Turks and the Ottoman Empire
Turkic migration, Great Seljuq Empire, and Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire at the height of its power (ca. 1680.)
The House of Seljuk was a branch of the Knk Ouz Turks who resided on the periphery of the Muslim world, north of the Caspian and Aral Seas in the Yabghu Khaganate of the Ouz confederacy
in the 10th century. In the 11th century, the Seljuks started migrating from their ancestral homelands towards the eastern regions of Anatolia, which eventually became the new homeland of Oghuz Turkic tribes following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.[citation needed]
The victory of the Seljuks gave rise to the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate; which developed as a separate branch of the larger Seljuk Empire that covered parts of Central Asia, Iran, Anatolia and Southwest Asia.
In 1243, the Seljuk armies were defeated by the Mongols, causing the Seljuk empire's power to slowly disintegrate. In its wake, one of the Turkish principalities governed by Osman I would, over the next 200 years, evolve into the Ottoman Empire, expanding throughout Anatolia, the Balkans and the Levant. In 1453, the Ottomans completed their conquest of the Byzantine Empire by capturing its capital, Constantinople.
The Selimiye Mosque in Edirne is one of the most famous architectural legacies of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire's power and prestige peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The empire was often at odds with the Holy Roman Empire in its steady advance towards Central Europe through the Balkans and the southern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.[12] At sea, the empire contended with the Holy Leagues, composed of Habsburg Spain, the Republic of Venice and the Knights of St. John, for control of the Mediterranean. In the Indian Ocean, the Ottoman navy frequently confronted Portuguese fleets in order to defend its traditional monopoly over the maritime trade routes between East Asia and Western Europe; these routes faced new competition with the Portuguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. In addition, the Ottomans were occasionally at war with Persia over territorial disputes or caused by religious differences between 16th and 18th centuries.