Ottoman Empire, dynastic state centered in what is now Turkey, founded in the late 13th century and dismantled in the early 20th century. At its height in the mid-1500s, the Ottoman Empire controlled a vast area extending from the Balkan Peninsula to the Middle East and North Africa. The empire then went into a long, slow decline. It was abolished in 1922 and replaced by the Republic of Turkey the following year.

The Ottoman Empire started to form in 1299, when a Sunni Muslim warrior known as Osman began to lead raids on Christian Byzantine settlements in western Anatolia. Under Osman and his son Orhan (reigned 1326-1362), the Ottomans conquered parts of Anatolia and invaded Thrace in Europe. Murad I (reigned 1362-1389) directed the Ottoman advance into the Balkan Peninsula.

For the next 130 years, under a series of sultans, the Ottomans expanded their empire, gaining ground in Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Anatolia, and elsewhere. In 1453 Muhammad II conquered Constantinople. During the reign of Selim I (reigned 1512-1520), the Ottomans swept over Anatolia, down the Fertile Crescent, and across the Red Sea to Egypt.

Selim I died in 1520. By the 1540s his son Suleiman I (reigned 1520-1566) had campaigned to the gates of Vienna in the west and the Iranian city of Tabr&imarc;z in the east. Ottoman fortunes began to decline after Suleiman died in 1566, although the changes were imperceptible at first. The Ottomans took Cyprus between 1570 and 1571, and Sultan Murad IV (reigned 1623-1640) captured Baghdad. After Murad's death the empire experienced disorder in the provinces, unrest in the military, and a lack of candidates old enough to assume the sultanate.

Political order was restored in 1656 when Köprülü Muhammad Pasha assumed the office of grand vizier (chief minister). He dismissed incompetents, ferreted out corruption, and revived the vigor and pride of the Ottoman Empire. Upon his death in 1661, he was succeeded as grand vizier by his son, Köprülü Fazil Ahmed Pasha.

Under Köprülü Fazil Ahmed, the Ottomans completed their last great acquisition, the conquest of most of Crete (Kríti). His successor, Kara Mustafa Pasha, committed a blunder by taking Ottoman armies all the way to Vienna, where they were routed by Polish forces. In 1697 the Austrians ambushed the Ottoman army in northern Serbia, inflicting great losses. Under the resulting Treaty of Karlowitz, the Ottoman Empire relinquished territory it had long held under its control. This event marked the beginning of the Ottoman retreat from the Balkan Peninsula.

The Ottoman state and its society rested on many institutions. One was the belief that leadership was a divine right bestowed on a chosen family. There were two other concepts that accompanied Ottoman practices of succession. One was that, up until the reign of Muhammad III (1595-1603), Ottoman princes were sent off to the provinces in the company of their tutors to learn the business of government. The other was that these same princes had to compete for the throne. When these practices ceased to be the rule, sultans were not properly trained for the duties of the crown.

In addition to their traditions of family sovereignty, the Ottomans drew strength from their origins as ghazis—that is, warriors who carry out raids upon and warfare with Christians in the interests of Islam. Frontier society had two social groups: the askeri (the military) and the raya (the subjects). Besides protecting the realm and the raya, the askeri conquered new territories, thus bringing more raya and wealth into the empire.

Several other elements constituted the backbone of Ottoman administrative practices and military preparedness. Those included the timar system, the land survey, the devshirme, and the Janissaries.

In the timar system, an askeri was given a share of the agricultural taxes of a designated region in return for military service and assistance in provincial administration. Timars were set forth and awarded in accordance with a land survey, which took place when a new area was conquered, and sometimes when there was a change in reign or when conditions in an older area had changed.

Another Islamic institution adapted by the Ottomans was the devshirme, in which young Christian males were removed from their villages in the Balkans to be trained for state service. The best of them were selected for education in the palace school. There they converted to Islam; became versed in Islamic religion and culture; learned Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic; and were trained in the military and social arts. When members of this select group graduated, they assumed positions in the provincial military structure or took up service in the palace guards regiments. Those not selected for the palace school converted to Islam, worked for rural Turkish farmers, learned vernacular Turkish and folk Islamic culture, and became members of the sultan's elite military infantry, the Janissaries.

In the early 18th century the Ottoman Empire encountered internal difficulties. Inflationary pressures caused economic disruptions. Bandits became common in the provinces and the government found it difficult to maintain order. The devshirme system was on the verge of disintegration, and the Janissaries periodically rebelled against sultans.

The Ottomans did mount a number of successful campaigns in the early 18th century. They defeated Russian tsar Peter the Great in 1711 and successfully fought the Austrians between 1736 and 1739. But then they lost in Romania to the Russians in a war that lasted from 1769 to 1774. French commander Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798.

Sultan Mahmud II (reigned 1808-1839) reasserted control over Anatolia and the Balkans, but he was much less successful in dealing with the drives for autonomy in Serbia, Greece, and Egypt. Serbia and Greece attained autonomy in 1829. In Egypt, Muhammad Ali—the Ottoman viceroy, or governor of Egypt—secured autocratic powers and took control of the country.

Abd al-Madjid (reigned 1839-1861) undertook reforms in education, military affairs, financial matters, the bureaucracy, and civil rights of ethnic and religious minorities. However, the reform movement soon foundered on budget deficits that led to increased foreign debt, foreign policy fiascoes, internal ethnic and nationalist discontent, and loss of European territory.

Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1877, driving the Ottomans back almost to the walls of Constantinople. Later, the Ottomans regained some of their lands, but Russia still made territorial gains in eastern Anatolia. In addition, Serbia and Montenegro became independent, and Austria-Hungary was allowed to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina. Britain gained possession of Cyprus.

The Ottomans also lost Tunisia to the French in 1881, Egypt to the British in 1882, and Eastern Rumelia to Bulgaria in 1885. To maintain greater control over what remained of his empire, Abd al-Hamid suspended the constitution he had granted in 1876.

The Ottoman Empire gradually drew closer to Germany, and at the same time, opposition groups formed. Among these was a group of army officers called the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP). Through a bloodless revolt in 1908, this organization and other forces, loosely grouped under the name Young Turks, forced the sultan to restore the constitution and parliamentary government. In 1909 Abd al-Hamid was deposed and banished. Although the title of sultan was given to his brother, who ruled as Muhammad V, the Young Turks of the CUP were in command of the empire.

The Young Turks continued the Ottoman reform process, opening schools to women and overseeing legislative progress in women's rights. External threats plagued the CUP, however. The Italians invaded Tripoli in 1911 and gained sovereignty there in 1912. The two Balkan Wars from 1912 to 1913 cost the Ottomans most of their territory in the Balkans. The 1914 assassination of Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand by a Serb in Sarajevo propelled Europe into World War I (1914-1918). The Ottomans aligned with the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria).

World War I was a disaster for the Ottoman Empire. Russia invaded Anatolia; the British, aided by an Arab revolt, swept through the Fertile Crescent; and eventually the Allies occupied Constantinople. The Battle of Gallipoli, where the performance of a young army officer named Mustafa Kemal helped turn back the Allied invasion, was one of the few Ottoman military victories of the war. As the World War I peace negotiations dragged on, the British helped the Greeks land at Izmir to take the share of western Anatolia that had been promised them earlier. Mustafa Kemal organized the resistance against the Greeks (and later against the British and the French). In Ankara he organized a rival government, which abolished the sultanate on November 1, 1922, formally ending the Ottoman Empire. The Republic of Turkey was founded the next year.