Rise of the Ottoman Empire

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The rise of the Ottoman Empire started with the emergence of the Ottoman principality (Ottoman Turkish: Osmanlı Beyliği) in c. 1299 and ended c. 1453. This period witnessed the foundation of a political entity ruled by the Oghuz Turkic Kayi tribe's 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, Caucasus, 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 achieved by Sultan Mehmed II...

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