Ottoman Empire A startling reality burst Osman's dream of a sole enduring promise land. The pious, Sufi mystics, beys, emirs and tribes on Anatolia's frontiers chased the Ottoman vision. Sultans would rise and build multicultural millets and stir the soul of caliphs. Drawn to the allure of the Orient Express, coffee and velvet, the burst didn't happen over night. Merchants, nobility and guilded artisans built markets and trade routes. Risking their lives, Ottomans crossed the pirate-riddled Adriatic. Sultans and gazis embraced the crescent's rise. Inside you will read about... - Origins until the Balkan Conquests - Institutions & Society: Millets, Guilds, Trade, Religion and Mysticism - Fifteenth Century Imperial Style, Sixteenth Century Golden Age, Cracks before World War I - The Eastern Question And much more . Western industrialization and the Enlightenment gripped hearts and minds as starry-eyed Ottoman astronomers and society embraced a Golden Age. Yet with any rise comes the reality that Sir Lawrence of Arabia and the Berlin-Baghdad Express alliances could only foreshadow. Designs on the lands turned the empire into the Eastern Question during World War I in a prelude to today's Middle East.