How did that come about?

  The time Babur almost died.

    ‘Constantinople’ by Edmondo De Amicis- a review.

  Aurangzeb and the Yusufzais revolt  Under Aurangzeb, the Mughal Empire reached its zenith. However, in 1667, an incident took place which disturbed the relative peace in the North West frontier. The Yusufzais, a tribe in the NWFP, revolted against Aurangzeb, paving way for two other tribes to revolt against him in the future. While Aurangzeb was successful, the revolts did have several long term consequences. Aurangzeb had to face numerous rebellions in his reign. One of the most significant one was the rebellion of the tribes of the North West Frontier Province. The earliest tribe in the North West Frontier Province that one hears about are the Yusufzais. Dominant in the Swat region, which is now in present day Pakistan, no other ruler except for Akbar had tried to subjugate this tribe.   Literally- “the sons of Yusuf”, they have a history spanning over centuries. The tribe settled in Kabul when Babur’s uncle- Mirza Ulugh Beg was the ruler but in order to avoid being massacred

  1453- The capture of Constantinople (Part 2)   April 6, 1453- The artillery guns of Sultan Mehmet II began to fire their first shots on the walls of Constantinople. May 14, 1453- Even after the Ottomans fired “210 stone balls” on them, the city walls, though weak, were still standing.                                                                   Walls of Constantinople- Source-                          https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Walls_of_Constantinople.JPG/250px-Walls_of_Constantinople.JPG     Even before Mehmet’s army, Constantinople had remained strong for a previous 23 sieges. Mehmet’s father himself had tried and failed to take the city. The reason for the city still standing strong lay in its geography as well as its ancient defense systems.                                   Defenses of the city  a. The Theodosian Walls. Emperor Constantine I had built his famous Constantine wall circa 324 AD as a form of fortification to pro

1453- The Capture of Constantinople (Part 1) Part 1. A brief history of Constantinople   Constantinople, previously known as Byzantium, and now known as Istanbul is in present day Turkey. The beautiful city, a peninsula ,stands at the edge of the two continents of Europe and Asia.  Constantinople was at the very edge of Asia and Europe. Thus , capturing the city had a monetary and tactical advantage. Constantinople was also called the “Red Apple” by the Turks. Some scholars contend that the idea of the “Red Apple” was to establish dominance over the area- a center of Orthodox Christianity.  Roger Crowley in 1453  says that the “Red Apple” also had a distinct geographical location – many believed that the “Red Apple” was the model of the globe in the hands of the statue of the Roman Emperor Justinian outside the church of St Sophia.