When Mahomet succeeded to the sultanate he was but twenty-one years old, but had already given proof of great talents, learning, and ambition, all guided by a judgment of remarkable maturity.

The stoutest opponent of the Osmanlis in Asia was the Anatolian Sultanate of KaramanMoslem, Turkish, and the legitimate heir of those Seljuk Turkish Sultans who had given Osman's father his first footing in the land.

The Sultanate of Timbuctoo seems in reality to have been a thriving empire, and if Timbuctoo was not the Claude-like vision of Carthaginian palaces which it became in the tales of imaginative travellers, it apparently had something of the magnificence of Fez and Marrakech.

The Seljuk sultanate in Anatolia, shaken by the crusades, had gone the way of all oriental empires to make room for one of its fractions, which showed a most un-oriental faculty of organic growth.

In the third place the sultanate of Stambul had retained a vague but valuable prestige, based partly on past history, partly on its pretension to religious influence throughout a much larger area than its proper dominions; and the conservative population of the latter was in great measure very imperfectly informed of its sovereign's actual position.

Undoubtedly, however, the Ottoman sultanate can count on its religious prestige appealing widely, overriding counteracting sentiments, and, if it rouses to action, rousing the most dangerous temper of all.

Stambul, Sultanate of, Stambulov, Stephen Dragutin, Stephen Du[)s]an, King of Serbia(1331-45), Tsar of Serbs, Bulgars, and Greeks (1345-55), Stephen (Lazarevi['c]), Serbian Prince, Stephen Nemanja, veliki [)z]upan, Stephen Nemanji['c], King of Serbia (1196-1223), the First-Crowned, Stephen Radoslav, King of Serbia (1223-33), Stephen Uro[)s]