Imagine being a Byzantine Emperor and all of a sudden, deciding to abandon everything and become a monk in a monastery.

On 6 April 1453, the Siege of Constantinople began under the command of Mehmed II, an Ottoman sultan who was just 21 years old but determined to see through his father’s dream of capturing the ...

The Hagia Sophia remains a highly popular tourist destination, attracting millions of travelers. Here is a detailed look at ...

Many factors contributed to the survival of the Byzantine Empire. It had a good infrastructure system that funneled agricultural supplies, and it had a good infrastructure system that funneled these ...

Add to that the public presence of diverse religions and it sounds like 2025, but this was life in the Ottoman Empire 200 years ago. Yet this seeming tolerance of non-Muslim faiths was in fact ...

Greek castles remind us of impressive stories from their epic past, some ranked among the best-preserved buildings in Europe.

Furthermore, contrary to many comparable short histories of the Empire, I gave special emphasis ... the fate of Constantinople and its people under Ottoman rule and the stories of some of the ...

However, this symbol did not originate with Islam; it was adopted for the first time by the city of Byzantine (which later became Istanbul). While the Ottoman Empire ruled the Muslim world ...

Turkey has begun a new phase in sweeping restorations of the nearly 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, focusing on ...