The Ottoman World

Osman I (d. c. 1324) led a small principality in north-west Anatolia. Over the next century his successors expanded across Anatolia and into the Balkans, building an administration that absorbed local practice rather than erasing it.

In 1453, Mehmed II took Constantinople after a long siege, ending the Byzantine Empire and making the city — Istanbul — an imperial capital. He rebuilt its population and economy, invited scholars and merchants, and issued guarantees to the city's Christian and Jewish communities.

Suleiman (r. 1520–1566) is called 'the Magnificent' in Europe and 'Kanuni' (the Lawgiver) in Turkish, because his reign systematised administrative law alongside the Shari'ah. The chief jurist Ebussuud Efendi shaped that legal work.

The architect Mimar Sinan (c. 1490–1588) built or supervised hundreds of structures, including the Süleymaniye and Selimiye mosque complexes — masterpieces of dome engineering.

Ottoman cities ran on waqf — permanent charitable endowments. A single complex could include a mosque, madrasa, hospital, soup kitchen, library, caravanserai and fountain, funded forever by rents from shops or farmland.

This is one of Islamic civilization's most practical achievements: welfare that did not depend on a ruler's mood.

From the eighteenth century the empire faced military defeats, debt, and pressure from industrialising European powers. The Tanzimat reforms (1839–1876) reorganised law, education and the army.

After defeat in the First World War, the empire was partitioned; the sultanate ended in 1922 and the caliphate was abolished in 1924. The shock of that ending shaped Muslim political thought worldwide, and still does.