Between 1783 and 1913, approximately 5–7 million refugees flooded into the Ottoman Empire, at least 3.8 million of whom were from Russia. Some migrations left indelible marks such as political tension between parts of the empire (e.g., Turkey and Bulgaria), whereas centrifugal effects were noticed in other territories, simpler demographics emerging from diverse populations. Economies were also impacted with the loss of artisans, merchants, manufacturers and agriculturists.[195] Since the 19th century, a large proportion of Muslim peoples from the Balkans emigrated to present-day Turkey. These people are called Muhacir.[196] By the time the Ottoman Empire came to an end in 1922, half of the urban population of Turkey was descended from Muslim refugees from Russia.[112]


1911 Ottoman calendar shown in several languages

Ottoman Turkish was the official language of the Empire. It was an Oghuz Turkic language highly influenced by Persian and Arabic. The Ottomans had several influential languages: Turkish, spoken by the majority of the people in Anatolia and by the majority of Muslims of the Balkans except in Albania and Bosnia; Persian, only spoken by the educated;[197] Arabic, spoken mainly in Egypt, the Levant, Arabia, Iraq, North Africa, Kuwait and parts of the Horn of Africa and Berber in North Africa. In the last two centuries, usage of these became limited, though, and specific: Persian served mainly as a literary language for the educated,[197] while Arabic was used for Islamic prayers. Turkish, in its Ottoman variation, was a language of military and administration since the nascent days of the Ottomans. The Ottoman constitution of 1876 did officially cement the official imperial status of Turkish.[198] In the post-Tanzimat period French became the common Western language among the educated.[7]




In the Ottoman imperial system, even though there existed a hegemonic power of Muslim control over the non-Muslim populations, non-Muslim communities had been granted state recognition and protection in the Islamic tradition.[200] The officially accepted state Dīn (Madh'hab) of the Ottomans was Sunni (Hanafi jurisprudence).[201]

Until the second half of the 15th century, the empire had a Christian majority, under the rule of a Muslim minority.[165] In the late 19th century, the non-Muslim population of the empire began to fall considerably, not only due to secession, but also because of migratory movements.[200] The proportion of Muslims amounted to 60% in the 1820s, gradually increasing to 69% in the 1870s and then to 76% in the 1890s.[200] By 1914, only 19.1% of the empire's population was non-Muslim, mostly made up of Jews and Christian Greeks, Assyrians, and Armenians.[200]



Turkic peoples practiced a variety of shamanism before adopting Islam. Abbasid influence in Central Asia was ensured through a process that was greatly facilitated by the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana. Many of the various Turkic tribes—including the Oghuz Turks, who were the ancestors of both the Seljuks and the Ottomans—gradually converted to Islam, and brought the religion with them to Anatolia beginning in the 11th century. Since the founding of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottomans followed the Maturidi creed (school of Islamic theology) and the Hanafi madhab (school of Islamic jurisprudence).[203][204][205]


Christianity and Judaism

In the Ottoman Empire, in accordance with the Muslim dhimmi system, Christians were guaranteed limited freedoms (such as the right to worship). They were forbidden to carry weapons or ride on horseback; their houses could not overlook those of Muslims, in addition to various other legal limitations.[207] Many Christians and Jews converted in order to secure full status in the society. Most, however, continued to practice their old religions without restriction.[208]


Similar millets were established for the Ottoman Jewish community, who were under the authority of the Haham Başı or Ottoman Chief Rabbi; the Armenian Apostolic community, who were under the authority of a head bishop; and a number of other religious communities as well.[211] Some argue that the millet system is an example of pre-modern religious pluralism.[212]

Social-political-religious structure

Society, government and religion was inter-related in complex ways after about 1800, in a complex overlapping, inefficient system that Atatürk systematically dismantled after 1922.[213][214] In Constantinople, the Sultan ruled two distinct domains: the secular government and the religious hierarchy. Religious officials formed the Ulama, who had control of religious teachings and theology, and also the Empire's judicial system, giving them a major voice in day-to-day affairs in communities across the Empire (but not including the non-Muslim millets). They were powerful enough to reject the military reforms proposed by Sultan Selim III. His successor Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839) first won ulama approval before proposing similar reforms.[215] The secularization program brought by Atatürk ended the ulema and their institutions. The caliphate was abolished, madrasas were closed down, and the sharia courts abolished. He replaced the Arabic alphabet with Latin letters, ended the religious school system, and gave women some political rights. Many rural traditionalists never accepted this secularization, and by the 1990s they were reasserting a demand for a larger role for Islam.[216]

Ethnic map of Asia Minor in 1910

The Janissaries were a highly formidable military unit in the early years, but as Western Europe modernized its military organization technology, the Janissaries became a reactionary force that resisted all change. Steadily the Ottoman military power became outdated, but when the Janissaries felt their privileges were being threatened, or outsiders wanted to modernize them, or they might be superseded by the cavalrymen, they rose in rebellion. The rebellions were highly violent on both sides, but by the time the Janissaries were suppressed, it was far too late for Ottoman military power to catch up with the West.[217][218] The political system was transformed by the destruction of the Janissaries in the Auspicious Incident of 1826, who were a very powerful military/governmental/police force that revolted. Sultan Mahmud II crushed the revolt, executed the leaders, and disbanded the large organization. That set the stage for a slow process of modernization of government functions, as the government sought, with mixed success, to adopt the main elements of Western bureaucracy and military technology. The Janissaries had been recruited from Christians and other minorities; their abolition enabled the emergence of a Turkish elite to control the Ottoman Empire. The problem was that the Turkish element was very poorly educated, lacking higher schools of any sort, and locked into a Turkish language that used the Arabic alphabet that inhibited wider learning. The large number of ethnic and religious minorities were tolerated in their own separate segregated domains called millets.[219] They were primarily Greek, Armenian, or Jewish. In each locality, they governed themselves, spoke their own language, ran their own schools, cultural and religious institutions, and paid somewhat higher taxes. They had no power outside the millet. The Imperial government protected them and prevented major violent clashes between ethnic groups. However, the millets showed very little loyalty to the Empire. Ethnic nationalism, based on distinctive religion and language, provided a centripetal force that eventually destroyed the Ottoman Empire.[220] In addition, Muslim ethnic groups, which were not part of the millett system, especially the Arabs and the Kurds, were outside the Turkish culture and developed their own separate nationalism. The British sponsored Arab nationalism in the First World War, promising an independent Arab state in return for Arab support. Most Arabs supported the Sultan, but those near Mecca believed in and supported the British promise.[221]


The economic system made little progress. Printing was forbidden until the 18th century, for fear of defiling the secret documents of Islam. The millets, however, were allowed their own presses, using Greek, Hebrew, Armenian and other languages that greatly facilitated nationalism. The religious prohibition on charging interest foreclosed most of the entrepreneurial skills among Muslims, although it did flourish among the Jews and Christians.

After the 18th century, the Ottoman Empire was clearly shrinking, as Russia put on heavy pressure and expanded to its south; Egypt became effectively independent in 1805, and the British later took it over, along with Cyprus. Greece became independent, and Serbia and other Balkan areas became highly restive as the force of nationalism pushed against imperialism. The French took over Algeria and Tunisia. The Europeans all thought that the empire was a sick man in rapid decline. Only the Germans seemed helpful, and their support led to the Ottoman Empire joining the central powers in 1915, with the end result that they came out as one of the heaviest losers of the First World War in 1918.[223]


Depiction of a hookah shop in Lebanon, Ottoman Empire

The Ottomans absorbed some of the traditions, art, and institutions of cultures in the regions they conquered and added new dimensions to them. Numerous traditions and cultural traits of previous empires (In fields such as architecture, cuisine, music, leisure, and government) were adopted by the Ottoman Turks, who developed them into new forms, resulting in a new and distinctively Ottoman cultural identity. Despite newer added amalgamations, the Ottoman dynasty, like their predecessors in the Sultanate of Rum and the Seljuk Empire, were thoroughly Persianised in their culture, language, habits, and customs, and therefore the empire has been described as a Persianate empire.[224][17][18][225] Intercultural marriages also played a part in creating the characteristic Ottoman elite culture. When compared to the Turkish folk culture, the influence of these new cultures in creating the culture of the Ottoman elite was clear.

New Mosque and Eminönü bazaar, Constantinople, c. 1895

Slavery was a part of Ottoman society,[226] with most slaves employed as domestic servants. Agricultural slavery, such as that which was widespread in the Americas, was relatively rare. Unlike systems of chattel slavery, slaves under Islamic law were not regarded as movable property, but maintained basic, though limited, rights. This gave them a degree of protection against abuse.[227] Female slaves were still sold in the Empire as late as 1908.[228] During the 19th century the Empire came under pressure from Western European countries to outlaw the practice. Policies developed by various Sultans throughout the 19th century attempted to curtail the Ottoman slave trade but slavery had centuries of religious backing and sanction and so slavery was never abolished in the Empire.[211]


Ottomans adopted Persian bureaucratic traditions and culture. The sultans also made an important contribution in the development of Persian literature.[230]


In the Ottoman Empire, each millet established a schooling system serving its members.[231] Education, therefore, was largely divided on ethnic and religious lines: few non-Muslims attended schools for Muslim students and vice versa. Most institutions that did serve all ethnic and religious groups taught in French or other languages.[232]




Ahmet Nedîm Efendi, one of the most celebrated Ottoman poets






Ottoman architecture was influenced by Persian, Byzantine Greek and Islamic architectures. During the Rise period (The early or first Ottoman architecture period), Ottoman art was in search of new ideas. The growth period of the Empire became the classical period of architecture when Ottoman art was at its most confident. During the years of the Stagnation period, Ottoman architecture moved away from this style, however. During the Tulip Era, it was under the influence of the highly ornamented styles of Western Europe; Baroque, Rococo, Empire and other styles intermingled. Concepts of Ottoman architecture concentrate mainly on the mosque. The mosque was integral to society, city planning, and communal life. Besides the mosque, it is also possible to find good examples of Ottoman architecture in soup kitchens, theological schools, hospitals, Turkish baths, and tombs.

Examples of Ottoman architecture of the classical period, besides Istanbul and Edirne, can also be seen in Egypt, Eritrea, Tunisia, Algiers, the Balkans, and Romania, where mosques, bridges, fountains, and schools were built. The art of Ottoman decoration developed with a multitude of influences due to the wide ethnic range of the Ottoman Empire. The greatest of the court artists enriched the Ottoman Empire with many pluralistic artistic influences, such as mixing traditional Byzantine art with elements of Chinese art.[239]

Decorative arts

Ottoman miniature painters
Selimiye Mosque calligraphy



The art of carpet weaving was particularly significant in the Ottoman Empire, carpets having an immense importance both as decorative furnishings, rich in religious and other symbolism and as a practical consideration, as it was customary to remove one's shoes in living quarters.[240] The weaving of such carpets originated in the nomadic cultures of central Asia (carpets being an easily transportable form of furnishing), and eventually spread to the settled societies of Anatolia. Turks used carpets, rugs, and kilims not just on the floors of a room but also as a hanging on walls and doorways, where they provided additional insulation. They were also commonly donated to mosques, which often amassed large collections of them.[241]

Music and performing arts



The traditional shadow play called Karagöz and Hacivat was widespread throughout the Ottoman Empire and featured characters representing all of the major ethnic and social groups in that culture.[242][243] It was performed by a single puppet master, who voiced all of the characters, and accompanied by tambourine (def). Its origins are obscure, deriving perhaps from an older Egyptian tradition, or possibly from an Asian source.


Enjoying coffee at the harem
Turkish women baking bread, 1790



Science and technology

Ottoman Imperial Museum, today the Istanbul Archaeology Museums


Taqi al-Din built the Constantinople observatory of Taqi al-Din in 1577, where he carried out observations until 1580. He calculated the eccentricity of the Sun's orbit and the annual motion of the apogee.[246] However, the observatory's primary purpose was almost certainly astrological rather than astronomical, leading to its destruction in 1580 due to the rise of a clerical faction that opposed its use for that purpose.[247] He also experimented with steam power in Ottoman Egypt in 1551, when he described a steam jack driven by a rudimentary steam turbine.[248]




In the early 19th century, Egypt under Muhammad Ali began using steam engines for industrial manufacturing, with industries such as ironworks, textile manufacturing, paper mills and hulling mills moving towards steam power.[252] Economic historian Jean Batou argues that the necessary economic conditions existed in Egypt for the adoption of oil as a potential energy source for its steam engines later in the 19th century.[252]





See also


  1. ^ In Ottoman Turkish, the city was known by various names, among which were Kostantiniyye (قسطنطينيه‎) (replacing the suffix -polis with the Arabic nisba), Dersaadet (در سعادت‎) and Istanbul (استانبول‎). Names other than Istanbul became obsolete in Turkish after the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923,[3] and after Turkey's transition to Latin script in 1928, the Turkish government in 1930 requested that foreign embassies and companies use Istanbul, and that name became widely accepted internationally.[4] Eldem Edhem, author of an entry on Istanbul in Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, stated that the majority of the Turkish people circa 2010, including historians, believe using "Constantinople" to refer to the Ottoman-era city is "politically incorrect" despite any historical accuracy.[3]
  2. ^ The sultan from 1512 to 1520.
  5. ^ "Sublime Ottoman State" was not used in minority languages for Christians and Jews, nor in French,[13] the common Western language among the educated in the late Ottoman Empire.[7] Minority languages, which use the same name in French:[13]
    • Western Armenian: Օսմանյան տերութիւն (Osmanean Têrut´iwn, meaning "Ottoman Authority/Governance/Rule"), Օսմանյան պետութիւն (Osmanean Petut‘iwn, meaning "Ottoman State"), and Օսմանյան կայսրություն (Osmanean Kaysrut, meaning "Ottoman Empire")
    • Bulgarian: Османска империя (Otomanskata Imperiya), and Отоманска империя is an archaic version. Definite article forms: Османската империя and Османска империя were synonymous
    • Greek: Оθωμανική Επικράτεια (Othōmanikē Epikrateia) and Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία (Othōmanikē Avtokratoria)
    • Ladino: Imperio otomano
  8. ^ Although his sons ‘Ali and Faisal had already initiated operations at Medina starting on 5 June[145]


  3. ^ a b Edhem, Eldem. "Istanbul." In: Ágoston, Gábor and Bruce Alan Masters. Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. Infobase Publishing, 21 May 2010. ISBN 1438110251, 9781438110257. Start and CITED: p. 286. "With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, all previous names were abandoned and Istanbul came to designate the entire city."
  4. ^ (Stanford and Ezel Shaw (27 May 1977): History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vol II, ISBN 0521291666, 9780521291668. p. 386; Robinson (1965), The First Turkish Republic, p. 298 and Society (4 March 2014). "Istanbul, not Constantinople". National Geographic Society. Retrieved 28 March 2019.)
  5. ^ Flynn, Thomas O. (7 August 2017). The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c.1760–c.1870. BRILL. ISBN 9789004313545.
  6. ^
    • Greek (Some of the sultans and among Greek-speaking community)
    • Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic, B. Fortna, page 50;"Although in the late Ottoman period Persian was taught in the state schools...."
    • Persian Historiography and Geography, Bertold Spuler, page 68, "On the whole, the circumstance in Turkey took a similar course: in Anatolia, the Persian language had played a significant role as the carrier of civilization.[..]..where it was at time, to some extent, the language of diplomacy...However Persian maintained its position also during the early Ottoman period in the composition of histories and even Sultan Salim I, a bitter enemy of Iran and the Shi'ites, wrote poetry in Persian. Besides some poetical adaptations, the most important historiographical works are: Idris Bidlisi's flowery "Hasht Bihist", or Seven Paradises, begun in 1502 by the request of Sultan Bayazid II and covering the first eight Ottoman rulers.."
    • Picturing History at the Ottoman Court, Emine Fetvacı, page 31, "Persian literature, and belles-lettres in particular, were part of the curriculum: a Persian dictionary, a manual on prose composition; and Sa'dis "Gulistan", one of the classics of Persian poetry, were borrowed. All these title would be appropriate in the religious and cultural eudcation of the newly converted young men.
    • Persian Historiography: History of Persian Literature A, Volume 10, edited by Ehsan Yarshater, Charles Melville, page 437;"...Persian held a privileged place in Ottoman letters. Persian historical literature was first patronized during the reign of Mehmed II and continued unabated until the end of the 16th century.
  7. ^ a b c Strauss, Johann (2010). "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire: Translations of the Kanun-ı Esasi and Other Official Texts into Minority Languages". In Herzog, Christoph; Malek Sharif (eds.). The First Ottoman Experiment in Democracy. Wurzburg: Orient-Institut Istanbul. pp. 21–51. (info page on book at Martin Luther University) // CITED: p. 26 (PDF p. 28): "French had become a sort of semi-official language in the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the Tanzimat reforms.[...]It is true that French was not an ethnic language of the Ottoman Empire. But it was the only Western language which would become increasingly widespread among educated persons in all linguistic communities."
  8. ^ Finkel, Caroline (2005). Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923. New York: Basic Books. pp. 110–1. ISBN 978-0-465-02396-7.
  14. ^ A ́goston, Ga ́bor; Masters, Bruce Alan (2008). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. Infobase Publishing, NY. p. 444. ISBN 0-8160--6259-5. "Osman was simply one among a number Turkoman tribal leaders operating in the Sakarya region."
  15. ^ "Osman I". Encyclopedia Britannica. Osman I, also called Osman Gazi, (born c. 1258—died 1324 or 1326), ruler of a Turkmen principality in northwestern Anatolia who is regarded as the founder of the Ottoman Turkish state.
  18. ^ a b "Historiography. xi. Persian Historiography in the Ottoman Empire". Encyclopaedia Iranica. 12, fasc. 4. 2004. pp. 403–11.
  20. ^ Walter, F. "7: The Departure of Turkey from the 'Persianate' Musical Sphere". Music of the Ottoman court.
  28. ^
  30. ^ "Ottoman banknote with Arabic script". Retrieved 26 August 2010.
  44. ^ Hodgkinson 2005, p. 240
  49. ^ "Encyclopædia Britannica". Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved 26 August 2010.
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  58. ^ Mansel, Philip (1997). Constantinople : city of the world's desire 1453–1924. London: Penguin Books. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-14-026246-9.
  60. ^ "The Ottoman 'Discovery' of the Indian Ocean in the Sixteenth Century: The Age of Exploration from an Islamic Perspective". Retrieved 11 September 2019.
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Further reading

General surveys

  • The Cambridge History of Turkey
  • Agoston, Gabor and Bruce Masters, eds. Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire (2008)
  • Kia, Mehrdad, ed. The Ottoman Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia (2 vol 2017)
  • Lord Kinross. The Ottoman centuries : the rise and fall of the Turkish empire (1979) online.
  • Mikaberidze, Alexander. Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia (2 vol 2011)

Early Ottomans


Diplomatic and military

  • Albrecht-Carrié, René. A Diplomatic History of Europe Since the Congress of Vienna (1958), 736pp; a basic introduction, 1815–1955 online free to borrow
  • Çelik, Nihat. "Muslims, Non-Muslims and Foreign Relations: Ottoman Diplomacy." International Review of Turkish Studies 1.3 (2011): 8-30. online
  • Hurewitz, Jacob C. "Ottoman diplomacy and the European state system." Middle East Journal 15.2 (1961): 141–152. online

Specialty studies



  • Aksan, Virginia H. "What's Up in Ottoman Studies?" Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 1.1-2 (2014): 3-21. online
  • Finkel, Caroline. "Ottoman history: whose history is it?." International Journal of Turkish Studies 14.1/2 (2008).
  • Gerber, Haim. "Ottoman Historiography: Challenges of the Twenty-First Century." Journal of the American Oriental Society, 138#2 (2018), p. 369+. online
  • Eissenstat, Howard. "Children of Özal: The New Face of Turkish Studies" Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 1#1 (2014), pp. 23–35 DOI: 10.2979/jottturstuass.1.1-2.23 online
  • Lieven, Dominic. Empire: The Russian Empire and its rivals (Yale UP, 2002), comparisons with Russian, British, & Habsburg empires. excerpt
  • Yılmaz, Yasir. "Nebulous Ottomans vs. Good Old Habsburgs: A Historiographical Comparison." Austrian History Yearbook 48 (2017): 173–190. Online

External links

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