ABSTRACT
For more than two generations, most historians have accepted the view of Paul Wittek that the Ottoman state, from beginning to end, had one primary reason for being: ghaza, which Wittek does not distinguish from jihad. The Ottoman regime conformed to the pattern of the military patronage state. The economic basis of the Ottoman Empire evolved just as its military organization did. The expansion of the empire brought more and more trade centers under control. Control of trade routes determined Ottoman grand strategy as much as the acquisition of agricultural land. This chapter consists of a narrative of Ottoman history from its beginning to 1730; discussions of Ottoman political ideology, military organization and methods of conquest, central and provincial administration, economy, society and popular religion, and cultural and intellectual history. It also consists of an analysis of the transformation of the empire during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
