Did the Ottoman Empire really decline for three centuries?

For most of the twentieth century, the standard story went like this: the Ottoman Empire reached a golden age under Suleiman the Magnificent, in the 1500s, and afterwards slid into stagnation and decline until it was dissolved in 1923. This "decline thesis" was the basis of both Western and Republican Turkish understanding of Ottoman history.

Specialists have mostly abandoned it. After studies from the 1980s onward that used previously untapped sources, academic historians of the empire reached a consensus that the notion of decline was a myth: the empire remained a vigorous and dynamic state long after Suleiman.

Where did the idea come from? Partly from Ottomans themselves. Writers of "advice for kings" literature praised Suleiman's reign as the most perfect expression of justice and described the empire as having fallen from it. But it is now recognised that they were often using the genre to voice personal complaints. One of them, Mustafa Âli, was largely motivated by frustration at his own failure to win promotions and patronage. Western historians later took up the idea, which also helped explain Ottoman defeats and to justify European imperialism.

Instead of decline, historians now speak of crisis and adaptation. After a wretched economic and demographic crisis around 1600, the empire changed from a military conquest state into a more stable, bureaucratic state concerned with raising revenue.

Does that mean nothing weakened? Not exactly: a standard overview still says the empire fell behind technologically by the late 18th century. The argument is about the story, not about denying all losses.