List of sultans of the Ottoman Empire
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The sultans of the Ottoman Empire (Ottoman Turkish: عثمانلو پادشاهی; Turkish: Osmanlı padişahları), who were all members of the Ottoman dynasty (House of Osman), ruled over the transcontinental empire from its perceived inception in 1299 to its dissolution in 1922. At its height, the Ottoman Empire spanned an area from Hungary in the north to Yemen in the south and from Algeria in the west to Iraq in the east. Administered at first from the city of Söğüt from before 1280 and then from the city of Bursa from 1323 or 1324, the empire's capital was moved to Adrianople (now known as Edirne in English) in 1363 following its conquest by Murad I and then to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) in 1453 following its conquest by Mehmed II.
The Ottoman Empire's early years have been the subject of varying narratives, due to the difficulty of discerning fact from legend. The empire came into existence at the end of the 13th century, and its first ruler (and the namesake of the Empire) was Osman I. According to later, often unreliable Ottoman tradition, Osman was a descendant of the Kayı tribe of the Oghuz Turks. The eponymous Ottoman dynasty he founded endured for six centuries through the reigns of 36 sultans. The Ottoman Empire disappeared as a result of the defeat of the Central Powers, with whom it had allied itself during World War I. The partitioning of the Empire by the victorious Allies and the ensuing Turkish War of Independence led to the abolition of the sultanate in 1922 and the proclamation of the modern Republic of Turkey in 1922.
Names
The sultan was also referred to as the padishah (Ottoman Turkish: پادشاه, romanized: pâdişâh, French: Padichah). In Ottoman usage the word "Padishah" was usually used except "sultan" was used when he was directly named. In several European languages, he was referred to as the Grand Turk, as the ruler of the Turks, or simply the "Great Lord" (il Gran Signore, le grand seigneur) especially in the 16th century.
Names of the sultan in languages used by ethnic minorities:
Arabic: In some documents padishah was replaced by malik (ملك, 'king')
Bulgarian: In earlier periods Bulgarian people called him the tsar (цар).
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