The Ottoman Empire was an empire that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe and, with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed the Conqueror.
The historiography of the Ottoman Empire refers to the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to develop a history of the Ottoman Dynasty's empire.
Timariot was the name given to a Sipahi cavalryman in the Ottoman army. In return for service, each timariot received a parcel of revenue called a timar, a fief, which were usually recently conquered plots of agricultural land in the countryside. Far less commonly, the sultan would grant a civil servant or member of the imperial family a timar. Also non-military timar holders were obliged to supply the imperial army with soldiers and provisions.
Phanariots, Phanariotes, or Fanariots were members of prominent Greek families in Phanar, the chief Greek quarter of Constantinople where the Ecumenical Patriarchate is located, who traditionally occupied four important positions in the Ottoman Empire: Voivode of Moldavia, Voivode of Wallachia, Grand Dragoman, and Grand Dragoman of the Fleet. Despite their cosmopolitanism and often-Western education, the Phanariots were aware of their Greek ancestry and culture; according to Nicholas Mavrocordatos' Philotheou Parerga, "We are a race completely Hellenic".
The history of the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century has classically been described as one of stagnation and reform. In analogy with 18th-century France, it is also known as the Ancien Régime or Old Regime, contrasting with the "New Regime" of the Nizam-i Cedid and Tanzimat in the 19th century.
The 1838 Treaty of Balta Liman, or the Anglo-Ottoman Treaty, is a formal trade agreement signed between the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain. The trade policies imposed upon the Ottoman Empire, after the Treaty of Balta Liman, were some of the most liberal, open market, settlements that had ever been enacted during the time. The terms of the treaty stated that, the Ottoman Empire will abolish all monopolies, allow British merchants and their collaborators to have full access to all Ottoman markets and will be taxed equally to local merchants. These agreements did not constitute an equal free trade arrangement, as the United Kingdom still employed protectionist policies on their agricultural markets.
The economic history of the Ottoman Empire covers the period 1299–1923. Trade, agriculture, transportation, and religion make up the Ottoman Empire's economy.
A timar was land granted by the Ottoman sultans between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, with a tax revenue annual value of less than 20,000 akçes. The revenues produced from land acted as compensation for military service. A Timar holder was known as a Timariot. If the revenues produced from the timar were from 20,000 to 100,000 akçes, the timar would be called zeamet, and if they were above 100,000 akçes, the land would be called hass.
There is considerable controversy regarding social status in the Ottoman Empire. Social scientists have developed class models on the socio-economic stratification of Ottoman society which feature more or less congruent theories. Albert Hourani described the Ottoman Empire as "a bureaucratic state, holding different regions within a single administrative and fiscal system".
Women in the Ottoman Empire enjoyed a diverse range of rights depending on the time period, as well as their religion and class. The Ottoman Empire, first as a Turkoman beylik, and then a multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire, was ruled in accordance to the qanun, the semi-secular body of law enacted by Ottoman sultans. Furthermore, the relevant religious scriptures of its many confessional communities played a major role in the legal system, for the majority of Ottoman women, these were the Quran and Hadith as interpreted by Islamic jurists, often termed sharia. Most Ottoman women were permitted to participate in the legal system, purchase and sell property, inherit and bequeath wealth, and participate in other financial activities, rights which were unusual in the rest of Europe until the 19th century.
Aleppo Eyalet was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. After the Ottoman conquest it was governed from Damascus, but by 1534 Aleppo was made the capital of a new eyalet. Its reported area in the 19th century was 8,451 square miles (21,890 km2). Its capital, Aleppo, was the third largest city of the Ottoman Empire during the 16th and 17th century.
Avarız was a property tax in the Ottoman Empire, an annual cash tax paid by households registered in a defter.
The resm-i bennâk was a tax on peasants who had little or no land - those who did not pay the resm-i çift - in the Ottoman Empire.
The tapu resmi was a feudal land tax in the Ottoman Empire.
Mülk was a type of land unit under the Ottomans.
The çift-hane system was the basic unit of agrarian land holding and taxation in the Ottoman Empire from its beginning. The pre-modern Ottoman system of land tenure was based on the distribution of land between publicly owned lands, miri and privately owned lands mülk, and the majority of the arable land was miri, especially grain-producing land. Peasants were the vast majority of the empire, and they worked as farmers on land designated as miri, relying heavily on wheat-barley production for their subsistence. The peasant household had been the basic form of agrarian production in much of the land ruled by the Ottomans since Roman times, and this had continued through Byzantine rule. So, the çift-hane system was based on the realities which were present in much of the lands the Ottomans conquered: a class of free peasants cultivating their own land, and a taxation policy combining Byzantine, Ottoman, and Islamic rules.
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 Transformation of the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Era of Transformation, constitutes a period in the history of the Ottoman Empire from c. 1550 to c. 1700, spanning roughly from the end of the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent to the Treaty of Karlowitz at the conclusion of the War of the Holy League. This period was characterized by numerous dramatic political, social, and economic changes, which resulted in the empire shifting from an expansionist, patrimonial state into a bureaucratic empire based on an ideology of upholding justice and acting as the protector of Sunni Islam. These changes were in large part prompted by a series of political and economic crises in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, resulting from inflation, warfare, and political factionalism. Yet despite these crises the empire remained strong both politically and economically, and continued to adapt to the challenges of a changing world. The 17th century was once characterized as a period of decline for the Ottomans, but since the 1980s historians of the Ottoman Empire have increasingly rejected that characterization, identifying it instead as a period of crisis, adaptation, and transformation.
