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.

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.

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

* 1799 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Mount Tabor – Napoleon drives Ottoman Turks across the River Jordan near Acre.

As the German princes were experiencing the tumult of the Reformation, the German Peasants ' War, and the wars against the Ottoman Turks, they did not enforce the ban on the duke, and agitation against him soon died away.

* This article incorporates text from the History of Ottoman Turks ( 1878 )

The subsequent years witnessed the gradual extinction of Byzantine rule in Asia Minor, as Orhan of the Ottoman Turks, who had already defeated Andronikos III at Pelekanos in 1329, took Nicaea in 1331 and Nicomedia in 1337.

Nicaea, until 1261 the capital of the Empire, was under siege by Ottoman Turks.

His loss of the empire's few remaining territories in Anatolia made the Ottoman Turks posed to expand into Europe as did its lack of strength following his reign to prevent the formation of the Serbian Empire.

By the end of Andronikos II's reign, much of Bithynia was in the hands of the Ottoman Turks of Osman I and his son and heir Orhan.

* 1521 – The Ottoman Turks occupy Belgrade.

* 1521 – The Ottoman Turks capture Nándorfehérvár, now known as Belgrade.

* 1526 – Battle of Mohács: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.

* 1541 – The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom.

The area thrived during the Ottoman Empire, as the centre of opium production and Afyon became a wealthy city with the typical Ottoman urban mixture of Turks, Armenians and Greeks.

) 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.

In fact, as the Ottoman Turks closed in on Constantinople, they constructed a fortification on each side of the strait, Anadoluhisarı ( 1393 ) and Rumelihisarı ( 1451 ).

Constantinople was captured by the Ottoman Turks, becoming the capital of their empire, in 1453.

On May 29, 1453, the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, and again became the capital of a powerful state, the Ottoman Empire.

* Battle of Adrianople ( 1365 )-Capture by Ottoman Turks

Gladstone, however, saw the issue in moral terms, for Bulgarian Christians had been massacred by the Turks and Gladstone therefore believed it was immoral to support the Ottoman Empire.

Other rewards were bestowed by foreign states, particularly the Ottoman Emperor Selim III, who made Nelson the first Knight Commander of the newly created Order of the Crescent, presented him with a chelengk, a diamond studded Rose, a sable fur and numerous other valuable presents.

The terms of the Treaty of Lausanne required the newly created states that acquired the territory detached from the Ottoman Empire to pay annuities on the Ottoman public debt and to assume responsibility for the administration of concessions that had been granted by the Ottomans.

In this period, a formal Ottoman government was created whose institutions would change drastically over the life of the empire.

Selim I established Ottoman rule in Egypt, and created a naval presence on the Red Sea.

Beginning with the Ottoman Empire, many modern sharia jurisdictions have created penal law codes ( Qanun ) that cover areas that are not specifically mentioned in sharia law, although they may not contradict sharia law.

During the Ottoman Tanzimat ( 1839 – 76 ) reforms, nationalism arose in the Empire and in 1870 a new Bulgarian Orthodox Church was established and its separate diocese was created, based on ethnic identity rather than religious principles.

The Ottoman Empire broke the treaty after just two months by invading the newly created Democratic Republic of Armenia in May 1918.

It also was granted League of Nations mandates over Palestine, which was turned into a homeland for Jewish settlers, and Iraq, created from the three Ottoman provinces in Mesopotamia.

Meanwhile, existing victorious Allies such as France, Belgium, Italy, Greece and Romania gained territories, while new states were created out of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Russian and Ottoman Empires.

The modern Greek state was created in 1832, when the Greeks liberated a part of their historic homelands, Peloponnese, from the Ottoman Empire.

In 1898, the autonomous Cretan State was created, under Ottoman suzerainty, with Prince George of Greece as its High Commissioner and under international supervision.

During the late Ottoman period, the city had a great Christian influence in terms of culture, and a wealthy merchant class who created several Western consulates.

The eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire were created mainly at one Coptic monastery, at Abou Gerbe monastery on Mount Ghebel Eter.

The crown of Skanderbeg, believed to have been created for the medieval king in the 15th century, was smuggled out of Albania by members of the Kastrioti family following the occupation of Albania by the Ottoman Empire.

Organizations created to aid the Jewish migration to Ottoman Syria also bought land from absentee landowners.

In Silemani ( Sulaymaniyah ), the Ottoman Empire had created a secondary school ( Rushdíye ), the graduates from which could go to Istanbul to continue to study there.

During the Great War ( 1683 – 90 ) between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League — created with the sponsorship of the Pope and including Austria, Poland and Venice — these three powers as means of divide and conquer strategy, incited including Serbs to rebel against the Ottoman authorities and soon uprisings and terrorism spread throughout the western Balkans: from Montenegro and the Dalmatian Coast to the Danube basin and Old Serbia ( Macedonia, Raška, Kosovo and Metohija ).

* Even shortly before on 8 December 1918 the Allied occupation of the Bosporus, the Dardanelles, the eastern coast of the Sea of Marmara, the islands of Imros, Lemnos, Samothrace and Tenedos and 15 km deep into eastern and the eastern shores ; entire area demilitarized ( Zone of the Straits ; complemented 16 March – 10 August 1920 as the allies occupy the Ottoman capital Istanbul ) was a military fact, in November 1918 a double post was created: until the termination of allied occupation on 22 October 1923, there were at all times one British Senior Allied High Commissioner and one ( junior ) Allied High Commissioner ( incumbents from France, thrice, Italy and the US, each twice ).

Very elaborate decorated versions were created for important documents that were also works of art in the tradition of Ottoman illumination, such as the example of Suleiman the Magnificent in the gallery below.

Nadir Shah's devastating campaign against the Mughal Empire, created a void in the western frontiers of Persia, which was effectively exploited by the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud I, who initiated the Otttoman-Persian War ( 1743 – 1746 ), in which the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah closely cooperated with the Ottomans and their ambassador Haji Yusuf Agha, these relations between the two great empires continued until Muhammad Shah's death in 1748.

Contrary to common legend, the bagel was not created in the shape of a stirrup to commemorate the victory of Poland's King Jan III Sobieski over the Ottoman Turks in the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

Eastern Rumelia or Eastern Roumelia (, Iztochna Rumeliya ;, Rumeli-i Şarkî ;, Anatoliki Romylia ) was an autonomous unit ( Oblast in Bulgarian, vilayet in Turkish ) in the Ottoman Empire, created in 1878 by the Treaty of Berlin and ended in 1885, when it willingly united with Bulgaria, from which state its territory is still part.