In 1453 when the last vestige of ancient Roman power fell to the Turks, the city officially shifted religions -- although the Patriarch, or Pope, of the Orthodox Church continued to live there, and still does -- and became the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

Going through the Imperial Gate in the wall, I entered the grounds of Topkapi Palace, home of the Sultans and nerve center of the vast Ottoman Empire, and walked along a road toward another gate in the distance, past the Church of St. Irene, completed by Constantine in 330 A.D. on my left, and then, just outside the second gate, I saw a spring with a tap in the wall on my right -- the Executioner's Spring, where he washed his hands and his sword after beheading his victims.

The Aegean Sea was later invaded by the Persians and the Romans, and inhabited by the Byzantine Empire, the Bulgarians, the Venetians, the Genoeses, the Seljuq Turks, and the Ottoman Empire.

The Anatolian beyliks were in turn absorbed into the rising Ottoman Empire during the 15th century.

With the beginning of the slow decline of the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century, and as a result of the expansionist policies of Czarist Russia in the Caucasus, many Muslim nations and groups in that region, mainly Circassians, Tatars, Azeris, Lezgis, Chechens, and several Turkic groups left their ancestral homelands and settled in Anatolia.

As the Ottoman Empire further fragmented during the Balkan Wars, much of the non-Christian populations of its former possessions, mainly the Balkan Muslims, flocked to Anatolia and were resettled in various locations, mostly in formerly Christian villages throughout Anatolia.

Anatolia remained multi-ethnic until the early 20th century ( see the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire ).

* 1921 – The British install the son of Sharif Hussein bin Ali ( leader of the Arab Revolt of 1916 against the Ottoman Empire ) as King Faisal I of Iraq.

* 1903 – Fall of the Ottoman Empire: an unsuccessful uprising led by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden – Preobrazhenie Uprising, takes place.

* 1664 – The Ottoman Empire is defeated in the Battle of Saint Gotthard by an Austrian army led by Raimondo Montecuccoli, resulting in the Peace of Vasvár.

* 1687 – Battle of Mohács: Charles of Lorraine defeats the Ottoman Empire.

Ahmed I ( Ottoman Turkish: احمد اول Aḥmed-i evvel, ) or Ahmed Bakhti ( April 18, 1590 – November 22, 1617 ) was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1603 until his death in 1617.

Category: Infectious disease deaths in the Ottoman Empire

Ahmed II Khan Ghazi ( Ottoman Turkish: احمد ثانى Aḥmed-i < u > s </ u > ānī ) < span dir =" ltr ">( February 25, 1643 – February 6, 1695 )</ span > was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1691 to 1695.

Only a few weeks after his accession the Ottoman Empire sustained a crushing defeat at the Battle of Slankamen from the Austrians under Margrave Louis William of Baden and was driven from Hungary.

Ahmed III ( Ottoman Turkish: احمد ثالث Aḥmed-i < u > s </ u > āli < u > s </ u >) < span dir =" ltr ">( December 30 / 31, 1673 – July 1, 1736 )</ span > was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and a son of Sultan Mehmed IV ( 1648 – 87 ).

The subsequent Ottoman victories against Russia enabled the Ottoman Empire to advance to Moscow, had the Sultan wished.

However, this was halted as a report reached Constantinople that the Safavids were invading the Ottoman Empire, causing a period of panic, turning the Sultan's attention away from Russia.

The recovery of Azov and the Morea, and the conquest of part of Persia, managed to counterbalance the Balkan territory ceded to the Habsburg Monarchy through the Treaty of Passarowitz, after the Ottoman Empire was defeated in Austro-Turkish War of 1716-18.

* June 4 – Cyprus Convention: The Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains the nominal title.

His uncle Hussein Kamel was declared Sultan of Egypt by the British, who declared severance of the nominal ties of Egypt and Sudan to the Ottoman Empire ( at least arguably invalid under international law, which did / does not allow acquisition of title to territory unless the existing sovereign, i. e., the Ottoman Empire, cedes it ), and brought an end to the use of the title of Khedive.

Ada Kaleh | Adakale Island in Danube | River Danube was totally forgotten during the peace talks at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which allowed it to remain a de jure Turkish territory and the Ottoman Sultan's private possession until the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 ( de facto until Romania unilaterally declared its sovereignty on the island in 1919 and further strengthened this claim with the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.

Locally known as Abdulwahab Island, the island was leased to Adel & Khiereddine Abdulwahab as a shipyard, since the Ottoman rule and till this day a well known ship and marine contractor.

The Greeks during the times of Ottoman Empire renamed it Fidonisi ( English: Snake Island ) and the island gave its name to the naval Battle of Fidonisi.

The Ottomans nevertheless built the old town of Massawa on Massawa Island into a prominent port on the Red Sea in typical Islamic Ottoman architecture using dry corals for walls, roof and foundation as well as imported wood for beams, window shutters and balconies.

* January 9-The Royal Navy seaplane carrier Ben-my-Chree is sunk by Ottoman artillery while in harbor at Castelorizo Island, becoming the only aviation ship of any nationality sunk by enemy action during World War I.

The islands were not fully colonised until 1681, when salt collectors from Bermuda built the first permanent settlement on Grand Turk Island ( thought to be so named due to the presence of cacti with, what appeared to them to be red fez-like structures on their tops, but this not likely to be true, since the fez was unknown to Ottoman Empire before 1826 ).

The Hafsid lineage survived the Ottoman massacre by a branch of the family being taken to the Canary Island of Tenerife by the Spanish.

The Hafsid lineage survived the Ottoman massacre by a branch of the family being taken to the Canary Island of Tenerife by the Spanish.

Mit ’ hat Frashëri ( also known by his nom de plume as Lumo Skëndo ; March 25, 1880, Ioannina, Ottoman Empire – October 3, 1949, New York, Long Island ) was an Albanian diplomat, writer and politician.

Kamaran Island had an Ottoman post office until 1915 and had a sub-post office of Aden beginning in 1924.

He is generally considered a world conquest military genius, given his successful strategy: he attempted to close all the Indian Ocean naval passages to the Atlantic, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and to the Pacific, transforming it into a Portuguese mare clausum established over the Ottoman power and their Muslim and Hindu allies .< ref >

Adaptations of the Arabic script for other languages, such as Persian, Ottoman, Sindhi, Urdu, Malay or Pashto, Arabi Malayalam, have additional letters, shown below.

Many dishes are part of the larger tradition of Ottoman cuisine and their names reveal Arabic, Persian or Turkish roots: moussaka, tzatziki, yuvarlakia, keftethes, boureki, and so on.

Imperialism has been found in the histories of Japan, the Assyrian Empire, the Chinese Empire, the Roman Empire, Greece, the Byzantine Empire, the Persian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, ancient Egypt, and India.

Their cultural integration with the emirates of the Persian Gulf formed a network of tribal and trade relationships stronger than the tie to Ottoman Iraq.

In the 1870s, Ottoman officials were reasserting their presence in the Persian Gulf, with a military intervention in 1871 — which was not effectively pursued — where family rivalries in Kuwait and Qatar were breeding chaos.

In the east, the Ottoman Turks took Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, gaining control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf.

As the 16th century progressed, Ottoman naval superiority was challenged by the growing sea powers of western Europe, particularly Portugal, in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and the Spice Islands.

When he refused to support the Ottoman Vali ( Governor ) of Basra, Kubad Pasha, in another campaign against the Portuguese in the northern Persian Gulf, Piri Reis was publicly beheaded in 1554 or 1555.

Under his rule, the Ottoman fleet dominated the seas from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

He spoke five languages: Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Chagatai ( a dialect of Turkic languages and related to Uyghur and Uzbek ), Persian and Russian.

Ottoman navies also controlled the Red Sea, and held the Persian Gulf until 1554, when their ships were defeated by the navy of the Portuguese Empire.

Whereas previous rulers had been influenced by Persian culture ( Suleiman's father, Selim I, wrote poetry in Persian ), Suleiman's patronage of the arts had seen the Ottoman Empire assert its own artistic legacy.

Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words.

The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire period ( c. 1299 – 1922 ) is termed Ottoman Turkish, which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or " rough Turkish ", spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language.

Along with other contemporary works, such as Giovanni Paolo Marana's Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy and Montesquieu's Persian Letters, the opera was inspired by a contemporary interest in the perceived " exotic " culture of the Ottoman Empire, a nation which had only recently ceased to be a military threat to the Austrian Empire.

* In the Persian Gulf, the Ottoman Empire Red Sea Fleet attacks the Portuguese stronghold of Hormuz but fails to capture it.

Many Bosnians also made a lasting impression on Ottoman culture, emerging as mystics, scholars, and celebrated poets in the Turkish, Arabic, and Persian languages.

Isa Muhammad Effendi or Ustad Isa ( translation Master Isa ( Jesus in Arabic )) was a Persian architect from Iran he and his colleague Ismail Effendi entered the service of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan after the Ottoman Sultan Murad IV and the Mughals exchanged ambassadors.

In Ottoman Turkish and Persian, it is written as طربزون.

The first half of the 15th century saw the Van region become a land of conflict as it was disputed by the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Safavid Empire.