Paul Wittek

Paul Wittek (11 January 1894 – 13 June 1978) was an Austrian Orientalist and historian. His 1938 thesis on the rise of the Ottoman Empire, known as the ''ghazi thesis'', argues that the driving force behind Ottoman state-building was the expansion of Islam. Until the 1980s, his theory was the most influential and dominant explanation of the formation of the Ottoman Empire. Provided by Wikipedia