The Ottoman Empire (/ˈɒtəmən/; Ottoman Turkish: دولت عليه عثمانیه, Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿOsmānīye, literally The Exalted Ottoman State; Modern Turkish: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti; also historically known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire,Ottoman Turkey or simply Turkey) was an empire founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt (modern-day Bicelik Province) by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was a multinational, multilingual empire controlling much of Southeast Europe, parts of Central Europe, Western Asia, the Caucasus, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa. At the beginning of the 17th century, the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.