Flags of the Ottoman Empire

The star and crescent design later became a common element in the national flags of Ottoman successor states in the 20th century.

A depiction of a tugh appears in the Relation d'un voyage du Levant by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1718).

During the 16th and 17th centuries, Ottoman war flags often depicted the bifurcated Zulfiqar sword, often misinterpreted in Western literature as showing a pair of scissors.

Franz Babinger (1992) suggests this possibility, noting that the crescent alone has a much older tradition also with Turkic tribes in the interior of Asia.

[12] Parsons (2007) notes that the star and crescent was not a widespread motive on the coinage of Byzantium at the time of the Ottoman conquest.

[13] Turkish historians tend to stress the antiquity of the crescent (not star-and-crescent) symbol among the early Turkic states in Asia.

The crescent and star flag of the Ottoman Empire, an early 19th-century design officially adopted in 1844
Adopted in 1882, the coat of arms of the Ottoman Empire featured a green flag at left (representing the Rumelia Eyalet ) and red flag at right (representing the Anatolia Eyalet and the other Asian eyalets ). [ 15 ]