Ottoman Empire

State · 1305–1923 CE · at its largest around 1595 CE

From a frontier band of Turkish warriors grew a multi-faith empire whose capital, Istanbul, was crowned by Sinan's mosques under Suleiman the Magnificent. Coffeehouses, calligraphy, Sufi orders and a mix of Muslims, Christians and Jews defined six centuries of life.

Its battles, in Battle View

Battle of Lepanto (1571 CE)
Landing at Anzac Cove (1915 CE)

On its lands while it lasted

Knights Templar (c. 1119–1312 CE): Hugues de Payens and fellow knights founded this military order in Jerusalem around 1119 to protect pilgrims, with headquarters on the Temple Mount. It grew rich and powerful until Pope Clement V dissolved it in 1312 under pressure from Philip IV of France.
Dante Alighieri (1265 CE – 1321 CE): Florentine poet whose Divine Comedy, written in the Tuscan vernacular, is a masterpiece of world literature and helped establish the Italian language.
Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel frescoes (1305 CE): Giotto covered the walls of a Padua chapel with the lives of the Virgin and Christ under a starry blue vault. His solid, feeling figures broke with Byzantine stiffness and began the road to the Renaissance.
Ibn Battuta’s travels: Maghreb, Arabia and East Africa (1325–1332 CE): The Moroccan scholar Ibn Battuta left Tangier on the hajj in 1325, visited Egypt, Syria, Mecca and Iraq, then sailed down the East African coast to Kilwa and back via Oman and the Persian Gulf. His Rihla records some 30 years of travel.
Black Death (1346–1353 CE): Bubonic plague pandemic that reached Europe through Mediterranean ports such as Messina in 1347 and killed an estimated third to half of Europe's population.
Joan of Arc (c. 1412 CE – 1431 CE): French peasant girl who led French forces to lift the siege of Orléans; she was captured, tried for heresy and burned at Rouen.
Dome of Florence Cathedral (1436 CE): Brunelleschi's dome, completed in 1436, was the largest built since antiquity and a landmark of Renaissance architecture.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 CE – 1519 CE): Italian Renaissance polymath born in Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, whose notebooks record studies in anatomy, engineering and flight.
Fall of Constantinople (1453 CE): Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II captured Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire; the city became the Ottoman capital.
Songhai Empire (c. 1464–1591 CE): Empire centred on Gao that under Sunni Ali and Askia Muhammad became one of the largest states in African history before falling to a Moroccan invasion in 1591.
Michelangelo (1475 CE – 1564 CE): Florentine sculptor, painter and architect of the High Renaissance. He carved the Pietà and David, painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Last Judgement, and designed the dome of St Peter's.
Suleiman the Magnificent (1494 CE – 1566 CE): The longest-reigning Ottoman sultan (r. 1520–1566), under whom the empire reached the height of its power and its legal system was codified.
Mona Lisa (c. 1503 CE): Leonardo da Vinci began this portrait of Lisa Gherardini in Florence around 1503 and kept working on it for years. It hangs in the Louvre and is among the most famous paintings in the world.
Galileo Galilei (1564 CE – 1642 CE): Italian astronomer and physicist born in Pisa who pioneered experimental science and telescopic astronomy. Condemned by the Inquisition in 1633, he spent his last years under house arrest near Florence.
Einstein's special relativity (1905 CE): In 1905, while working at the patent office in Bern, Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity and, in a follow-up paper, E = mc². It transformed ideas of space and time.