- Osman
- Osman, founder of the Ottoman state in early fourteenth-century Anatolia
- Constantinople
- Constantinople, the Roman capital Mehmed conquered in 1453
- the 1453 conquest
- the 1453 conquest ending Byzantium and opening a new Ottoman age
- Istanbul
- Istanbul, the name conquered Constantinople took as caliphal capital
- Süleyman the Lawgiver
- Süleyman the Lawgiver, their greatest sultan of the sixteenth century
- Mehmed the Conqueror
- Mehmed the Conqueror, taker of Constantinople and builder of its laws
- gunpowder
- the gunpowder that changed battles and sieges in the fifteenth century
- the musket
- the musket carried by the Ottomans' new soldier on the field
- the cannon
- the great cannon that breached Constantinople's ancient walls
- the Safavids
- the Safavids, their Shi'i neighbours in Iran and the long frontier between
- Mughal India
- Mughal India, the greatest Islamic realm in the east
- Anatolia
- Anatolia, the Ottomans' homeland from which the state grew
