tolia, the Levant and southeast Arabia.
In 1243, the Seljuk armies were defeated by the Mongols, causing the Seljuk Empire's power to slowly disintegrate. In its wake, one of the Turkish principalities governed by Osman I would, over the next 200 years, evolve into the Ottoman Empire, expanding throughout Anatolia, the Balkans and the Levant. In 1453, the Ottomans completed their conquest of the Byzantine Empire by capturing its capital, Constantinople.
Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) successfully expanded the Empire's southern and eastern borders by defeating Shah Ismail I of Safavid dynasty, in the Battle of Chaldiran(1514). Yavuz Sultan Selim expanded Ottoman rule in Egypt, and created a naval presence on the Red Sea. After this Ottoman expansion and following expansions, a competition started between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire to become the dominant power in the region of Red Sea and Indian Ocean.
The Ottoman Empire's power and prestige peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The empire was often at odds with the Holy Roman Empire in its steady advance towards Central Europe through the Balkans and the southern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At sea, the Ottoman Navy contended with several Holy Leagues (composed primarily of Habsburg Spain, the Republic of Genoa, the Republic of Venice, the Knights of St. John, the Papal States, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Duchy of Savoy) for control of the Mediterranean Sea. In the Indian Ocean, the Ottoman Navy frequently confronted Portuguese fleets in order to defend the empire's monopoly over the historic maritime trade routes between East Asia and Western Europe; these routes faced new competition with the Portuguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, which had a considerable impact on the Ottoman economy. In addition, the Ottomans were occasionally at war with Safavid Persia over territorial disputes
