Armed Forces of the Ottoman Empire, 1683–1918

The Ottoman Empire (c. 1300–1918) ruled over most of the territories of what is now known as the Middle East. The Ottomans were a Muslim dynasty (the house of Osman) that governed multireligious and multiethnic populations from the steppes of Russia to the Balkans and the Arabian Peninsula as well as North Africa, the Levant, and Turkey from the 1300s to 1918. The Ottoman difference lies in its creation of a ruling class of any and all that …