Osman's beylik became a tri-continental empire until 1922
From a northwestern Anatolian principality founded by Osman I around 1299, the Ottoman Empire spanned Southeastern Europe, West Asia, and North Africa into the early twentieth century. It ended Byzantium, then spent centuries negotiating decline after the failed 1683 Vienna siege.
Mid-fourteenth-century Balkan expansion made a transcontinental state. Modern consensus dates relative decline after 1683 yet notes flexible strength into the 1700s before late-century technological lag. Young Turk intellectuals pushed Westernising reform, culminating in the 1908 CUP revolution restoring constitutional monarchy—then wartime catastrophe beside the Central Powers.
Muslim refugees from Balkan, Caucasus, and Crimean contractions poured into Anatolia. The English name Ottoman anglicises Osman; Ottoman Turkish called the state the Sublime Ottoman State. Osmanlı first meant Osman's tribal followers and later the ruling military and administrative class, whereas Türk was used for Anatolian peasants.
The early climb was steady. As the Rum Sultanate faded in the 13th century, Anatolia split into beyliks, and Osman's, in Bithynia on the Byzantine frontier, grew fastest; he died in 1323 or 1324. Historians connect the rapid advance to the Black Death, which left Byzantine lands short of people and soldiers. Balkan territory lost after 1402, including Thessaloniki and Kosovo, was regained by Murad II, who crushed the Crusade of Varna on 10 November 1444. His son Mehmed the Conqueror took Constantinople on 29 May 1453 and let the Orthodox Church keep its autonomy in return for loyalty. Selim I, reigning from 1512 to 1520, beat Safavid Iran at Chaldiran and annexed Mamluk Egypt, and Suleiman the Magnificent took Belgrade in 1521 and won at Mohács in 1526. Control of the overland trade routes between Europe and Asia underpinned the prosperity.
Source: Ottoman Empire
