Rise of the Ottoman Empire
Rise of the Ottoman Empire to prominence (1299-1453) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The rise of the Ottoman Empire is a period of history that started with the emergence of the Ottoman principality (Turkish: Osmanlı Beyliği) in c. 1299, and ended c. 1453. This period witnessed the foundation of a political entity ruled by the Ottoman Dynasty in the northwestern Anatolian region of Bithynia, and its transformation from a small principality on the Byzantine frontier into an empire spanning the Balkans, Anatolia, Middle East and North Africa. For this reason, this period in the empire's history has been described as the "Proto-Imperial Era".[1] Throughout most of this period, the Ottomans were merely one of many competing states in the region, and relied upon the support of local warlords Ghazis and vassals (Beys) to maintain control over their realm. By the middle of the fifteenth century the Ottoman sultans were able to accumulate enough personal power and authority to establish a centralized imperial state, a process which was brought to fruition by Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451–1481– ).[2] The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 is seen as the symbolic moment when the emerging Ottoman state shifted from a mere principality into an empire therefore marking a major turning point in its history.[3]
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The cause of Ottoman success cannot be attributed to any single factor, and they varied throughout the period as the Ottomans continually adapted to changing circumstances.[4]
The earlier part of this period, the fourteenth century, is particularly difficult for historians to study due to the scarcity of sources. Not a single written document survives from the reign of Osman I, and very little survives from the rest of the century.[5] The Ottomans, furthermore, did not begin to record their own history until the fifteenth century, more than a hundred years after many of the events they describe.[6] It is thus a great challenge for historians to differentiate between fact and myth in analyzing the stories contained in these later chronicles,[7] so much so that one historian has even declared it impossible, describing the earliest period of Ottoman history as a "black hole".[8]
Turkish historian Halil Inalcik has emphasized the importance of religious zeal—expressed through jihad—as a primary motivation for the conquests of the Ottomans: “The ideal of gaza, holy war, was an important factor in the foundation and development of the Ottoman state. Society in the frontier principalities conformed to a particular cultural pattern imbued with the ideal of continuous Holy War and continuous expansion of the Dar ul Islam—the realms of Islam—until they covered the whole world.”[9] This is known as the Gaza Thesis, a now largely-criticised theory of early Ottoman expansion.