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This city was founded by Arabs and served as a fort for Islamic conquest. Interestingly this fort was used as defensive during attacks during Berber revolts. This city later went into decline about the 13th century.

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Fustat is localted modern day "Old Cairo" in Egypt. Arabs founded this city as the first islamic capital of egypt as a place for expansion into more of Africa. The people who migrated where mostly from yeman and this represents the changing demographics in the region.

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The Battle of Manzikert, between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Empire on 26 August 1071, lead to the Turkification of Asian minor. This remains me of the reading and the changing demographics and movement of people in the region.

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This battle was a turning point in the Reconquista in 1212. This is when Iberian Christian kingdoms defeated the Almohad Caliphate. What I found interesting is that then sent an entire army across the straits and made several victories a few years before. Hence, this shows the Reconquista and much more gradual.

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Namik Kemal in London in 1872. What is very interesting about Kemal's description is that he connects it to the older India and China, again connecting these countries into the wider world (especially during this time when the British are invading both India and China) and shows how the variation in empire changes. Again, this shows the "Ottoman" Empire and ambassor trying to model after other nations.

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Lady Mary's visit during 1717-1718.
Her visit reflects the start of more interactions with the "Middle East" and "Europe". But, it still redifines what "decline" is, not as more women in power, but admiring the role of women.Lady Mary brought back the version of the smallpox vaccine

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In 1633, Murad IV shut down the coffee houses and made smoking an capital offense. He citied the reasons of the threat of fires and also the gossip that the coffee houses provided. However, it did not last long and smoking got back up into the public sphere.

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It is hard to see smoking as taboo in "Middle Eastern Society" today. However, with the Columbia exchange, new commodities like tobacco started entering the Old World. While originally treated for various diseases, from head colds to the plague, it quickly became recreational. It was swiftly adopted in the "Ottoman Empire," and by 1700, it was grown in Macedonia, Anatolia, and Syria; by 1800, it was tobacco was three times cheaper than coffee by weight. Tobacco brought political and religious contentious. Similar to coffee, people argued that it caused intoxication. Futhermore, because tobacco, unlike coffee, came from the Atlantic World, and by extension Europe, some "Ottoman" officials viewed it as Christian contamination in the lands of Islam. Additionally, tobacco came at at time of increasing social leveling, coffee houses, which undermined long-standing social hierarchies "Ottoman empire".

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Most google images of the Maldives make it out to be the ultimate tourist destination included tropical beaches and wooden houses in stilts. However, I choose this image of a Mosque in Male to should how the Maldives were part of the wider Islamic world. For example, Ibn Battutah visited the 1340s. It became an important place to trade, cowrie shells, that was used as currency throughout Asia. Later in the 1500s, it became an strategic island in the Indian ocean for trade and colonization.

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The Zagros Mountains are in the western part of modern day Iran and stretching into Iraq, Syria and even Turkey. Moutains can act as a naturla boarder, in this cased, a border between the Ottomans and the Safavids. Again, these mountians reflect how the "Middle East" was never monolithic, but instead a wide range of peoples and religions.

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It is a very dry and large desert in the southern Arabian Peninsula (about the size of France). It largely consist of nomadic populations. Contrary to its name, it is rich in oil and Saudi Arabia started oil production in the 1930s.

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Samarkand was a major trading city on the silk road. Again, it was visited by Ibn Battuta during his travels. Many different religions were present in the city, Islam, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. This shows how the Mongol conquest also changed regions not just in Anatolia

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This was a major trading and imperial city during the Roman and Byzantine eras. Thessaloniki was a Janissary stronghold where novice Janissaries were trained and had a mixture of Greeks, Turks, and Jews living in the City. This city reflects the diversity of the Ottoman empire. Demography, the city became vastly majority Greek since Post World War II. It it a major tourist destination today in Greece.

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The "Ottoman Empire" never directly controlled Morocco. However, they did conquer the city in 1576 and installed a puppet government. Fez is an example of the furthest extents of Ottoman rule and their control of most of the Mediterranean Sea.

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This river has been an historical source of irrigation water for both Turkey and Syria. While today it marks the border between these states, the river has been control by different people throughout time, like the Roman Empire and could been seen as a place of communication and growth in the region.

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Since the 1960s, the Aral Sea as been shrinking and is almost fully dried up because of the overgrowing of Cotton in the region and Soviet planning. This has had a lot of damage for the local community because the sea provided fishing stocks, water conservation, and soil fertility

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Cordoba was the capital of caliphate of Cordoba form 929 to 1031 AC. It was a center for Islamic culture during the middle ages. After the Spanish conquest, The city even experience a golden age between 1530 and 1580, before a decline. Hence, the city shows another place and blending of Islamic influence in Europe.

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Venice is a major trading city in the Mediterranean Sea. Venice is often sees as a rival to the Ottoman Empire. While they did engage in conflict, they mostly traded, Venice sent luxury textiles, glass, and metallic goods departed,  and the Venetians brought back from the orient raw silk, cotton, spices and grains.