The Ottoman political enterprise emerged in the northwestern corner of Anatolia at the turn of the fourteenth century, a time when the political and ideological conditions largely created by the advance of the Mongols in the thirteenth century still dominated. Chinggis Khan (d. 1227) united the Mongol tribes in 1206 and formed the army of nomadic warriors that would bring about the creation of the largest empire in human history. During Chinggis Khan's lifetime, the Mongol armies captured northern China, Transoxiana, Khorasan, Khwarezm, and Azerbaijan. After his death, his sons extended the limits of the empire even further. A Mongol army stepped into Anatolia, defeated the Seljuks in 1243, and forced them into vassalage. After undertaking the task of consolidating and expanding control in the west in 1255, Chinggis Khan's grandson Hülegü (d. 1265) led the Mongol army against Baghdad and sacked the city in 1258, ending the Islamic caliphate – a religio-political institution that had ostensibly represented the moral unity of Muslims since the seventh century. Afterward, Hülegü established a separate political unit within the Great Mongol Empire, the Ilkhanate, which comprised Iran, Iraq, and Anatolia. The rulers of the Ilkhanate gradually increased their influence over the affairs of Anatolia to the point of establishing a direct administration after 1295.

The Mongol advance introduced a new understanding of sovereignty and law to the Islamic world. In the Mongol understanding, Chinggis Khan and his progeny through his four sons were God-chosen and had a divine mandate to rule the world. Anyone who attempted to maintain political independence from them was an insurgent and deserved execution. In addition, Mongols believed that the laws instituted by Chinggis Khan, known as yasa or yasak, had a status higher than that of all other laws. From the perspective of the conquered Muslim peoples, the Mongol idea of sovereignty and law was alien and mostly unacceptable, for it accorded no value to the continuous unity (real or assumed) of the Muslim community under the caliphate and did not recognize the superior status of sharia.

From the mid-thirteenth century onward, the Mongols appear to have shown an interest in establishing a regular administration. They then attempted to legitimize their rule in the eyes of the subject population instead of keeping them subdued through brute force and fear.