Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: When did the Ottoman Empire begin and end?
The foundation and rise of the Ottoman Empire is a period of history that started with the emergence of the Ottoman principality in c.1299, and ended with the conquest of Constantinople on May 29, 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 and Anatolia. 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 and vassals 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, marking a major turning point in its history.[3]
The year 1204 marks the beginning of the Late Byzantine period when Constantinople and a number of Byzantine territories were conquered by the Latins during the Fourth Crusade. During this period, a number of Byzantine Greek successor states emerged such as the Empire of Nicaea, the Despotate of Epirus and the Empire of Trebizond. In Latin-occupied territories, elements of feudality entered medieval Greek life. The Latin Empire, however, lasted only 57 years when in 1261, Constantinople was reclaimed by the Byzantine Greeks and the Byzantine Empire was restored. From 1261 onwards, Byzantium underwent a gradual weakening of its internal structures and the reduction of its territories from Ottoman invasions culminating in the fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople resulted in the official end of both Byzantium and the Byzantine period of Greek history.
When the Ottoman Caliph called for a "Great Jihad" by all Muslims against Allied powers during World War I, there were hopes and fears that non-Turkish Muslims would side with Ottoman Turkey, but the appeal did not "[unite] the Muslim world", and Muslims did not turn on their non-Muslim commanders in the Allied forces. (The war led to the end of the caliphate as the Ottoman Empire entered on the side of the war's losers and surrendered by agreeing to "viciously punitive" conditions. These were overturned by the popular war hero Mustafa Kemal, who was also a secularist and later abolished the caliphate.)
In the last century of Ottoman rule, in addition to the Ottoman state postal service, up to six foreign powers were also allowed to operate postal services on Ottoman territory, with such rights originating in the Ottoman capitulations and other bilateral treaties. At the beginning of the First World War, the specific postal rights enjoyed by these foreign powers throughout the empire were revoked by the Ottoman authorities. Beginning in 1900 through until the war's end, Ottoman citizens, including those in Palestine, were forbidden to use the services of the foreign post offices.
With the resignation of the Ottoman Empire from the war with the Armistice of Mudros between Ottoman Empire and Entente on 30 October 1918, it was expected that Fahreddin Pasha would also surrender. He refused and did not surrender even after the end of the war despite pleas from the Ottoman Sultan. He held the city until 72 days after the end of the war. After the Armistice of Moudros the closest Ottoman unit was 1300 km (808 miles) away from Medina.
Armenia's most crippling problem was its dispute with its neighbor to the west, the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans had killed as many as 1.5 million Armenians during the Armenian Genocide. Although the armies of the Ottoman Empire eventually occupied the South Caucasus in the summer of 1918 and stood poised to crush the republic, Armenia resisted until the end of October, when the Ottoman Empire capitulated to the Allied powers. Though the Ottoman Empire was partially occupied by the Allies, and while being invaded by Franco-Armenian forces of the Cilicia Campaign, the Turks did not withdraw their forces to the pre-war Russo-Turkish boundary until February 1919 and maintained many troops mobilized along this frontier.
Beginning with Murad I in the 14th century and extending through the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire employed "devşirme" (دوشيرم), a kind of tribute or conscription system where young Christian boys were taken from communities in the Balkans, enslaved and converted to Islam and later employed either in the Janissary military corps or the Ottoman administrative system. The most promising students were enrolled in the Enderun School, whose graduates would fill the higher positions. Most of the children collected were from the Empire's Balkan territories, where the "devşirme" system was referred to as the "blood tax". When the children ended up becoming Islamic due to the milieu in which they were raised, any children that they had were considered to be free Muslims.
The Ottoman Empire began its expansion into Europe by taking the European portions of the Byzantine Empire in the 14th and 15th centuries up until the 1453 capture of Constantinople, establishing Islam as the state religion in the region. The Ottoman Empire continued to stretch northwards, taking Hungary in the 16th century, and reaching as far north as the Podolia in the mid-17th century (Peace of Buczacz), by which time most of the Balkans was under Ottoman control. Ottoman expansion in Europe ended with their defeat in the Great Turkish War. In the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), the Ottoman Empire lost most of its conquests in Central Europe. The Crimean Khanate was later annexed by Russia in 1783. Over the centuries, the Ottoman Empire gradually lost almost all of its European territories, until its collapse in 1922, when the former empire was transformed into the nation of Turkey.
The Ottoman Empire overran northern Epirus from the late 14th century, but being a natural fortress, Himara was the only region that did not submit to Ottoman rule. It became a symbol of resistance to the Ottomans but suffered from an almost continuous state of warfare. Himariotes participated in Skanderbeg's resistance against the Ottoman Empire. In the summer of 1473 the chieftain John Vlasis, with a small unit from nearby Corfu as well as with native Himariot support, took control of the entire coastal region from Sagiada to Himara, but when the ongoing Ottoman-Venetian war ended (1479) the region was again under Ottoman control. In 1481, one year after the Ottomans had landed in Otranto in southern Italy, the Himariotes joined the forces of Gjon Kastrioti II (son of Skanderbeg) in his uprising against the Ottomans. The uprising failed, but the Himariotes rose up again in 1488, and between 1494–1509, destabilizing Ottoman control but failing to liberate their territory.
In 1804 the Serbian Revolution against Ottoman rule erupted in the Balkans, running in parallel with the Napoleonic invasion. By 1817, when the revolution ended, Serbia was raised to the status of self-governing monarchy under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. In 1821 the First Hellenic Republic became the first Balkan country to achieve its independence from the Ottoman Empire. It was officially recognised by the Porte in 1829, after the end of the Greek War of Independence.
Ottoman's did not see a chance of these new states to stand against new Russia. These new Muslim states needed support to be emerged as viable independent states. In order to consolidate a buffer zone with Russia (both for the Empire and these new states), however, Ottomans needed to expel the Bolsheviks from Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus before the end of war. Based on 1917 negotiations, Enver concluded that Empire should not to expect much military assistance from the Muslims of the Caucasus as they were the one in need. Enver also knew the importance of Kars—Julfa railroad and the adjacent areas for this support. Goal was set forward beginning from 1918 to end of the war.
It has pleased western historians to write of a decline of the Ottoman Empire as though a stable and uncontested polity of that name once existed. The borders did expand and contract but they were always dynamic and always in "question" right from the beginning. The Ottoman Empire was created from the lands of the former eastern Roman Empire on the occasion of the latter's violent demise. The last Roman emperor died fighting hand-to-hand in the streets of his capital, Constantinople, overwhelmed by the Ottoman military, in May, 1453. The victors inherited his remaining territory in the Balkans.
Nevertheless, border disputes between Persia and the Ottoman Empire did not end. Between 1555 and 1918, Persia and the Ottomans signed no less than 18 treaties that would re-address their disputed borders. The exact demarcation according to this treaty would permanently begin during the 19th century, essentially laying out the rough outline for the frontier between modern day Iran and the states of Turkey and Iraq (the former Ottoman-Persian border until 1918, when the Ottoman Empire lost its territories in the Middle East following their defeat in World War I.) Nevertheless, according to Professor Ernest Tucker, the Zuhab treaty can be seen as the "culmination" of a process of normalisation between the two that had commenced with the Peace of Amasya. As opposed to any other Ottoman-Safavid treaty, the Zuhab treaty proved to be more "resilient", and it became a "point of departure" for almost all further agreements on a diplomatic level between the two neighbors.
Faisal, Hussein's third son, played an active role in the revolt as commander of the Arab army while the overall leadership was placed in the hands of his father. The idea of an Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire was first conceived by Abdullah. Only after gradual and persistent nudging did Abdullah convince his father, the conservative Sharif of Mecca, to move from the idea of home rule of a portion of Arabia within the Ottoman Empire to complete and total independence of the entire Empire's Arab provinces. Hussein recognized the necessity of breaking away from the Empire in the beginning of 1914 when he realized that he would not be able to complete his political objectives within the framework of the Ottomans. To have any success with the Arab revolt, the backing of another great power was crucial. 
a : The full style of the Ottoman ruler was complex, as it was composed of several titles and evolved over the centuries. The title of sultan was used continuously by all rulers almost from the beginning. However, because it was widespread in the Muslim world, the Ottomans quickly adopted variations of it to dissociate themselves from other Muslim rulers of lesser status. Murad I, the third Ottoman monarch, styled himself sultan-i azam (سلطان اعظم, the most exalted sultan) and hüdavendigar (خداوندگار, emperor), titles used by the Anatolian Seljuqs and the Mongol Ilkhanids respectively. His son Bayezid I adopted the style Sultan of Rûm, Rûm being an old Islamic name for the Roman Empire. The combining of the Islamic and Central Asian heritages of the Ottomans led to the adoption of the title that became the standard designation of the Ottoman ruler: Sultan [Name] Khan.[64] Ironically, although the title of sultan is most often associated in the Western world with the Ottomans, people within Turkey generally use the title of padishah far more frequently when referring to rulers of the Ottoman Dynasty.[65] b : The Ottoman Caliphate was one of the most important positions held by rulers of the Ottoman Dynasty. The caliphate symbolized their spiritual power, whereas the sultanate represented their temporal power. According to Ottoman historiography, Murad I adopted the title of caliph during his reign (1362 to 1389), and Selim I later strengthened the caliphal authority during his conquest of Egypt in 1516-1517. However, the general consensus among modern scholars is that Ottoman rulers had used the title of caliph before the conquest of Egypt, as early as during the reign of Murad I (1362–1389), who brought most of the Balkans under Ottoman rule and established the title of sultan in 1383. It is currently agreed that the caliphate "disappeared" for two-and-a-half centuries, before being revived with the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, signed between the Ottoman Empire and Catherine II of Russia in 1774. The treaty was highly symbolic, since it marked the first international recognition of the Ottomans' claim to the caliphate. Although the treaty made official the Ottoman Empire's loss of the Crimean Khanate, it acknowledged the Ottoman caliph's continuing religious authority over Muslims in Russia.[66] From the 18th century onwards, Ottoman sultans increasingly emphasized their status as caliphs in order to stir Pan-Islamist sentiments among the empire's Muslims in the face of encroaching European imperialism. When World War I broke out, the sultan/caliph issued a call for jihad in 1914 against the Ottoman Empire's Allied enemies, unsuccessfully attempting to incite the subjects of the French, British and Russian empires to revolt. Abdülhamid II was by far the Ottoman sultan who made the most use of his caliphal position, and was recognized as caliph by many Muslim heads of state, even as far away as Sumatra.[67] He had his claim to the title inserted into the 1876 Constitution (Article 4).[68] c : Tughras were used by 35 out of 36 Ottoman sultans, starting with Orhan in the 14th century, whose tughra has been found on two different documents. No tughra bearing the name of Osman I, the founder of the empire, has ever been discovered,[69] although a coin with the inscription "Osman bin Ertuğrul" has been identified.[17] Abdülmecid II, the last Ottoman caliph, also lacked a tughra of his own, since he did not serve as head of state (that position being held by Mustafa Kemal, President of the newly founded Republic of Turkey) but as a religious and royal figurehead. d : The Ottoman Interregnum, also known as the Ottoman Triumvirate (Turkish: Fetret Devri), was a period of chaos in the Ottoman Empire which lasted from 1402 to 1413. It started following the defeat and capture of Bayezid I by the Turco-Mongol warlord Tamerlane at the Battle of Ankara, which was fought on 20 July 1402. Bayezid's sons fought each other for over a decade, until Mehmed I emerged as the undisputed victor in 1413.[70] e : The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was a gradual process which started with the abolition of the sultanate and ended with that of the caliphate 16 months later. The sultanate was formally abolished on 1November1922. Sultan Mehmed VI fled to Malta on 17November aboard the British warship Malaya.[60] This event marked the end of the Ottoman Dynasty, not of the Ottoman State nor of the Ottoman Caliphate. On 18November, the Grand National Assembly (TBMM) elected Mehmed VI's cousin Abdülmecid II, the then crown prince, as caliph.[71] The official end of the Ottoman State was declared through the Treaty of Lausanne (24July1923), which recognized the new "Ankara government," and not the old Istanbul-based Ottoman government, as representing the rightful owner and successor state. The Republic of Turkey was proclaimed by the TBMM on 29October1923, with Mustafa Kemal as its first President.[72] Although Abdülmecid II was a figurehead lacking any political power, he remained in his position of caliph until the office of the caliphate was abolished by the TBMM on 3March1924.[68] Mehmed VI later tried unsuccessfully to reinstall himself as caliph in the Hejaz.[73]
Ottoman bureaucratic and military expenditure was raised by taxation, generally from the agrarian population. Pamuk notes considerable variation in monetary policy and practice in different parts of the empire. Although there was monetary regulation, enforcement was often relaxed and little effort was made to control the activities of merchants, moneychangers, and financiers. During the "price revolution" of the 16th century, when inflation took off, there were price increases of around 500 percent from the end of the 15th century to the close of the 17th. However, the problem of inflation did not remain and the 18th century did not witness the problem again.
From 1882 onwards, Egypt's status became deeply convoluted: officially a province of the Ottoman Empire, semi-officially a virtually independent state with its own monarchy, armed forces, and territorial possessions in Sudan, and for practical purposes a British puppet. The legal fiction of Ottoman sovereignty in Egypt was finally ended in 1914 when the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in First World War. Alarmed that the anti-British Khedive Abbas II would side with the Ottomans, the British deposed him in favor of his uncle Hussein Kamel and declared Egypt a British protectorate. Symbolizing the official end of Ottoman rule, Hussein Kamel took the title Sultan as did his brother Fuad I who succeeded him in 1917, though in reality Egypt remained under British domination. Both Hussein Kamel and Fuad maintained Egypt's claim to Sudan, with Egyptian nationalists declaring both in turn to be the "Sultan of Egypt and Sudan".
In 1355 the Serbian Empire was dissolved and several Albanian principalities were formed including the Balsha, Kastrioti, Thopia and Shpata as the major ones.
In the late 14th and the early 15th century the Ottoman Empire conquered parts of south and central Albania. The Albanians regained control of their territories in 1444 when the League of Lezhë was established, under the rule of George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, the Albanian national hero. The League was a military alliance of feudal lords in Albania forged in Lezhë on 2 March 1444, initiated and organised under Venetian patronage with Skanderbeg as leader of the regional Albanian and Serbian chieftains united against the Ottoman Empire. The main members of the league were the Arianiti, Balšić, Dukagjini, Muzaka, Spani, Thopia and Crnojevići. For 25 years, from 1443–1468, Skanderbeg's 10,000 man army marched through Ottoman territory winning against consistently larger and better supplied Ottoman forces. Threatened by Ottoman advances in their homeland, Hungary, and later Naples and Venice – their former enemies – provided the financial backbone and support for Skanderbeg's army. By 1450 it had certainly ceased to function as originally intended, and only the core of the alliance under Skanderbeg and Araniti Comino continued to fight on. After Skanderbeg's death in 1468, the sultan "easily subdued Albania," but Skanderbeg's death did not end the struggle for independence, and fighting continued until the Ottoman siege of Shkodra in 1478–79, a siege ending when the Republic of Venice ceded Shkodra to the Ottomans in the peace treaty of 1479.
Ottoman supremacy in the west Balkan region began in 1385 with their success in the Battle of Savra. Following that battle, the Ottoman Empire established the Sanjak of Albania covering the conquered parts of Albania, which included territory stretching from the Mat River in the north to Chameria in the south. In 1419, Gjirokastra became the administrative centre of the Sanjak of Albania. Beginning in the 14th century, the Ottomans expanded their empire from Anatolia to much of the Balkans (Rumelia).
Beginning from the late eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire faced challenges defending itself against foreign invasion and occupation. In response to foreign threats, the empire initiated a period of tremendous internal reform which came to be known as the Tanzimat, which succeeded in significantly strengthening the Ottoman central state, despite the empire's precarious international position. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman state became increasingly powerful and rationalized, exercising a greater degree of influence over its population than in any previous era. The process of reform and modernization in the empire began with the declaration of the Nizam-ı Cedid (New Order) during the reign of Sultan Selim III and was punctuated by several reform decrees, such as the Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane in 1839 and the Hatt-ı Hümayun in 1856. At the end of this period, marked with 1908, to a degree the Ottoman military became modernized and professionalized according to the model of Western European Armies. The period was followed by the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1922).
"Sami Frashëri" Gymnasium is the first gymnasium teaching in the Albanian language in Kosovo. The school was established at the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, during the Ottoman Empire. Although the majority of students and teachers were Albanian, classes were taught in the Turkish language, because the Ottoman power did not allow Albanian language to be taught.
This period of early Ottoman rule will be long remembered as Sarajevo's golden age. The 16th century was its peak, when nearly the whole city area (that would last until the late 19th century) was built. During the 17th century, Sarajevo didn't expand, although its population continued to grow. Its residents lived luxuriously, and Sarajevo was the richest city in the West Balkans after Dubrovnik. However the 17th century also brought the start of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. With the defeats at Vienna, the empire grew weaker, and along with the empire as a whole did its various regions. Although Sarajevo would remain prosperous until the very end of the 17th century, the latter half of it proved to be the beginning of the end.
In Western Europe, the two names "Ottoman Empire" and "Turkey" were often used interchangeably, with "Turkey" being increasingly favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", and "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character.
In 1804 the Serbian Revolution against Ottoman rule erupted in the Balkans, running in parallel with the Napoleonic invasion. By 1817, when the revolution ended, Serbia was raised to the status of self-governing monarchy under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. In 1821 the First Hellenic Republic became the first Balkan country to achieve its independence from the Ottoman Empire. It was officially recognised by the Porte in 1829, after the end of the Greek War of Independence.
As Bedross Der Matossian from Columbia University describes, for about 250 years, from the early 18th century until around 1950, more than 2000 books in the Turkish language were printed using the Armenian script. Not only did Armenians read Armeno-Turkish, but so did the non-Armenian (including the Ottoman Turkish) elite. The Armenian script was also used alongside the Arabic script on official documents of the Ottoman Empire written in Ottoman Turkish. For instance, the first novel to be written in the Ottoman Empire was Vartan Pasha's 1851 "Akabi Hikayesi", written in the Armenian script. Also, when the Armenian Duzian family managed the Ottoman mint during the reign of Abdülmecid I, they kept records in Armenian script, but in the Turkish language. From the end of the 19th-century, the Armenian alphabet was also used for books written in the Kurdish language in the Ottoman Empire.
After its pinnacle during the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire was thereafter in constant regression rather than being able to progress as its European counterparts did. As European power increased, the Ottomans saw a lack of progress themselves. In the Treaty of Paris (1856), the Ottomans were now considered part of the European world. This was the beginning of intervention by Europeans (i.e. Great Britain and France) in the Ottoman Empire. One of the reasons they were taking a step into Ottoman territory was for the protection of Christianity in the Ottoman Empire. There had been perennial conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims in the Empire. This was the focal point for the Russians to interfere, and the Russians were perhaps the Ottomans' most disliked enemy. The Russians looked for many ways to become involved in political affairs especially when unrest in the Empire reached their borders. The history of the Russo-Turkish wars was long, for many different reasons. The Ottomans saw the Russians as their most fierce enemy and not one to be trusted.