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.

Vincent Berger's mission is a failure because the Ottoman nationalism on which Enver Pasha counted does not exist.

* 1903 – Macedonian rebels in Kruševo proclaim the Kruševo Republic, which exists only for 10 days before Ottoman Turks lay waste to the town.

Ahmed III left the finances of the Ottoman Empire in a flourishing condition, which had remarkably been obtained without excessive taxation or extortion procedures.

In 1699, thanks to English mediation, the war ended with the peace of Karlowitz by which Venice retained possession of the 7 Ionian islands, Butrinto and Parga, the Morea, Spinalonga and Suda, Tenos, Santa Maura and Aegina and ceased to pay a tribute for Zante, but restored Lepanto to the Ottoman sultan.

The crop failure of 1873, the sultan's lavish expenditures for the Ottoman Navy and the new palaces which he had built, and the mounting public debt heightened public discontent.

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.

Also in 1904, Muhammad ` Ali continued his accusations against ` Abdu ' l-Bahá which caused an Ottoman commission summoning ` Abdu ' l-Bahá to answer the accusations levelled against him.

Ulu Cami is the largest mosque in Bursa and a landmark of early Ottoman architecture, which carried many elements from the Seljuk architecture.

) The mosques that were built after the conquest of Constantinople ( Istanbul ) by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, and influenced by the design of the 6th century Byzantine basilica of Hagia Sophia, had increasingly elevated and large central domes, which create a vertical emphasis that is intended to be more overwhelming ; in order to convey the divine power of Allah, the majesty of the Ottoman Sultan, and the governmental authority of the Ottoman State.

Bulgaria, which had secured Ottoman recognition of her independence in April 1909 and enjoyed the friendship of Russia, also looked to districts of Ottoman Thrace and Macedonia for expansion.

The First Balkan War, which lasted from October 1912 to May 1913, strengthened Bulgaria's position as a regional military power, significantly reduced Ottoman influence over the Balkans, and resulted in the formation of an independent Albanian state.

At its peak in the 16th through the 18th centuries, the Ottoman Empire had wrested control of the entire Black Sea area, which was for the time an " Ottoman lake ", on which Russian warships were prohibited.

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 ascended to the throne following the death of his father Murad I, who was killed by Serbian knight Miloš Obilić during ( June 15 ), or immediately after ( June 16 ), the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, by which Serbia became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire.

Anadoluhisarı fortress was built between 1393 and 1394 as part of preparations for the Second Ottoman Siege of Constantinople, which took place in 1395.

Later in the same century, Croatia was so weak that its parliament authorized Ferdinand Habsburg to carve out large areas of Croatia and Slavonia adjacent to the Ottoman Empire for the creation of the Military Frontier ( Vojna Krajina, German Militaergrenze ) which would be ruled directly from Vienna's military headquarters.

As a result of their compulsory military service to the Habsburg Empire during conflict with the Ottoman Empire, the population in the Military Frontier was free of serfdom and enjoyed much political autonomy, unlike the population living in the parts ruled by Hungary.

Between 1805 and 1914, the ruling dynasty of Egypt ruled de jure viceroys of the Ottoman Empire, but acted as de facto independent rulers who maintained a polite fiction of Ottoman suzerainty.

The Ottoman period also saw the rising of semi-autonomous Albanian ruled Pashaliks and Albanians were also an important part of the Ottoman army and Ottoman administration like the case of Köprülü family.

Known as " Ofioussa " ( having snakes ) and " Pityoussa " ( having pine trees ) in antiquity, during the medieval age the island was ruled by a number of external powers and has also been known as Scio ( Genoese ), Chio ( Italian ) and Sakız ( صاقيز — Ottoman Turkish ).

The valley of the river Vardar, which was later to become the central area of the Republic of Macedonia, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire prior to the First Balkan War of 1912, with the exception of the brief period in 1878 when it was liberated from Ottoman rule after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, becoming part of Bulgaria.

Osman I or Othman I or Osman Gazi ( 1258 – 1326 ) Sultan Osman Ghazi, or Osman Bey or I. Osman, Osman Gazi Han ), nicknamed " Kara " for his courage, was the leader of the Ottoman Turks, and the founder of the dynasty that established and ruled the Ottoman Empire.

1299-1326 ), the founder of the dynasty that ruled the Ottoman empire for 620 years.

The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires, Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice.

* Osman I ( 1258 – 1326, Osman Gazi or Osman Bey or I. Osman or Osman Sayed II ) leader of the Ottoman Turks, founder of the dynasty that established and ruled the Ottoman Empire.

As Louis had no legitimate children Ferdinand was elected as his successor in Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, but the Hungarian throne was contested by John Zápolya, who ruled the areas of the kingdom conquered by the Turks as an Ottoman client.

During the Greek War of Independence the Greek people fought for independence from the Ottoman Empire who ruled them.

During the rule of the Ottoman Empire in Palestine ( 1517-1918 ), Jenin, Lajjun and the Carmel area, were for part of the 17th century ruled by Bedouin sheikhs, in this case the Turabay family.

After the Fourth Crusade in 1204, a Byzantine successor state was founded there with support of Queen Tamar of Georgia, the Empire of Trebizond, which ruled part of the Black Sea coast from Trebizond until 1461, when its ruler, David, surrendered to Mehmed II, ruler of the Ottoman Empire.

The Duchy was ruled by Nerio II Acciaioli, a vassal of the Ottoman Sultan.

An even earlier example of a puppet state ( as well as a vassal state ) is Wallachia, which was partially de facto ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1462 when Radu the Handsome was placed on the throne after his older brother Vlad III was banished from Wallachia and interned by Hungary.

He and the three Caliphs selected after him shunned any pretensions to royalty but later on ruling dynasties came into existence and ruled until the end of the Ottoman Caliphate that came after its defeat in the First World War along with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire by, inter alia, Britain, France and Russia in 1918.

Machiavelli explained that in his time the Near East was again ruled by an empire, the Ottoman empire, with similar characteristics to that of Darius-seen from the viewpoint of a potential conqueror.

This had begun in 1821 as an uprising by Greek nationalists against the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled Greece for over three centuries.