1389
Battle of Kosovo
Both rulers died. Murad I was stabbed in his tent by a Serbian noble, and Serbia became an Ottoman vassal.
Battles · Ottomans
Ottoman Battles and Sieges
15 battles and sieges from 1389 to 1683. Each links to its own page with the sides, the commanders, the result and a map.
1396
Battle of Nicopolis
The largest crusade of its time was destroyed on the Danube.
1402
Battle of Ankara
Bayezid was captured and died in captivity. The Ottoman state nearly fell apart in eleven years of civil war among his sons.
1444
Battle of Varna
The young king of Poland and Hungary was killed. It was the last real crusade to save Constantinople.
1453
Conquest of Constantinople
After a 53-day siege, with giant cannon and ships dragged overland into the Golden Horn, the city fell on 29 May 1453. Mehmed II made it his capital, and the Byzantine Empire ended after more than a thousand years.
1514
Battle of Chaldiran
Ottoman guns beat the Safavid cavalry and Selim took Tabriz. The Sunni Ottoman and Shia Safavid rivalry shaped the region for two centuries.
1516
Battle of Marj Dabiq
The Mamluk sultan died on the field and Syria passed to the Ottomans.
1517
Battle of Ridaniya
Egypt fell and the Mamluk sultanate ended. The last Abbasid caliph of Cairo was taken to Istanbul, the Ottomans became guardians of Makkah and Madinah, and later sultans claimed the title of caliph.
1522
Siege of Rhodes
After a six-month siege the knights surrendered and were allowed to leave. They moved to Malta, where they would meet the Ottomans again in 1565.
1526
Battle of Mohacs
Hungary's army was destroyed in about two hours and its king drowned while fleeing. Most of Hungary came under Ottoman rule.
1529
First Siege of Vienna
Rain, mud and the late season forced Suleiman to turn back. Vienna marked the edge of Ottoman power in Europe.
1538
Battle of Preveza
Barbarossa's win made the Ottomans the leading naval power of the Mediterranean for over thirty years.
1565
Great Siege of Malta
Nearly four months of assaults failed against the forts of Malta, and the famous corsair Turgut Reis was killed. It marked the limit of Ottoman power in the western Mediterranean.
1571
Battle of Lepanto
Most of the Ottoman fleet was lost, but it was rebuilt within a year, and Cyprus stayed Ottoman.
1683
Second Siege of Vienna
A relief army led by the king of Poland broke the siege on 12 September 1683. The Ottomans gave up Hungary at Karlowitz in 1699, the start of their long retreat.
Other kinds of war
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