The history of the Ottoman Empire is marked by the pursuit of traditional Islamic ideals of conquest combined with the development of an efficient centralized state capable of supporting extensive conquest and managing the administration of the empire. The gazi ethos that drove the early conquest of Anatolia and, eventually, Constantinople reached a plateau following the so-called Golden Age of Snleyman I (r. 1520-66) and subsequently faded in importance as the consolidated imperial state faced new kinds of political and economic challenges. In the course of building their vast empire the Ottomans had also developed a unique variant of Islamic society in which the state was the dominant institution. The institutions of the Ottoman state were drawn from several models and served the needs of the centralized state extremely well. But, like the gazi ideology, these institutions were increasingly in need of modification as the decentralization of imperial governance proceeded throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Though this process of change is sometimes described as a precipitous decline resulting from these institutions' surrender to pervasive corruption, the changes resulted from the development of a new relationship between Ottoman elites and access to power and resources. Recent studies, such as those by Hathaway, Abou-El-Haj, and Kafadar indicate that Ottoman history, especially for the centuries after Snleyman I, is undergoing a radical reevaluation.
The Mongol invasions of the mid-thirteenth century destroyed the Seljuk state in central and southern Anatolia and led to the formation of frontier states under the control of Turkish warriors. Ertegrul (d. c. 1280) led one such state which was "destined for greatness," beginning with the leadership of his son Osman, from whom the name of the Ottoman dynasty derives (Lapidus 306). Within a century the Ottomans seized Bursa (1326), crossed the Strait of Galli...