In the east the Empire was overrun by the Seljuk Turks ; from the north Bulgarians and Vlachs descended unchecked to ravage the plains of Macedonia and Thrace, and Kaloyan of Bulgaria annexed several important cities, while Alexios squandered the public treasure on his palaces and gardens and attempted to deal with the crisis through diplomatic means.

With the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick in September / October 1697, the desultory war in the west was finally brought to an inconclusive end, and Leopold I could once again devote all his martial energies into defeating the Ottoman Turks in the east.

The Oghuz Turks controlled western Kazakhstan from the 9th through the 11th centuries ; the Kimak and Kipchak peoples, also of Turkic origin, controlled the east at roughly the same time.

The Khwarazmians were nomadic Turks from central Asia, who had recently been displaced by the Mongols further to the east and were now residing in Mesopotamia.

The Turks stayed in Otranto and its surrounding areas for nearly a year, but after Mehmed II's death on 3 May 1481, plans for penetrating deeper into the Italian peninsula with fresh new reinforcements were given up on and cancelled and the remaining Ottoman troops sailed back to the east of the Adriatic Sea.

In the east, the Ottoman Turks took Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, gaining control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf.

This location was auspicious, as the wealthy Byzantine Empire was weakening to his West, while in the east, Muslim forces under the Seljuk Turks were splintered and distracted in the face of relentless Mongol aggression and internal bickering.

* The Ottoman Turks capture Turnovgrad ( now Veliko Tarnovo ), the capital city of east Bulgaria.

These defeats in the east and the west of the island proved decisive for the Turks and they abandoned their siege and departed.

John's campaigns fundamentally changed the balance of power in the east, forcing the Turks onto the defensive and restoring to the Byzantines many towns, fortresses and cities right across the peninsula.

This was done partly to cow the Serbs into submission ( Serbia was, at least nominally, a Byzantine protectorate ), and partly to strengthen the Byzantine frontier in the east against the Turks.

By the time of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, the Byzantine Empire was largely confined to Balkan Europe and the northwestern fringe of Anatolia, and faced Norman enemies in the west as well as Turks in the east.

Both Turks and Persians wanted to dominate the Silk Road and the trade industry between the west and the far east.

From his father he had inherited an ongoing war against the East Roman ( Byzantine ) Empire and against the Turks in the east.

This shift was caused by the successful circumnavigation of Africa opening up sea-trade with the east: after Portugal's Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and landed in Calicut, India in May 1498, a new path of eastern trade was possible ending the monopoly of the Ottoman Turks and their European allies, the Italian city-states.

Map of The Bahamas ( excluding the Turks and Caicos Islands, east of Great Inagua off the right edge of the map )

Serbs were left with too few men to effectively defend their lands, while the Turks had many more troops in the east.

The Serbs were left with too few men to defend their lands effectively, while the Turks had many more troops in the east.

A minute force of little more than a division proper, just enough to forestall a possible Turkish redeployment eastwards, was to be sent west as the " Army of Epirus ", while the bulk of the army and artillery would embark on what would later be called " blitzkrieg " tactics against the Turks in the east.

' The area around Melk was given to Margrave Leopold I in the year 976 to serve as a buffer between the Magyars ( called " Turks " in that time's sources ) to east and Bavaria to the west.

When level with the empty No. 4 redoubt, Ryzhov wheeled to the left, crested the Causeway Heights, and came to a halt ; before him, he could see the Heavy Brigade moving east across his front, whilst away to the south he could discern the Highlanders and Turks immediately to the north of Kadikoi.

In his accredited work titled Diwan Lughat al-Turk, Mahmud of Kashgar, a Turkic scholar of the 11th century, described the Karachuk Mountains which are located just east of the Aral Sea as the original homeland of the Oghuz Turks.

At its widest ( west to east ), from the Cayman Islands to Barbados it spanned some ( and across approximately 22 degrees of longitude ) and from the Turks and Caicos Islands in the north, to the Icacos Point, Trinidad in the south it extended ( and across 12 degrees of latitude ).

This pre-emptive strike was intended to intimidate the German states into accepting his conditions, while encouraging the Ottoman Turks to continue their own struggle with the Emperor in the east.

alt = Map of Caribbean showing seven approximately parallel westward-pointing arrows that extend from east of the Virgin Islands to Cuba.

The Aegean Islands are found within its waters, with the following islands delimiting the sea on the south ( generally from west to east ): Kythera, Antikythera, Crete, Kasos, Karpathos and Rhodes.

The Almoravid power was at its height at Yusuf's death, and the Moorish empire then included all North-West Africa as far as Algiers, and all of Iberia south of the Tagus, with the east coast as far as the mouth of the Ebro, and included the Balearic Islands.

Locations include the Cyclopean Islands east off Sicily and near Trentino in northern Italy ; Victoria in Australia ; Kerguelen Island in the Indian Ocean ; in the Lake Superior copper district of Michigan, Bergen Hill, New Jersey, Golden, Colorado, and at Searles Lake, California in the United States ; and at Cape Blomidon, Nova Scotia and Mont Saint-Hilaire, Quebec in Canada ; and in Iceland.

The Virgin Islands, often called the British Virgin Islands ( BVI ), is a British overseas territory located in the Caribbean to the east of Puerto Rico.

They are located in the Virgin Islands archipelago, a few miles east of the U. S. Virgin Islands.

The British Virgin Islands are located in the Caribbean, between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, east of Puerto Rico. Its geographic coordinates are.

The Banda Islands () are a volcanic group of ten small volcanic islands in the Banda Sea, about south of Seram Island and about east of Java, and are part of the Indonesian province of Maluku.

The descendants of some of the Bandanese who fled Dutch conquest in the seventeenth century live in the Kai Islands ( Kepulauan Kei ) to the east of the Banda group, where a version of the original Banda language is still spoken in the villages of Banda Eli and Banda Elat on Kai Besar Island.

Ecuador is divided into three continental regions — the Costa ( coast ), Sierra ( mountains ), and Oriente ( east )— and one insular region, the Galápagos Islands ( officially Archipiélago de Colón ).

Their homeland – the Inuvialuit Settlement Region – covers the Arctic Ocean coastline area from the Alaskan border east to Amundsen Gulf and includes the western Canadian Arctic Islands.

* Matthew and Hunter Islands east of New Caledonia claimed by France and Vanuatu

Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, an island arc with an estimated area of 14, 300 km² extending east from the Java island of Indonesia.

The Federated States of Micronesia ( FSM ) consists of 607 islands extending 1, 800 miles ( 2, 900 km ) across the archipelago of the Caroline Islands east of the Philippines.

Boat parties charted the east coasts of Chichagof and Baranof Islands, circumnavigated Admiralty Island, explored to the head of Lynn Canal, and charted the rest of Kuiu Island and nearly all of Kupreanof Island.

lowest point: Indian Ocean 0 m ( sea surface level ), Wetar Basin in east of Banda Sea at-7, 440 m ( northwest of Tanimbar Islands & southeast of Ceram Island ), where subduction zone is

It is native to the Old World and is found from Cape Verde and the Canary Islands, southern Europe across to northern and eastern Africa, the Mediterranean, south west Asia to south east India.

It forms part of the chain of the Lesser Sunda Islands, with the Lombok Strait separating it from Bali to the west and the Alas Strait between it and Sumbawa to the east.

It is located in the western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands.

It consisted of two island groups, the ABC islands Curaçao, Bonaire and ( until 1986 ) Aruba just north of Venezuela, and the SSS islands east of the Virgin Islands.

New Caledonia is made up of a main island, the Grande Terre, and several smaller islands, the Belep archipelago to the north of the Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands to the east of the Grande Terre, the ( Isle of Pines ) to the south of the Grande Terre, the Chesterfield Islands and Bellona Reefs further to the west.

* The Loyalty Islands, a hundred kilometers to the east, are coral and limestone islands built on top of ancient collapsed volcanoes originating due to subduction at the Vanuatu trench.