Daily Medieval

When Cem, brother of Sultan Bayezid II, came to be incarcerated in Rome as the "guest" of Pope Innocent VIII , he had a very comfo...

When Bayezid II became sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1481, he had a rival: his half-brother Cem (22 December 1459 - 25 February 1495). Ce...

Yesterday's post on Mesih Pasha mentions the Siege of Rhodes in 1480, when a small garrison of Knights Hospitallers at Rhodes withstood...

Mesih Pasha was chosen from obscurity—we don't even know his original name before Mehmed II forced him to convert to Islam and made him...

After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II , he took two young male potential Byzantine heirs, converted them to Islam, and ...

Once Mehmed II had taken Constantinople  in 1453, absorbing it into the Ottoman Empire , he declared himself Roman Caesar. His thinking was...

In 1451, Mehmed II , sultan of the Ottoman Empire , chose as his first self-imposed task that he would conquer Constantinople. To prepare, h...

Mehmed II, also called Mehmed the Conqueror, accomplished one of the most damaging counters to Christianity and Europe and conquered an enor...

The Ottoman Empire , begun by Osman Ghazi , lasted until the 19th century, but we will confine ourselves to an earlier century or two. The i...

Although Alaeddin's idea to create a group ready to be called up to military service at a moment's notice failed due to their lack ...

Well, not the "real" Aladdin in the sense that he was a man with a magic lamp, but a man who did perform "wonders" in th...

Begun by (and named for) Osman Ghazi  (c.1254 - 1323/4), and inspired (perhaps) by a dream , the Ottoman Empire grew to encompass an enormou...

Osman I (c.1254 - 1323), emir of his Turkish clan, married Rabia Bala Hatun (died 1324), daughter of Sheikh Edebali, a religious leader. Ac...

Osman Ghazi is one of those many figures in history whose impact was large but whose life's details are not well known. We are not even ...

The Trebizond Empire  (the orange slice on the southern shore of the Black Sea illustration), founded in 1204 on the shores of the Black Sea...

The unifying of Poland and Lithuania after the marriage of Jadwiga of Poland and Jogaila, the Grand Duke of Lithuania , did not resolve al...

Sigismund, King of Hungary, had an awkward relationship to that title. He only became king because of his marriage to Queen Mary of Hungary....

Vlad III Dracul was the son of Vlad II Dracul. Vlad the father was an illegitimate son of Mircea I of Wallachia, voiv ode  (military leader)...

Long before he engaged in the bloodthirsty military tactics that made him the historical inspiration for a vampire count, Vlad Tsepes (a you...

Historic periods rarely have well-defined dates, unless they can point to a specific event that created definitive change. One can say there...