Concept
The Ottoman Turks (Osmanlı Türkleri) were a Turkic ethnic group. They founded the Ottoman Empire in the early modern era and remained sociopolitically the most dominant group in the Empire for the duration ( 1299/1302–1922). Reliable information about the early history of Ottoman Turks remains scarce, but they take their Turkish name, Osmanlı ("Osman" became altered in some European languages as "Ottoman"), from the house of Osman I (reigned 1299–1326), the founder of the House of Osman, the ruling dynasty of the Ottoman Empire for its entire 624 years. Expanding from its base in Söğüt, the Ottoman principality began incorporating other Turkish-speaking Muslims and non-Turkish Christians. Crossing into Europe from the 1350s, coming to dominate the Mediterranean Sea and, in 1453, conquering Constantinople (the capital city of the Byzantine Empire), the Ottoman Turks controlled all major land routes between Asia and Europe. Western Europeans had to find other ways to trade with the East. Ottoman Empire The Ottomans first became known to the West in the 13th century when they migrated from their homeland in Central Asia westward to the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia. The Ottoman Turks established a beylik in Western Anatolia under Ertugrul, the capital of which was Söğüt in western Anatolia. Ertugrul, leader of the nomadic Kayı tribe, first established a principality as part of the decaying Seljuk empire. His son Osman expanded the principality; the polity and the people were named "Ottomans" by Europeans after him ("Ottoman" being a corruption of "Osman"). Osman's son Orhan expanded the growing realm into an empire, taking Nicaea (present-day İznik) and crossed the Dardanelles in 1362. All coins unearthed in Söğüt during the two centuries before Orhan bear the names of Illkhanate rulers. The Seljuks were under the suzerainty of the Illkhanates and later the Turco-Mongol Timur lane. The Ottoman Empire came into its own when Mehmed II captured the reduced Byzantine Empire's well-defended capital, Constantinople in 1453.
