From its very origins as a semi-nomadic community seeking to establish itself as an early modern state, large flows of migrants, exiles, and refugees found an accommodating Ottoman Empire. Indeed, the conditions under which migrants settled allowed for many to thrive as the empire encouraged migration as a manner to expand its territorial reach beyond the core Anatolian and Balkan regions. The ethnic and religious diversity of these migrants helped regularly energize Ottoman political, economic, and cultural life. At other moments, in different settings, other migrants destabilized the empire as peasants were uprooted by administrative attempts at settling the new arrivals. Arriving as the empire replaced previous ruling structures to adjust to political, cultural, and economic changes in the larger world, refugees from neighboring empires were thus seen as threats by many while they were welcomed by other constituencies within the Ottoman state, a pattern of settlement that shaped the 600-year history of the empire.