By 1400, the once mighty Byzantine Empire was nothing more than the Despotate of the Morea, a few Aegean islands, and a strip of land in Thrace in the immediate vicinity of the capital.
Within 90 years of Osman I's establishment of the Ottoman beylik, the Byzantines lost all their Anatolian territory and by 1380, Byzantine Thrace was also lost to the Ottomans. While many Turkish beys participated in the conquest of Byzantine and Seljuk territory, the territories under the control of one such bey, Osman I, posed the greatest threat to Nicaea and to Constantinople. The weakening of the Sultanate of Rum brought no long-term advantage to the Empire, as nobles known as ghazis began setting up fiefdoms at the expense of the Byzantine Empire. This, combined with the reduced power of the Sultanate of Rum (Byzantium's chief rival in Asia) led to the removal of troops from Anatolia to maintain Byzantium's grip on Thrace. The position of the Byzantine Empire in Europe remained uncertain due to the presence of the rival kingdoms of the Despotate of Epirus, Serbia and the Second Bulgarian Empire. Eventually Constantinople was re-taken from the Latin Empire in 1261 by the Nicaean Empire. Taking advantage of the situation, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum began seizing territory in Western Anatolia, until the Nicaean Empire was able to repulse the Seljuk Turks from the remaining territories still under Roman rule. The Byzantine Empire, already weakened by misrule, was left divided and in chaos. In 1204 the Byzantine capital of Constantinople was sacked and occupied by the Fourth Crusaders, an important moment of the Christian East–West Schism. The Byzantine–Ottoman wars were a series of decisive conflicts between the Ottoman Turks and Byzantines that led to the final destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Ottoman Empire.
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