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.

* 1909 – The Turkish military reverses the Ottoman countercoup of 1909 to force the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

After the Ottoman conquest of Greece, the Parthenon was used as the garrison headquarters of the Turkish army, and the Erechtheum was turned into the Governor's private Harem.

Abdülaziz ( Ottoman Turkish: عبد العزيز / ` Abdü ’ l -` Azīz ; February 9 / 18, 1830 – June 4, 1876 ) was the 32nd Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and reigned between 25 June 1861 and 30 May 1876.

Abdülhamid I, Abdul Hamid I or Abd Al-Hamid I ( Ottoman Turkish: عبد الحميد اول ` Abdü ’ l-Ḥamīd-i evvel ), which translates to the Servant of God ( March 20, 1725 – April 7, 1789 ), was the 27th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

* Agha ( Ottoman Empire ), Aga, Agha, or Ağa, an Ottoman Turkish military and administrative rank

It was influenced by its non-Slavic neighbors in the Balkan language area ( mostly grammatically ) and later also by Turkish, which was the official language of the Ottoman Empire, in the form of the Ottoman Turkish language, mostly lexically.

As a national revival occurred towards the end of the period of Ottoman rule ( mostly during the 19th century ), a modern Bulgarian literary language gradually emerged which drew heavily on Church Slavonic / Old Bulgarian ( and to some extent on literary Russian, which had preserved many lexical items from Church Slavonic ) and later reduced the number of Turkish and other Balkanic loans.

Bayezid I ( Ottoman: بايزيد اول, Turkish: Beyazıt, nicknamed Yıldırım ( Ottoman: ییلدیرم ), " the Thunderbolt "; 1354 – March 8, 1403 ) was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1389 to 1402.

Bayezid II or Sultân Bayezid-î Velî ( December 3, 1447 – May 26, 1512 ) ( Ottoman Turkish: بايزيد ثانى Bāyezīd-i < u > s </ u > ānī, Turkish: II.

This name was used in Turkish side by side with Kostantiniyye, the more formal adaptation of the original Constantinople, during the period of Ottoman rule, while western languages mostly continued to refer to the city as Constantinople until the early 20th century.

In Ottoman Turkish the Empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAliyye-yi ʿO < u > s </ u > mâniyye ( د َ و ْ ل َ ت ِ ع َ ل ِ ي ّ ه ٔ ع ُ ثم َ ان ِ ی ّ ه ), or alternatively Osmanlı Devleti ( عثمانلى دولتى ).

The Nizam-ı Cedid ( from Arabic َ Al-Niẓām Al-Jadīd via Persian Nizām-e Jadīd-" New Order ") was a series of reforms carried out by the Ottoman Empire sultan Selim III during the late eighteenth century in a drive to catch up militarily and politically with the Western Powers.

In 1901, as a result of the article " Edebiyyât ve Hukuk " ( ادبيات و ﺣﻘﻮق ; " Literature and Law "), translated from French and published in Servet-i Fünûn, the pressure of censorship was brought to bear and the magazine was closed down by the government of the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II.

One early master by the name of Shebek is mention posthumously in the earliest Ottoman text on the art known as the Tertib-i Risâle-i Ebrî ( ترطیب ِ رسالۀ ابری ), which is dated based on internal evidence to after 1615.

Rûm, also Roum or Rhum ( in Arabic الر ُّ وم ُ ar-Rūm, Persian / Turkish Rum ; all from Middle Persian Hrom ) is a vague term used at different times in the Muslim world to refer to the Balkans and Anatolia generally, to the Byzantine Empire in particular, to the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm in Asia Minor, to non-Muslims inhabiting Ottoman or Turkish territory, and to Greeks living outside of Greece.

After the fall of the Ottoman dynasty as Emperors of the Ottoman State ( Padishahan-i Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmaniyye in Ottoman Turkish ), Abdulmecid II ( 1922 ) still was proclaimed Caliph with the title Halife (" Caliph ", in modern Turkish ) by the Turkish Nationalist Assembly of the city of Ankara on November 19th 1922.

Murad II Kodja ( June 1404, Amasya – 3 February 1451, Edirne ) ( Ottoman Turkish: مراد ثانى Murād-ı < u > s </ u > ānī, Turkish: II.

Murad III ( Ottoman Turkish: مراد ثالث Murād-i < u > s </ u > āli < u > s </ u >, Turkish: III. Murat ) < span dir =" ltr ">( 4 July 1546 – 15 / 16 January 1595 )</ span > was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1574 until his death.

Mehmed III Adli ( Ottoman Turkish: محمد ثالث Meḥmed-i < u > s </ u > āli < u > s </ u >, Turkish: III. Mehmet ; < span dir =" ltr "> May 26, 1566 – December 21 / 22, 1603 )</ span > was sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1595 until his death.

Murad IV Ghazi ( Ottoman Turkish: مراد رابع Murād-i rābi ‘) < span dir =" ltr ">( July 26 / 27, 1612 – February 9, 1640 )</ span > was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1623 to 1640, known both for restoring the authority of the state and for the brutality of his methods.

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 >

During the medieval period and prior to the Ottoman occupation of Debarewa in 1557, Eritrea ’ s historical name was Bahre-Negash ( Kingdom of the Sea ).

Mehmed the Conqueror, the Ottoman sultan living in the 15th century, European sources say “ who was known to have ambivalent sexual tastes, sent a eunuch to the house of Notaras, demanding that he supply his good looking fourteen year old son for the Sultan ’ s pleasure.

Sultan Osman II or Othman II ( commonly known as Genç Osman – meaning Osman the Young – in Turkish ) ( Ottoman Turkish عثمان ثانى ‘ O < u > s </ u > mān-i < u > s </ u > ānī ) < span dir =" ltr ">( November 3, 1604 – May 20, 1622 )</ span > was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1618 until his death on 20 May 1622.