Languages of the Ottoman Empire
The Ottomans had three influential languages: Turkish, spoken by the majority of the people in Anatolia and by the majority of Muslims of the Balkans except in Albania, Bosnia, and various Aegean Sea islands; Persian, initially used by the educated in northern portions of the Ottoman Empire before being displaced by Ottoman Turkish; and Arabic, used in southern portions of the Ottoman Empire; Arabic was spoken mainly in Arabia, North Africa, Mesopotamia and the Levant. Throughout the vast Ottoman bureaucracy Ottoman Turkish language was the official language, a version of Turkish, albeit with a vast mixture of both Arabic and Persian grammar and vocabulary.
List of lingua francas
In the Middle East, from around 2600BCE to 1500BCE, forms of Akkadian were the universally recognized language. It was used throughout the Akkadian empire as well as internationally as a diplomatic language – for example between Egypt and Babylon – well after the fall of the Akkadian empire itself and even while Aramaic was more common in Babylon.