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.

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.

General Edmund Allenby used infantry, to successfully attack the strong Ottoman front line, under cover of an artillery barrage. This creeping barrage lifted and moved forward at a rate of between 50 yards ( 46 m ), 75 yards ( 69 m ) and 100 yards ( 91 m ) per minute, while 4. 5-inch howitzers fired on points beyond the barrage augmented by the guns of two destroyers firing from the Mediterranean Sea.

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.

The kings of the Ancien Régime and the July Monarchy used the title Empereur de France in diplomatic correspondence and treaties with the Ottoman emperor from at least 1673 onwards.

The Great Turkish Bombard | Sultani Cannon, a very heavy bronze muzzle-loading cannon of type used by Ottoman Empire in the Fall of Constantinople | conquest of Constantinople, in 1453.

During this time, the Ottoman Army continued to press upon a reluctant Navy a plan for the re-occupation of Tenedos, which the Greek destroyers used as a base, by an amphibious operation.

When gunpowder was introduced, the Ottoman Turks of the Ottoman Empire hired the mercenaries that used the gunpowder weapons and obtained their instruction for the Janissaries.

The development of pike and shot and later linear tactics with increased use of firearms by Europeans proved deadly against the massed infantry in close formation used by the Ottoman Turks.

) However, the printing press was used only by the non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire until the 18th century.

The Sword of Osman () was an important sword of state used during the coronation ceremony of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire.

In the second, Kantakouzenos used Ottoman forces against John V himself, granting them the use of a European fortress at Çimpe around 1352.

Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu used opium in the fourteenth century Ottoman Empire to treat migraine headaches, sciatica, and other painful ailments.

To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish — the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire — spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded.

It is considered particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman which sounded so alien to later listeners that it had to be " translated " three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995.

Etli yaprak sarma ( vine leaves stuffed with meat and rice ) used to be cooked with sour plums in Ottoman cuisine.

* June 29 or June 30 – The first document is fully written in Romanian: the letter of Neacşu, a trader from Câmpulung, to Johannes Benkner, the mayor of Braşov, warning that the Ottoman Empire is preparing its troops to cross into Wallachia and Transylvania ; the script used is Romanian Cyrillic.

The term used in Ottoman documents is sürgün, from the verb sürmek, to displace.

Beginning in the reign of Bayezid II ( d. 1512 ), transfers were used to manage the Ottoman state's difficulty with the heterodox kizilbas movement in eastern Anatolia.

Macedonians used Bulgaria as a base, beginning in 1894, to agitate for independence from the Ottoman Empire.

# " Quadruple Alliance " was also used as an alternative term for the Central Powers of World War I, it consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.

Classical Ottoman period standard equipment of Rumeli ( Balkan ) Sipahis was round shield, lance, sword, javelins and plated chainmail.

Austria gained permission in 1721 from the Ottoman Empire to operate a postal service for official correspondence only and subsequently this was extended to the opening of post offices and carrying mail for merchants.

There are archaeological finds, architectural fragments and social history material relating to the Priory site ; seals and numismatics, including an important collection of Crusader coins ; arms and armour, mainly European plate armour but also an example of Turkish Ottoman mail ; drug jars, mortars and weights from the Hospitallers ' pharmacy in Malta ; decorative arts ( portrait medals, ceramics, glass, silver, furniture, jewellery, insignia, textiles, ecclesiastical vestments ) reflecting the tastes of the European aristocrats who joined the Order and became significant patrons of the arts.

In 1865 the local post distribution company Liannos et Cie was established in Constantinople to distribute mail arriving in the city which was not addressed in Arabic as the staff of the Ottoman Postal Service were not able to do so.

Ottoman Turkey also made wide use of plate armour but incorporated large amounts of mail into their armour, which was widely used by shock troops such as the Janissary Corps.