Ottoman Empire
From its beginnings in what is now Turkey in the 14th century, the Ottoman Empire expanded to cover much of the Middle East, southeastern Europe, and North Africa. During the 15th and 16th centuries it was one of the most powerful states in the world. In the 20th century the remains of the empire became the Republic of Turkey.
The empire was named after its founder, Osman. In the late 13th century Osman became a prince on the peninsula of Anatolia (or Asia Minor), which makes up most of present-day Turkey. Soon he emerged as the leader of local Turks in the fight against the Byzantine Empire. The Turks were Muslims (followers of Islam) and the Byzantines were Christians. Osman and his successors took over Byzantine territories, first in western Anatolia and then in southeastern Europe. By the mid–15th century most of the Balkan Peninsula had fallen into Ottoman hands. In 1453, under the leadership of Mehmed II, the Ottomans captured the city of Constantinople, the Byzantine capital. They renamed the city Istanbul and made it their capital.
The Ottoman Empire reached the peak of its power and wealth between the 1480s and the 1560s. In 1517 the Ottomans took control of Mecca and Medina, the holiest cities of Islam. After these conquests, the Ottoman ruler, or sultan, was regarded as the spiritual leader of Islam. During the reign of Süleyman I, from 1520 to 1566, the Ottoman Empire stretched from Hungary in Europe to the Persian Gulf in Asia. Its lands also included Egypt and the northern parts of present-day Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria.
The Ottoman sultans demanded that conquered lands pay taxes to the empire. They also took children from Christian families to be brought up as servants of the Ottomans. Many of these converted Christians eventually joined the army, becoming known as Janissaries. But those who showed special ability were able to rise to the highest levels of government within the empire.
The Ottoman Empire began a slow but steady decline in the last decades of the 16th century. Few sultans after Süleyman were able to exercise real power when the need arose. In 1683 the Ottomans were defeated in an attempt to capture the city of Vienna in Austria. That battle began more than a century of wars between the Ottomans and their European enemies. As a result, the empire lost much of its Balkan territory and all of its possessions on the shores of the Black Sea.
Along with the loss of territory, the Ottoman sultans began to lose their grip on power in the empire's remaining lands. Local rulers challenged the authority of the central government by forming their own armies and collecting their own taxes. In the 19th century Ottoman rulers made reforms in the empire in an attempt to hold onto power. But the changes came too slowly. By the second half of the 19th century the Ottoman Empire came to be known as “the sick man of Europe.”
More warfare led to the final collapse of the empire in the first decades of the 20th century. In 1912–13 the empire lost almost all its remaining European territory in two military conflicts known as the Balkan Wars. Then in World War I (1914–18) the empire fought with Germany on the losing side. This defeat forced the Ottoman leaders to give up much of the rest of their territory. Outraged by this development, a group of Turks led by Mustafa Kemal formed a new government. Ottoman leaders fled the country. In 1923 Turkey was declared a republic with Mustafa Kemal (later known as Atatürk) as its president
