Growth of the Ottoman Empire

During the growth period, also "Pax Ottomana", empire grow in size and extent, expanding into North Africa in the southwest, and battling with the Shi'ia Islamic Safavid Empire of re-emergent Persia, to the east.

Bayezid II

When Beyazid II was enthroned upon his father's death, he first had to fight his younger brother Cem, who took Inegöl and Bursa and proclaimed himself Sultan of Anatolia. After a battle at Yenişehir, Cem was defeated and fled to Cairo. The very next year he returned, supported by the Mameluks, and took eastern Anatolia, Ankara and Konya but eventually he was beaten and forced to flee to Rhodes.

Sultan Beyazid attacked Venice in 1499. Peace was signed in 1503, and the Ottomans gained the last Venetian strongholds on the Peloponnesos and some towns along the Adriatic coast. In the 1500s Mameluks and Persians under Shah Ismail I allied against the Ottomans. The war ended 1511 in favor for the Turks.

Later that year, Beyazid's son Ahmet forced his father into making him regent. His brother Selim was forced to flee to Crimea. When Ahmet was about to be crowned the Janissaries intervened, killed the prince and forced Beyazid into calling Selim back and making him the sultan. Beyazid abdicated and he died immediately after leaving the throne.

 Yavuz Sultan Selim

During his reign, Selim I was able to expand the empire's borders greatly in the east. He defeated the Mamelukes and conquered most of modern Syria, Lebanon,Palestine,Israel and Egypt, including the holy city of Jerusalem as well as Cairo, the residence of the Abbasid caliph. Thus, Selim was able to claim himself caliph of Islam.

Selim I conquered the Safavid Empire, only to lose it soon after; the Safavids later defeated and conquered the eastern Ottomans, and captured Baghdad. The Empire established a navy in the Red Sea that succeeded, at least for a while, in countering Portuguese influence on the spice trade. During this period, the Empire vied with the emerging European colonial powers, in the Indian Ocean. Fleets, with soldiers and arms, were sent to support Muslim rulers in Kenya and Aceh (on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra), and to defend the Ottoman spice and slave trades. In Aceh, the Ottomans built a fortress, and supplied it with huge cannon. The Dutch Protestants were at first helped by the Ottomans in their struggle against Catholic Spain. The Ottoman navy also had much influence in the Mediterranean Sea, and trade there flourished, because of the stability afforded to the shipping lanes.

At the Battle of Chaldiran in eastern Anatolia in 1514, Ottoman forces under Sultan Selim I won a decisive victory against the Safavids, ensuring Ottoman security on their eastern front.