An Ottoman panel of İznik tiles painted with flowers
Tile Panel, second half 16th century
Marked Bursa

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Ottoman empire

From a small state in Anatolia, the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453 and ruled much of south-east Europe, the Middle East and North Africa for six hundred years, until the empire ended after the First World War.

Place
Bursa · Istanbul · Topkapı Palace · ViennaThe Middle East, Europe, Africa
Laid out as
An empireOne power across a long stretch of time: how it grew, held together, and came apart.
Lessons
7 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IOsman’s state
  2. II1453
  3. IIISüleyman and his court
  4. IVSinan the architect
  5. VCoffee houses
  6. VIThe sick man of Europe?
  7. VIIThe end of the empire

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Osman I
  • Mehmed II
  • Süleyman I
  • Hürrem Sultan
  • Mimar Sinan

Objects

  • The Süleymaniye Mosque
  • Tughras
  • İznik tiles

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1299 to 1922. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?