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.

Part of the Ottoman territories in the Balkans ( such as Thessaloniki, Macedonia and Kosovo ) were temporarily lost after 1402, but were later recovered by Murad II between the 1430s and 1450s.

Lucaris was several times temporarily deposed and banished at the instigation of both his Orthodox opponents and the Catholic French and Austrian ambassadors, while he was supported by the Protestant Dutch and English ambassadors to the Ottoman capital.

When the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II launched a retaliatory attack on Moldavia, Stephen defeated the invaders at the Battle of Vaslui in 1475, a victory which temporarily halted the Turkish advance.

In the nineteenth century, the nationalist movement that had risen against both the former Ottoman rule and contemporary Austro-Hungarian occupation temporarily revived the arms from the Fojnica armorial.

Known in Ottoman history as the Interregnum, that struggle temporarily halted active Ottoman expansion in the Balkans.

In 1500, a Spanish-Venetian army commanded by Gonzalo de Córdoba took Kefalonia, temporarily stopping the Ottoman offensive on eastern Venetian territories.

The Turkish advance was temporarily halted after Stephen the Great of Moldavia defeated the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II's armies at the Battle of Vaslui in 1475, which was one of the greatest defeats of the Ottoman empire until that time.

When the Ottoman Empire was formally split up by the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, it was decided that four of its territories in the Middle East should be League of Nations mandates temporarily governed by the United Kingdom and France on behalf of the League.

On 17 May 1821 the people of Polygyros rose against the Ottoman authority and managed, temporarily, to expel the ottoman guard.

Local opposition attempted to use an Ottoman force to take control of Racha, but the victory of King David at Skhvava ( January 26, 1786 ) temporarily secured his dominance in the area.

He became the Despot of Serbia in 1402 after the Ottoman state temporarily collapsed following Timur's invasion of Anatolia with the Battle of Ankara, where he and his Serbian Knights fought well and a good portion of his forces survived. Then stopping at Constantinople on his way home, he was well received by the Emperor who granted him the title of Despot by which he was to be known from then on and by which his successors were also to be known.

The combined forces of Daher, Ali Bey, and Russia ( which was at war with the Ottoman Empire that time ) kept the majority of the Galilee free of Ottoman influence, and Daher was able to temporarily extend his rule along the coast as far south as Jaffa and as far north as Sidon.

Although after the Austro-Ottoman war ( 1683 – 1697 ) and before the treaty of Karlowitz ( 1699 ) most parts of Banat were temporarily controlled by the forces of Prince Eugene of Savoy ; in consequence of the treaty, the Ottoman sovereignty was recognized over the region with the fort of Temeşvar.

This region was temporarily occupied by Ottoman Empire in 1514, in 1534, in 1548 and in 1553.

He initially emigrated to Ottoman Palestine in 1912, but returned temporarily to Europe and was stranded there until after World War I, not returning to the then Mandate Palestine, later Israel, until 1919. where he died in 1958.

He subsequently joined forces with Sigismund Báthory's 40, 000-man army ( led by István Bocskay ) and counterattacked the Ottomans, freeing the towns of Târgovişte ( October 8 ), Bucharest ( October 12 ) and Brăila, temporarily removing Wallachia from Ottoman suzerainty.

In the 16th century the monks had to temporarily leave the monastery on several occasions due to the Ottoman threat.

The place also hosted a company of the Ottoman foot-artillery division, along with an Austrian and French vice-consulate.

He afforded refuge in Ottoman territory to Charles XII of Sweden ( 1682 – 1718 ) after the Swedish defeat at the hands of Peter I of Russia ( 1672 – 1725 ) in the Battle of Poltava of 1709.

* 1713 – The Kalabalik or Tumult in Bendery results from the Ottoman sultan's order that his unwelcome guest, King Charles XII of Sweden, be seized.

King Charles XII of Sweden fled to the Ottoman Empire following his defeat against the Russians at the Battle of Poltava in 1709.

Accordingly, King Charles XII of Sweden was welcomed as an ally in the Ottoman Empire following his defeat by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 ( part of the Great Northern War of 1700 – 1721.

) Charles XII persuaded the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III to declare war on Russia, which resulted in the Ottoman victory at the Pruth River Campaign of 1710 – 1711.

He organised for the Ottoman Empire a standing army of regularly paid and disciplined infantry and horses, a full century before Charles VII of France established his fifteen permanent companies of men-at-arms, which are generally regarded as the first modern standing army.

The presence of the Spanish in the Eastern Mediterranean concerned Suleiman, who saw it as an early indication of Charles V's intention to rival Ottoman dominance in the region.

By 1544, a peace between Francis I and Charles V had put a temporary end to the alliance between France and the Ottoman Empire.

16th century copy of the 1569 Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire | Capitulations between Charles IX of France | Charles IX and Selim II.

* March 8 – Antoine Escalin des Eymars, the French ambassador, returns from Constantinople with promises of Ottoman aid in a war against Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

* August 12 – Battle of Mohács ( 1687 ): imperial army under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine defeats the Ottoman Turks and enables Austria to conquer most of Ottoman-occupied Hungary.

* May 20 – July 9 – Zarafa, a giraffe presented by the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, Mehmet Ali Pasha, to King Charles X of France, the first to be seen in Europe for over three centuries, walks from Marseilles to Paris.

Charles XII and the remnants of his army were cut off from Sweden and fled south into Ottoman territory, where he remained three years.

However, Turkish failure to pursue the victory enraged Charles and from that moment his relations with the Ottoman administration soured.

In 1566, through the ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Guillaume de Grandchamp de Grantrie and because of a long-standing Franco-Ottoman alliance, Charles IX of France and Catherine de Medicis proposed to the Ottoman Court a plan to resettle French Huguenots and French and German Lutherans in Ottoman-controlled Moldavia, in order to create a military colony and a buffer against the Hapsburg.

In 1736 Anna declared war on the Ottoman Empire, but Charles made a separate peace with the Porte, forcing Russia to follow suit and to give up all recently captured territories with the exception of Azov.

After some five years of siege, Manuel II entrusted the city to his nephew and embarked ( along with a suite of 40 people ) on a long trip abroad to seek assistance against the Ottoman Empire from the courts of western Europe, including those of Henry IV of England ( making him the only Byzantine emperor ever to visit England – he was welcomed from December 1400 to January 1401 at Eltham Palace, and a joust took place in his honour ), Charles VI of France, the Holy Roman Empire, Queen Margaret I of Denmark and from Aragon.

Charles XII moved from Saxony into Russia to confront Peter, but the campaign ended with the destruction of the main Swedish army in Poltava ( now Ukraine ), and Charles's exile in Ottoman Bender.

Charles was crushingly defeated by a larger Russian force under Peter in the Battle of Poltava and fled to the Ottoman Empire while the remains of his army surrendered at Perevolochna.

When his army surrendered, Charles XII of Sweden and a few soldiers escaped to Ottoman territory, founding a colony in front of Bender, Moldova.