Rise of the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman state before 1453

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".

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