ABSTRACT
The long-lived Ottoman Empire, which lasted from 1299 to 1922, covered a wide swath of the Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe. Led by Turkish leaders called sultans, the Ottoman Empire became the dominant force in this part of the world in the 1400s to 1600s and threatened central Europe until the failure of their siege of Vienna in 1683. The seat of this Islamic empire was Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire until it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453. By the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire was in rapid decline until its collapse, under internal and foreign pressures after World War I.
