The Ottoman state began as one of many small Turkish states that emerged in Asia Minor during the breakdown of the empire of the Seljuk Turks. The Ottoman Turks began to absorb the other states, and during the reign (1451–81) of Muhammad II they ended all other local Turkish dynasties. The early phase of Ottoman expansion took place under Osman I, Orkhan, Murad I, and Beyazid I at the expense of the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria, and Serbia. Bursa fell in 1326 and Adrianople (the modern Edirne) in 1361; each in turn became the capital of the empire. The great Ottoman victories of Kosovo (1389) and Nikopol (1396) placed large parts of the Balkan Peninsula under Ottoman rule and awakened Europe to the Ottoman danger. The Ottoman siege of Constantinople was lifted at the appearance of Timur, who defeated and captured Beyazid in 1402. The Ottomans, however, soon rallied.
The Period of Great Expansion

The Ottoman Empire (/ˈɒtəmən/; Ottoman Turkish: دولت عليه عثمانیه‎,Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿOsmānīye; Modern Turkish: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu orOsmanlı Devleti), also known as the Turkish Empire,[9] Ottoman Turkey,[10][11] was an empire founded at the end of the thirteenth century in northwestern Anatolia by the Turkish tribal leader Osman,[12]according to the Ottoman tradition said to have been descended from the Kayı tribe.[dn 4] After conquests in the Balkans by Murad I between 1362 and 1389, the Ottoman sultanate was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empirewith the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror.[14]

During the Ottoman Empire (1453~1920), the Turks were one of many linguistic and ethnic groups living in Turkey. There were 3 languages used at that time: Arabic which was used as the primary language of religion; Persian which was the language of art, refined literature, and diplomacy; and at the official level, the Ottoman Turkish that was used only for the administration of the empire. Members of the civil, military, and religious elite talked and conducted their business in Ottoman Turkish, which was a mixture of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. Ottoman Turkish not only borrowed vocabulary from Arabic and Persian but also lifted entire expressions and syntactic structures out of these languages and incorporated them into the Ottoman idiom.

The language of the court and government of the Ottoman Empire wasOttoman Turkish,[3] but many other languages were in contemporary use in parts of the empire. Although the minorities of the Ottoman Empire were free to use their language amongst themselves, if they needed to communicate with the government they had to use Ottoman Turkish.[4]

The Ottomans had three influential languages: Turkish, spoken by the majority of the people in Anatolia and by the majority of Muslims of the Balkans except in Albania, Bosnia, and various Aegean Sea islands;Persian, only spoken by the educated;[5] and Arabic, spoken mainly inArabia, North Africa, Iraq, Kuwait and the Levant. Throughout the vast Ottoman bureaucracy Ottoman Turkish language was the official language, a version of Turkish, albeit with a vast mixture of both Arabic and Persian grammar and vocabulary.

Ottoman Turkish /ˈɒtəmən/, or the Ottoman language (لسان عثمانى‎‎Lisân-ı Osmânî) (also known as تركجه‎ Türkçe or تركی‎ Türkî, "Turkish"), is the variety of the Turkish language that was used in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows, in all aspects, extensively from Arabic and Persian, and it was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. During the peak of Ottoman power, Persian and Arabic vocabulary accounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary,[2] while words of Arabic origins heavily outnumbered native Turkish words.[3]
Consequently, Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated lower-class and rural Turks, who continued to use kaba Türkçe("raw Turkish"), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and is the basis of the modern Turkish language.[4] The Tanzimât era saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language (لسان عثمانی‎ lisân-ı Osmânî or عثمانليجه‎ Osmanlıca) and the same distinction is made in Modern Turkish (Osmanlıca and Osmanlı Türkçesi).

Great and famous folk philosopher whose memory has become a legend. His anecdotes which are verbally transmitted at everywhere where Turkish is spoken is popular among all classes and levels of people. They also were transmitted to the everyday language of countries which are neighbors of Turkey; Azerbaijan, Clans of Caucasia, Crimea and Idyll vicinity, Turkistan and the lands of Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan are among them. The fame of Nasreddin Hodja is gradually spreading all over the world and his anecdotes are being translated into several languages.

One of the most famous and greatest poets of Turkish literature. Fuzuli, who had a perfect knowledge of Turkish, Arabic and Persian, the three great Eastern languages of the time, has written his collected poems (Divan) in three different languages. Besides his "kaside", each being a monument, he has given us the best and the most sensitive examples of lyrical Turkish poetry, "Leyla ile Mecnun". This famous love and pain "mesnevi", which is considered to be the most important work of Fuzuli, occupies a special place among the work on the theme of these tragic and legendary lovers by numerous Turkish and Iranian poets. In his work titled "hadikad-üs- Sueda he describes the tragedy of Kerbela which is an extremely sad incident of the Islamic history. This literary piece is one of the best works produced in Turkish. He also has numerous other works of importance.

The great doctor, scholar and philosopher of the eastern world during the middle Ages. For years, his works were used as text books at western universities. He was a true pathfinder not only in medicine but also in mathematics and physics. The philosophical encyclopedia called "Sifa" (Healing), "Kanun" which is a medical encyclopedia, and books titled "Necat" and "Isarat" and the twenty volume "Kitab-ül- insaf" which comments on total works of Aristotle are among his major works.

Famous Turkish sailor and the first Turkish marine cartographer born in Gelibolu (Gallipoli). Piri Reis was both a great sea commander who was heroic and smart in battle and one of the most important cartographers and sailor writers of his time.
Starting with his days of piracy, he systematically wrote down his observations. Works he produced written by using the material he found on marine cartography and marine geography and the maps he produced have a distinguished place in history of science. The world map he charted was printed by the Turkish Historical Institution in 1935. This map was presented by Piri Reis to Yavuz Sultan Selim in Egypt in 1517.

Sultan Cem or Cem Sultan (December 22, 1459 – February 25, 1495) (pronounced [ˈd͡ʒem sulˈtɑːn]; Ottoman Turkish: جم‎), also referred to as Jem Sultan, or Jem Zizim by the French, was a pretender to the Ottoman throne in the 15th century.
Cem was the third son of Sultan Mehmed II and younger half-brother of SultanBayezid II, and thus a half-uncle of Sultan Selim I of Ottoman Empire.
After being defeated by Bayezid, Cem went on exile in Egypt and Europe, under the protection of the Mamluks, the Knights Hospitaller of St. John on the island of Rhodes, and ultimately the Pope.

Early life
Cem was born on 22 December 1459 in Edirne.[1] His mother, Çiçek Hatun(Çiçek Khātūn), was probably of Serbian origin. In accordance with the custom for an Ottoman prince (şehzade, şehzāde), Cem was appointed to a provincial governorship of Kastamonu in 1469. In December 1474, Cem replaced his deceased brother Mustafa as governor of Karaman in Konya.[1]
Succession dispute

Fużūlī (Azerbaijani: Füzuli فضولی, c. 1494 – 1556) was the pen name of theAzerbaijani[1][2][3] of the Bayat tribes of Oghuz Turks[4][5][6] poet, writer and thinker Muhammad bin Suleyman (Azerbaijani: Məhəmməd Ben Süleyman محمد بن سليمان). Often considered one of the greatest contributors to theDîvân tradition of Azerbaijani literature,[7] Fuzûlî in fact wrote his collected poems (dîvân) in three different languages: in his native Azerbaijani[8] and also in Persian and Arabic. Although his Turkic works are written in the Azerbaijani dialect of Turkish, he was well-versed in both the Ottoman and the ChagataiTurkic literary traditions as well. He was also well versed in mathematics andastronomy.[9]

Life

The article of Professor Dr. Bekir Karliga on the horizon of Katip Çelebi's thought is a tremendous analysis of the reformist efforts deployed by the renowned 17th-century Ottoman scholar Katip Çelebi Mustafa bin Abdallah, known as Haji Khalifa. Striving to show the acute consciousness Katip Çelebi had of the intellectual stagnation that was occuring in the Islamic world, in comparison with the earlier centuries of Islamic civilisation and with the then ongoing growth of science in Europe, the author depicts a faithful picture of Katip Çelebi's warning to his contemporaries. Four centuries later the alert that Katip Celebi sounded still holds good.

1. The historical context

Life:
Autobiographical sections in his Sullam al-Wusul, in one Cihannüma autograph, and Mizanü’l-Haqq, constitute the primary source of information for entries in biographical dictionaries (Uşaqizade, Şeyhi) and modern reference works on K.Ç., arguably the most important Ottoman intellectual figure of the 11th/17th century.

Matrakci Nasuh was a famous Ottoman polymath, writer and knight who produced important books in several fields. He made contributions in the fields of mathematics, geography, history and calligraphy. He also invented a military lawn game called "Matrak", a kind of animation of battle.

Nasuh bin Karagöz bin Abdullah el-Visokavi el-Bosnavî, or Nasuh el-Matrakči ibn Karađoz ibn Abdullah el-Visokavi el-Bosnevi, commonly known asMatrakçı Nasuh (Turkish pronunciation: [matrakˈtʃɯ naˈsuh]; Serbian:Matrakčija Nasuh Visočak) for his competence in the game of Matrak, invented by himself, (also known as Nasuh el-Silâhî, Nasuh the Swordsman, because of his talent with weapons; 1480 – c. 1564) was a 16th-centuryBosniak[1][2][3] statesman of the Ottoman Empire, polymath, mathematician, teacher, historian, geographer, cartographer, swordmaster, navigator, inventor, painter, farmer, and miniaturist. He was brought to Istanbul after being recruited by the Ottoman scouts in Rumelia, educated, served several Ottoman sultans, and became a teacher at Enderun School.[4]

Life