In the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire extended its influence all the way to Southeast Asia, forging alliances and ...

One of the greatest empires in history, the Ottomans reigned for more than 600 years before crumbling on the battlefields of World War I. The tughra (insignia) of the 16th-century Ottoman emperor ...

By the early 16th century, the Ottoman empire had one of the largest Jewish communities in the word. Constantinople, the city wasn’t officially renamed Istanbul until 1930, became a real blend ...

Sultans in the Ottoman Empire loved to eat. In the 15th century, Topkapi Palace boasted a kitchen staff of 100 people, a number that grew to 500 during the 16th-century reign of Suleiman the ...

At its peak in the 16th century, under Suleyman the Magnificent and his immediate successors, the Ottoman Empire stretched from the proverbial gates of Vienna to Aden on the Red Sea and from ...

At a time when art and culture flourished as much as the expanding empire’s conquests, poetry was especially important to the highest reaches of Ottoman society—namely the sultan himself. Having ...

The island of Rhodes was a blemish on the Ottoman Empire's record. It was held by the Order of St. John (also known as the Knights Hospitaller), and it withstood the Ottoman troops' siege in 1480.

This 16th-century corsair was the most feared pirate of the Mediterranean. No Spanish ships or ports were safe when dread pirate Barbarossa, ally of the powerful Ottoman Empire, sailed the high seas.

Its onset in the late 16th century was particularly noticeable in Anatolia, a largely rural region that once formed the heartland of the Ottoman Empire and is roughly coterminous with modern-day ...