History of the Ottoman Empire |
---|
Timeline |
Historiography (Ghaza, Decline) |
The Classical Age of the Ottoman Empire (Turkish: Klasik Çağ) concerns the history of the Ottoman Empire from the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 until the second half of the sixteenth century, roughly the end of the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566). During this period a system of patrimonial rule based on the absolute authority of the sultan reached its apex, and the empire developed the institutional foundations which it would maintain, in modified form, for several centuries.[1] The territory of the Ottoman Empire greatly expanded, and led to what some historians have called the Pax Ottomana. The process of centralization undergone by the empire prior to 1453 was brought to completion in the reign of Mehmed II.