Ottoman Empire map: from a frontier principality to an empire on three continents

The Ottoman Empire lasted from about 1299 to 1922, longer than almost any other empire on the historical map. It began as one of many small Turkish principalities on the border of Byzantium. Two centuries later it had taken Constantinople, and at its peak it controlled the Balkans, Anatolia, the Arab Middle East and most of North Africa. Then, for more than two hundred years, the map shows it shrinking, until the First World War finished it off.

On the Panchronia globe the borders of the Ottoman Empire change with the timeline. Below are the key stages; each link opens the map in that year.

The Ottoman Empire map at a glance

From principality to empire: 1299–1453

Around 1299 a Turkish chieftain named Osman I ruled a small territory in Bithynia, near the Byzantine cities of Bursa and Nicaea; his name gave the dynasty and the state their name. His son Orhan took Bursa in 1326 and made it his capital. In 1354 an earthquake damaged the walls of Gallipoli and the Ottomans crossed into Europe. From then on they expanded faster in the Balkans than in Anatolia: they took Adrianople (Edirne), and in 1389 Murad I defeated the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo, although he was killed in the battle.

His son Bayezid I the Thunderbolt defeated a crusader army at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396 and besieged Constantinople. Then Timur came from the east: at the Battle of Ankara in 1402 Bayezid was captured, and his sons fought each other for eleven years. The state survived, and in 1453 Mehmed II, aged twenty-one, took Constantinople after a siege of almost eight weeks. The city, later known as Istanbul, remained the capital until the end of the empire.

Conquests in the east: Selim I

Selim I the Grim reigned for only eight years but nearly doubled the empire. In 1514 he defeated the Safavid shah of Iran at the Battle of Chaldiran. In 1516–1517 he destroyed the Mamluk Sultanate, taking Syria and Palestine, and conquered Egypt. With them came the protection of Mecca and Medina, and the Ottoman sultans began to present themselves as the leaders of the whole Muslim world.

The peak: Suleiman the Magnificent

Under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566) the empire reached the height of its power. He took Belgrade and Rhodes, destroyed the Hungarian army at the Battle of Mohács in 1526 and laid siege to Vienna in 1529. In the east he took Baghdad and Mesopotamia from the Safavids. At sea, the corsair Hayreddin Barbarossa brought Algiers and much of the North African coast under Ottoman rule, and the Ottoman fleet dominated the Mediterranean.

Not every campaign succeeded: the Great Siege of Malta in 1565 failed, and in 1571, soon after the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus, a Christian coalition destroyed the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto. But the fleet was rebuilt within a year, and the borders hardly changed.

The Ottoman Empire reached its greatest extent in the late seventeenth century. Counting vassal states such as the Crimean Khanate, Wallachia and Moldavia, it covered about 5 million km² and stretched over parts of some forty modern countries.

The long retreat: 1683–1914

In 1683 an Ottoman army besieged Vienna a second time and was routed at its walls by a relief force led by the Polish king Jan Sobieski. The war that followed ended with the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699: for the first time the empire gave up large territories, including Hungary and Transylvania.

In the eighteenth century the main rival became Russia. Under the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 the Crimean Khanate became independent of the sultan, and in 1783 it was annexed by Russia. In the nineteenth century the Balkan peoples rose one after another: the First Serbian Uprising in 1804 and the Greek War of Independence, which ended with an independent Greece in 1830. Egypt under Muhammad Ali became independent in all but name, France took Algiers in 1830, and Britain occupied Egypt in 1882.

The sultans tried to modernise the state with the Tanzimat reforms, opened by the Edict of Gülhane in 1839, and the first constitution of 1876. But after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 the Congress of Berlin recognised the independence of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania and created an autonomous Bulgaria. Libya was lost to Italy in 1912, and the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 took almost everything that was left in Europe.

The end of the empire

In the First World War the Ottoman Empire fought on the side of Germany. It held off the Allied landing in the Gallipoli campaign, but lost Mesopotamia, Palestine and Syria. During the war the Ottoman government carried out the Armenian genocide. Britain and France had already agreed how to divide the Arab provinces in the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

After the defeat, the Turkish national movement led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk fought for Anatolia. The sultanate was abolished in November 1922, and the last sultan, Mehmed VI, left Istanbul on a British warship. The Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 fixed the borders of modern Turkey, and on 29 October 1923 the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed with its capital in Ankara.

The sultans in order

The table lists the Ottoman sultans and who ruled in Russia, England, France and China at the same time. A separate page has the full list of Ottoman Sultans with dates.

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