Most of my readers are quite familiar with the great rulers of the Renaissance: Henry VIII and his consecutive marital ...

Born from conquest, trained from childhood, and loyal only to the Sultan—the Janissaries were the backbone of the Ottoman war machine.

Hürrem Sultan, also known as Roxelana, was an enslaved concubine before she became the powerful wife of Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.

After conquering Constantinople, the young sultan — he was only 21 — performed his first Friday prayer here, starting a tradition for all subsequent sultans of the Ottoman Empire.

The ruthless brutality of Vlad III of Walachia, forged by the 15th-century clash between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, would partly inspire Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel ...

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 ...

First he ordered the Sultan expelled; 16 months later the Caliph (or Moslem spiritual leader) was exiled. Kemal announced that “Islam is a dead thing,” and Turkey became a nondenominational state.

Book Club: Showcasing Ottoman design across centuries of opulence, Assouline’s latest release tracks the evolution of luxury throughout the ages.