Under the ruler Suleiman the Magnificent (born 1494), the Ottoman Empire reached it's peak from 1520 AD to 1566 AD. Ottoman Empire Peak. The ottoman empire's peak was from 1481-1566, during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The Ottoman Empire began in 1299 after an Oguz warrior named Ertugrul and his son, Osman Gazi, arrived at the Empire of Rum in Anatolia (Asia Minor) from Central Asia. They are battling to gain control of the Middle East. This image is from an editorial in 1912 by David Wilson depicting the Ottoman Empire fighting against the Balkan League. This image depicts the Ottomans defending themselves from Persian invaders. 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 The Ottomans or the Ottoman Empire was a state of Turkish origin which attained the status of great power in Europe in the Early Modern Age (1299-1923 AD). Upon his arrival, Ertugrul helped Seljuk Sultan Kaihusrev II to defeat Mongolian invaders at Eskisehir, and in so doing helped to save Seljuk’s Empire of Rum. The Ottoman Empire, officially the Sublime State of Ottomania (in Ottoman Turkish:دولت عالیه عثمانیه), was an empire that lasted from 1299 to 1923. Despite military reforms which reconstituted the Ottoman Modern Army, the Empire lost its North African territories and the Dodecanese in the Italo-Turkish War (1911) and almost all of its European territories in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). At the peak of their might from the mid sixteenth to the late seventeenth century, they controlled modern day Turkey, the Balkans, parts of the Middle East and much of the North African coast. It was centered in Turkey and controlled the eastern and southern lands around the Mediterranean Sea.