Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire, also known as the Sublime Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: Devlet-i ʿAliyye-yi ʿOsmâniyye or Osmanlı Devleti), was a Sunni Muslim and Turkic dominion that ruled the Eastern Mediterranean for an excess of six hundred years.

History

Formation

By 1299, the Byzantines had lost most of the Anatolian provinces, and as a result, Turkish Anatolia was divided into numerous Ghazi emirates. One of these Ghazi emirates was led by Osman I, which the empire would be later be entitled by.

Conquests

After Osman's death, the Ottomans rapidly conquered large territories in Anatolia and Greece that had previously been owned by the Byzantine Empire. Their victory at the Battle of Kosovo ended Serbian power in the region and paved the entrance to Europe. In time, the Ottomans had conquered all the lands around the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, though trouble struck when Timur of the Timurid Empire attacked Anatolia at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. He captured the Sultan and part of the Ottoman territories were lost. However, after a period of temporary disorder, Mehmed I became the Sultan and restored Ottoman power.

Constantinople

The grandson of Mehmed was known as Mehmed II al Fatih (the Conqueror). He reorganized the military and state of the Ottoman Sultanate and prepared the final effort to conquer the Byzantine capital Constantinople. In order to overcome the attack, the Byzantine Empire made an attempt at allegiance with the Pope and the Catholic Kingdoms by negotiating its conversion to Catholicism. However, the conversion was not accepted and Constantinople fell to Ottoman power in 1453, the city was converted into the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

Fall of the Empire

The Ottoman Turkish Empire fell behind the other European Empires in the 19th century, its western, more Christian provinces revolting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was finally conquered at the end of the first world war by the British and French Empires. The British marched into Jerusalem in 1917, and the Ottoman Empire finally fell when the British and French Imperial armies occupied Constantinople in 1918. The Eastern Ottoman territories such as Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Palestine became British protectorates, and Syria and Lebanon given to the French. Anatolia and the old Ottoman capital Constantinople became the modern Republic of Turkey. Constantinople officially became known as İstanbul in 1930. The first President of Turkey was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, widely regarded as the founder of modern Turkey.

Source

Wikipedia: Fall of the Ottoman Empire