Osman I or Osman Ghazi, sometimes transliterated archaically as Othman, was the founder of the Ottoman Empire. While initially a small Turkoman principality during Osman's lifetime, his beylik transformed into a world empire in the centuries after his death. It existed until shortly after the end of World War I.
Suleiman I, commonly known as Suleiman the Magnificent in the West and Suleiman the Lawgiver in his realm, was the longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 until his death in 1566. Under his administration, the Ottoman Empire ruled over at least 25 million people.
Ertuğrul or Ertuğrul Gazi was a 13th-century bey, who was the father of Osman I. Little is known about Ertuğrul's life. According to Ottoman tradition, he was the son of Suleyman Shah, the leader of the Kayı tribe of the Oghuz Turks. These Turkomans fled from western Central Asia to Anatolia to escape the Mongol conquests, but he may instead have been the son of Gündüz Alp. According to this legend, after the death of his father, Ertuğrul and his followers entered the service of the Sultanate of Rum, for which he was rewarded with dominion over the town of Söğüt on the frontier with the Byzantine Empire. This set off the chain of events that would ultimately lead to the founding of the Ottoman Empire.
The rise of the Ottoman Empire is a period of history that started with the emergence of the Ottoman principality in c. 1299, and ended circa 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". 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. 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.
Sheikh Bedreddin Mahmud bin Israel bin Abdulaziz (1359–1420) was an influential mystic, scholar, theologian, and revolutionary. He is best known for his role in a 1416 revolt against the Ottoman Empire, in which he and his disciples posed a serious challenge to the authority of Sultan Mehmed I and the Ottoman state.
The Germiyanids was a prominent Anatolian beylik established by the Oghuz Turkish tribes after the decline of Sultanate of Rûm. However, while the beylik was always mentioned as Turkoman or Oghuz Turkish, the population consisted of Turks and Yezidi Kurds, brought by the Seljuks from the east of Malatya to western Anatolia as militia guards against the threatening Turkish tribesmen.
The Classical Age of the Ottoman Empire concerns the history of the Ottoman Empire from the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453 until the second half of the sixteenth century, roughly the end of the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. During this period a system of patrimonial rule based on the absolute authority of the sultan reached its apex, and the empire developed the institutional foundations which it would maintain, in modified form, for several centuries. The territory of the Ottoman Empire greatly expanded, and led to what some historians have called the Pax Ottomana. The process of centralization undergone by the empire prior to 1453 was brought to completion in the reign of Mehmed II.
Süleyman Pasha was the son of Orhan, the second ruler of the newly established Ottoman Empire. He played a major role in early Ottoman expansion into Thrace in the 1350s. He died in a hunting accident in 1357.
Handan Sultan was a consort of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed III, and mother and Valide Sultan to their son Sultan Ahmed I.
İmâdüddin Mustafa bin İbrâhim bin İnac al-Kırşehrî (1206-1326), often known as Sheikh Edebali, was an Arab Sunni Muslim Sheikh of the Ahi brotherhood, who helped shape and develop the policies of the growing Ottoman State. He became first Qadi of the Ottoman Empire. He was the father of Rabia Bala Hatun.
Malhun Hatun was the wife of Osman I, the leader of the Ottoman Turks and the founder of the dynasty that established and ruled the Ottoman Empire. She was possibly the mother of Sultan Orhan.
Dervish Ahmed, better known by his pen name Âşıki or family name Aşıkpaşazade, was an Ottoman historian, a prominent representative of the early Ottoman historiography. He was a descendant of mystic poet dervish Aşık Pasha (1272–1333). He was born in the region of Amasya and studied in various Anatolian towns before going to Hajj and stayed some time in Egypt. He later took part in various Ottoman campaigns, such as the Battle of Kosovo (1448), Fall of Constantinople and witnessed the circumcision festivities of Mustafa and Bayezid II the sons of Mehmed the Conqueror. Later in his life he started to write his famous history work Tevārīḫ-i Āl-i ʿOsmān.
This is a bibliography of notable works about the Ottoman Empire.
Hatice Sultan was an Ottoman princess, daughter of Sultan Selim I and Hafsa Sultan. She was the sister of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
Rabia Bala Hatun was the wife of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Dynasty. She was the daughter of the famous Sheikh Edebali and the mother of Alaeddin Pasha of the Ottoman Empire.
Halime Hatun was, according to some Ottoman folklore, the wife of Ertuğrul and the mother of Osman I.
The Ottoman decline thesis or Ottoman decline paradigm is an obsolete historical narrative which once played a dominant role in the study of the history of the Ottoman Empire. According to the decline thesis, following a golden age associated with the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the empire gradually entered into a period of all-encompassing stagnation and decline from which it was never able to recover, lasting until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. This thesis was used throughout most of the twentieth century as the basis of both Western and Republican Turkish understanding of Ottoman history. However, by 1978, historians had begun to reexamine the fundamental assumptions of the decline thesis.
The Ghaza or Ghazi thesis is a historical paradigm first formulated by Paul Wittek which has been used to interpret the nature of the Ottoman Empire during the earliest period of its history, the fourteenth century, and its subsequent history. The thesis addresses the question of how the Ottomans were able to expand from a small principality on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire into a centralized, intercontinental empire. According to the Ghaza thesis, the Ottomans accomplished this by attracting recruits to fight for them in the name of Islamic holy war against the non-believers. Such a warrior was known in Ottoman Turkish as a ghazi, and thus this thesis sees the early Ottoman state as a "Ghazi State," defined by an ideology of holy war. The Ghaza Thesis dominated early Ottoman historiography throughout much of the twentieth century before coming under increasing criticism beginning in the 1980s. Historians now generally reject the Ghaza Thesis, and consequently the idea that Ottoman expansion was primarily fueled by holy war, but disagree about what hypothesis to replace it with.
Şehzade Mehmed was an Ottoman prince and the second son of Sultan Ahmed I. His mother was in all probability Kösem Sultan, Ahmed's favorite and Haseki.
