The Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) (Old Ottoman Turkish: دولت عالیه عثمانیه Devlet-i Âliye-yi Osmâniyye, Late Ottoman and Modern Turkish: Osmanlı Devleti or Osmanlı İmparatorluğu), was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Turkish-ruled state. The state was known as the Turkish Empire or Turkey by its contemporaries; see the other names of the Ottoman State. It was succeeded by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed in 1923.

At the height of its power (16th–17th century), it spanned three continents, controlling much of Southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, stretching from the Strait of Gibraltar (and, in 1553, the Atlantic coast of Morocco beyond Gibraltar) in the west to the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf in the east, from the edge of Austria, Slovakia and parts of Ukraine in the north to Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and Yemen in the south. The Ottoman Empire contained 29 provinces, in addition to the tributary principalities of Moldavia, Transylvania, and Wallachia.

The empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. The Ottoman Empire was, in many respects, an Islamic successor to earlier Mediterranean empires — namely the Roman and Byzantine empires.