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.

The castle was much fought over during the Crusades and was finally conquered by the Ottoman Sultan Beyazid I in 1392 but was lost after the invasion of Timur Lenk in 1402.

On 29 May 1453 it was conquered by the emerging Ottoman Empire.

For example, in the 1543 Siege of Nice the Ottoman forces led by Barbarossa conquered and pillaged the town itself and took many captives-but the city castle held out, due to which the townspeople were accounted the victors.

The peninsula, a part of the Byzantine Empire, was gradually conquered by the Ottoman Empire from 13th century to the 15th century.

The Mamluk province of Bilad a-Sham ( Syria ) was conquered by Turkish Sultan Selim II in 1516 – 17, becoming a part of the province of Ottoman Syria for the next four centuries, first as the Damascus Eyalet and later as the Syria Vilayet ( following the Tanzimat reorganization of 1864 ).

In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt conquered Ottoman Syria and decided to revive and resettle much of its regions.

The area was conquered by the Serbian Empire, passing to the Ottoman Empire in 15th century.

In the late 14th and the early 15th century the Ottoman Empire conquered parts of Albania.

On the conquered part of Albania, which territory stretched between Mat River on the north and Çameria to the south, Ottoman Empire established the Sanjak of Albania and in 1419 Gjirokastra became the county town of the Sanjak of Albania.

The Ottoman sultan, Selim I ( 1516 – 20 ), after defeating the Persians, conquered the Mamluks.

It was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1386 / 87 and again in the 1390s, but only came under permanent Ottoman control in 1423, by Turahan Bey.

He established the Empire by building up a society and government in the newly conquered city of Adrianople ( Edirne in Turkish ) and by expanding the realm in Europe, bringing most of the Balkans under Ottoman rule and forcing the Byzantine emperor to pay him tribute.

Ottoman defeats in the war caused Mehmed III to take personal command of the army, the first sultan to do so since Suleyman I. Mehmed III's armies conquered Eger in 1596 and defeated the Habsburg and Transylvanian forces at the Battle of Keresztes ( Turkish for Battle of Hacova ) during which the Sultan had to be dissuaded from fleeing the field halfway through the battle.

Selim I conquered the Ottoman – Mamluk War ( 1516 – 1517 ) | Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, making the Turks the dominant power in the Islamic world.

He also claimed that the formation of Janissary out of conquered children would induce other people to adopt, not only out of the children of the conquered nations, but out of a crowd of their friends and relations, who would come as volunteers to join the Ottoman ranks.

Many small local states with varying degrees of independence developed, but only in the 14th century the larger principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia emerged to fight a threat in the form of the Ottoman Turks, who conquered Constantinople in 1453.

In 1820 – 21, an Ottoman force conquered and unified the northern portion of the country.

The city was eventually conquered by the Arabs and then by the Ottoman Turks.

In 1392 the city was conquered by the Ottoman Turks who called the town Üsküp.

After conquering some parts of the Balkans, the Ottoman Turks conquered Skopje in 1392 beginning 520 years of Ottoman rule.

* The island of Paros is conquered by the Ottoman Empire

* Mehmed II Ottoman Sultan, born at Edirne in Thrace ; he was the Sultan who conquered Constantinople, marking the end of the Middle Ages.