The empire emerged from a beylik, or principality, founded in northwestern Anatolia in c. 1299 by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. His successors conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into the Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II, which marked the Ottomans' emergence as a major regional power. Under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566), the empire reached the peak of its power, prosperity, and political development. By the start of the 17th century, the Ottomans presided over 32 provinces and numerous vassal states, which over time were either absorbed into the Empire or granted various degrees of autonomy.[m] With its capital at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Middle East and Europe for six centuries.
While the Ottoman Empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline after the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, modern academic consensus posits that the empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society and military into much of the 18th century. However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind those of its chief European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian empires. The Ottomans consequently suffered severe military defeats in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, culminating in the loss of both territory and global prestige. This prompted a comprehensive process of reform and modernization known as the Tanzimat; over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organized internally, despite suffering further territorial losses, especially in the Balkans, where a number of new states emerged.
^Edhem, Eldem (21 May 2010). "Istanbul". In Gábor, Ágoston; Masters, Bruce Alan (eds.). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. Infobase. p. 286. ISBN978-1-4381-1025-7. 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.
^Shaw, Stanford J.; Shaw, Ezel Kural (1977b). History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. 2: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808–1975. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511614972. ISBN9780511614972.
^Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian Learning in the Ottoman World". In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. pp. 88–89. As the Ottoman Turks learned Persian, the language and the culture it carried seeped not only into their court and imperial institutions but also into their vernacular language and culture. The appropriation of Persian, both as a second language and as a language to be steeped together with Turkish, was encouraged notably by the sultans, the ruling class, and leading members of the mystical communities.
^Tezcan, Baki (2012). "Ottoman Historical Writing". In Rabasa, José (ed.). The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 3: 1400–1800 The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 3: 1400–1800. Oxford University Press. pp. 192–211. Persian served as a 'minority' prestige language of culture at the largely Turcophone Ottoman court.
^Spuler, Bertold (2003). Persian Historiography and Geography. Pustaka Nasional Pte. p. 68. ISBN978-9971-77-488-2. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2022. 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...
^Fetvacı, Emine (2013). Picturing History at the Ottoman Court. Indiana University Press. p. 31. ISBN978-0-253-00678-3. Archived from the original on 21 October 2022. Retrieved 21 October 2022. 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 titles would be appropriate in the religious and cultural education of the newly converted young men.
^Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian learning in the Ottoman World". In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. p. 92 (note 27). Though Persian, unlike Arabic, was not included in the typical curriculum of an Ottoman madrasa, the language was offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas. For those Ottoman madrasa curricula featuring Persian, see Cevat İzgi, Osmanlı Medreselerinde İlim, 2 vols. (Istanbul: İz, 1997),1: 167–169.
^Ayşe Gül Sertkaya (2002). "Şeyhzade Abdurrezak Bahşı". In György Hazai (ed.). Archivum Ottomanicum. Vol. 20. pp. 114–115. Archived from the original on 24 October 2022. Retrieved 23 October 2022. As a result, we can claim that Şeyhzade Abdürrezak Bahşı was a scribe lived in the palaces of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror and his son Bayezid-i Veli in the 15th century, wrote letters (bitig) and firmans (yarlığ) sent to Eastern Turks by Mehmed II and Bayezid II in both Uighur and Arabic scripts and in East Turkestan (Chagatai) language.
^Cite error: The named reference Lambton-1995 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Pamuk, Şevket (2000). A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge University Press. pp. 30–31. ISBN0-521-44197-8. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2022. The Ottomans began to strike coins in the name of Orhan Bey in 1326. These earliest coins carried inscriptions such as "the great Sultan, Orhan son of Osman" [...] Ottoman historiography has adopted 1299 as the date for the foundation of the state. 1299 might represent the date at which the Ottomans finally obtained their independence from the Seljuk sultan at Konya. Probably, they were forced at the same time, or very soon thereafter, to accept the overlordship of the Ilkhanids [...] Numismatic evidence thus suggest that independence did not really occur until 1326.
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