The Ottoman Empire, 1453-1699 < The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe

Part of the Ottomans' inheritance no doubt came from their far-distant past in central Asia, when they had almost surely come under the influence of China and had lived like other nomads of the region. Their language, their capacity for war, and their rigid adherence to custom may go back to this early period.

From the Persians and the Byzantines, the Turks seem to have derived their exaltation of the ruler, their tolerance of religious groups outside the state religion, and their practice of encouraging such groups to form independent, separate communities inside their state. From Islam, the Turks took the sacred law, the Arabic alphabet, and the Arabic vocabulary of religious, philosophical, and other abstract terms.