EduNETConnect.com - Time Machine

Please select a historical period:

25 years ago / 50 years ago / 80 years ago / 125 years ago / 150 years ago
250 years ago / 400 years ago / 700 years ago / 1,200 years ago
1,500 years ago / 2,000 years ago / 3,000 years ago / 4,000 years ago / 5,000 years ago / 10,000 years ago

400 Years Ago in Mediterranean

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519), Michelangelo (1475-1564), and Titian (1477- 1576) are some of the most famous names in Italian art, part of the last flowering of the Italian Renaissance. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, painted by Michelangelo, (see a detail from one of the scenes), is a world art treasure.

Spain becomes a great power between 1500 and 1600, under the Habsburg dynasty. Under the Emperor Charles V, and his son King Philip II, Spain is the centre of a world empire, occupying lands from Holland to Austria, from Italy to Bohemia, to South and Central America, to southeast Asia. Spanish culture reached high development through the literature of the writer Cervantes, and visual arts through the painters El Greco and Valesquez.

The Spanish navy defeats a Turkish fleet near Greece at the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571, the last great battle between fleets of rowed galleys. But in 1588, Spain suffers disaster with the defeat of the famed Armada. This was an attempt to defeat England and the Dutch rebels (see the Revolt of the Netherlands in West and North Europe) in one blow. Due largely to bad planning and poor weather, the Armada is defeated.

Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople in 1453, was a builder as well as a warrior. He began at once to repopulate the former Roman capital, bringing in craftsmen, merchants and farmers of all religions from various parts of his realm. He had bazaars, hans, mosques, and other buildings constructed. Istanbul, as the Turks called it and as it is known today, probably comes from hearing Greeks say they were going "eis ten potin", meaning "to the city".

In 1516, the Ottoman emperor Selim and his forces marched south into Syria against the Mamluks. In the early 1500s the Mamluks were threatened by the Portuguese, who, having circumnavigated Africa, preyed on Muslim commerce in the Arabian Sea and nibbled at the southern Red Sea approaches to Egypt itself. Selim may have thought of himself as a deliverer of Muslims from both the Mamluks and the Portuguese. In any case, he was welcomed by the people of Aleppo in 1516, defeated the Mamluk sultan and his army nearby at Marj Dabik, and proceeded south to take all of Syria. Continuing the long march into Egypt, Selim routed another Mamluk army near Cairo in 1517. Firearms, which the skilled Mamluk horsemen refused to use because they disdainfully considered them unchivalrous, were the key to the Ottoman victories.

In 1520, Suleiman "the Magnificent" became Ottoman emperor. Under his rule, the Turks occupied Lybia, Tunisia and Algeria. In 1530, they took Arabia, Yemen and dominated the Red Sea trade routes, threatening Ethiopia.

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, painted by Michelangelo, (see a detail from one of the scenes).

back to map