A period in European history marked by efforts to reform the Christian Church
Murad II's retirement and return, Mehmed II's conquest of Constantinople and cultural patronage, Bayezid II's naval war with Venice, and Selim I's conquest of Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt, which made the Ottoman sultan the head of the Islamic world.
Ottoman court poetry and its Persian models, the Turkish poets Ahmedi, Ahmed Pasha and Necati, the Herat circle of Mir Ali-Shir Nava'i, and the mystic poet Jami with his allegories Salaman and Absal and Yusuf and Zulaikha.
The art of Islamic Asia from 1300 to 1520: mosque architecture from Tabriz to Mashhad, Timur's monumental building, the Timurid masterpiece at Mashhad, Ottoman mosques, Persian miniature painting and Behzad, ceramics, metalwork and textiles.
Why science and philosophy declined in late medieval Islam while geography, medicine and history produced great figures: Ibn Battuta the traveler, Ibn al-Nafis on circulation, Ibn al-Khatib on contagion, Abu al-Fida the geographer and, above all, Ibn Khaldun and his theory of the rise and fall of states.
The reach of African Islam from Timbuktu to Morocco, the cities of Fez and Tlemcen, the rise of Algiers as a corsair base, and the career of Khayr al-Din Barbarossa, who brought the Maghreb under the Ottomans and shook the Christian Mediterranean.
The rise of the Safavid dynasty under the boy-shah Ismail, the adoption of Twelver Shiism as Iran's state religion, the war with Sultan Selim at Chaldiran, Shah Tahmasp's long reign, the Ottoman wars and the English traveler Anthony Jenkinson at the Persian court.
The arts of Safavid Iran under Shah Ismail and Shah Tahmasp: tilework and architecture at Isfahan, the Nastaliq script and the book arts, the Tabriz school of miniature painting, and the carpets that became the glory of Persian craft.
Suleiman's accession in 1520, his conquest of Belgrade, Rhodes and Hungary, the failed sieges of Vienna, the first Franco-Ottoman alliance, the Capitulations, and the treaties that made the Ottoman empire the strongest power in Europe and Africa.
How the Ottoman empire was governed in the sixteenth century: its economy and trade, the religious scholars and the law, the status of Christians and Jews, the cavalry and the Janissaries, the bureaucracy, the Sublime Porte, and the rise and fall of the grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha.
The morals, family life and habits of the Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth century, their courage and their severity in war, official corruption, the schools, the poet Baki, and the tiles, textiles, carpets and great mosques of the empire.
The reach of Suleiman's empire, his religious tolerance, his love for Roxelana and the tragic fate of his sons Mustafa and Bayezid, the failed siege of Malta, his death at Szigetvar in 1566, and a comparison with the rulers of his age.
The legend of the Wandering Jew, the safer life of Jewish communities under the Ottomans, and the unusual freedom Jews enjoyed in Renaissance Italy and under the popes, with the accusation at Trent, the Jewish poets Immanuel and Kalonymus, and the Hebrew scholars of the Italian courts.
