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* Constantinople’s population may have been just 30,000, but Mehmed ordered his magnates to sponsor new neighbourhoods, protected Greeks and invited in Jews, who were being persecuted in western Europe. Within twenty-five years, its population was 80,000, of which 60 per cent were Muslim, 20 per cent Christian, 10 per cent Jewish. Mehmed demolished the Church of the Apostles (tomb of Constantine and emperors), built his own mosque complex on top and constructed the Ayyub Ansari Mosque (on the ‘discovered’ site of a Companion of Muhammad who died during the siege of 668), as well as the fortress-arsenal of Seven Towers. Although still called Constantinople by the Turks, it was also known as Istanbul, derived from an old Greek nickname ‘eis ten polin’ (‘to the City’), adapted to Istambol. It remained the Ottoman/Turkish capital until 1923, and its name was officially changed to Istanbul in 1930.

* While the Impaler died fighting, Radu and the Dracula dynasty ruled on as Ottoman clients. For 250 years, the sultans appointed trusted Greek princes, some of them descended from emperors, from the Phanariot district of Constantinople to rule Moldavia and Wallachia, later combined to form Romania.

* Queen Jadwiga was one of the two daughters of Louis the Great, the Anjou king of Hungary and Poland whose widow Elisabeth of Bosnia tried to preserve the kingdoms for the two girls. Maria became queen of Hungary, but her mother Elisabeth overplayed her hand, murdering the male claimant, which led to her arrest and strangling in front of her daughter. Faced with marriage to a pagan, Jadwiga prayed and finally agreed, provided he converted. Jadwiga and Jagiełło were a successful partnership, she dying in childbirth, he ruling the joint kingdoms until 1434, establishing a dynasty that ruled for over a century and provided kings to Hungary and Bohemia.

* Ahmed, khan of the Golden Horde, had been a Eurasian potentate, a Golden prince, married to a Tamerlanian princess. After the debacle on the Ugra, Ahmed was assassinated by his cousin Ibak Khan of Sibir, his wife returned to Herat and the Golden Horde shattered for ever into several kingdoms. In the east, the khanate of Sibir, one of the lesser-known successor states of the Mongol empire, had been founded by Taibuga, a descendant of Jochi, who ruled from a town near today’s Tyumen. On the Volga and on the Caspian, a Golden khan ruled Kazan and Astrakhan. In Crimea, the Girays ruled a buffer state between Ottomans, Poles and Muscovites.

* Like his father, Lorenzo bought slaves with whom he had illegitimate children: these slaves were not from Africa but from Circassia in the Caucasus, probably traded through Genoese and Ottoman traders.

* In 1482, when Leonarda da Vinci offered his services to the duke of Milan, he boasted of his expertise in ‘1. “burning and destroying” enemy bridges; 2; “I make infinite numbers of bridges, mantlets and scaling ladders” for sieges. 3. “I have also types of cannons” 4. “Mines and secret passages” 5. “I will make cannon mortar and light ordinance … that are quite out of the ordinary”’ and only in point 6 does he add: ‘Also I can execute sculpture in marble bronze and clay.’ He did not mention he could also do some painting.

* Next, Ivan and Sophia invited Marco Ruffo and Pietro Solario, who built the Palace of Facets and the red crenellations of the Kremlin walls, including Ivan’s Belltower – all of which now appear distinctively Russian but derived from a clever merging of Byzantine and Italian styles. While Ivan’s army was traditionally Mongol-style cavalry with bows and arrows, the Italians brought cannon and firearms.

* It was during Vasili’s reign that Muscovite clergymen started to push the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome in succession to Constantinople.

* Just after taking Otranto in 1481, Mehmed the Conqueror died at the age of forty-nine. In the ensuing showdown, possibly overseen by his son Bayezid II, his grand vizier, the Jewish doctor Hekim Yakub, was accused by the Janissaries of being a Venetian agent: he had just negotiated a peace treaty with Venice. The Janissaries murdered Hekim and looted his palace. Ottoman tolerance had its limits: thereafter there were many more Slavic-born viziers but no more Jews.

Manikongos, Borgias and Columbuses

ISABELLA AND FERDINAND: CONQUERORS OF ISLAM, SCOURGE OF THE JEWS

Red-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned, pious and acute, Isabella was the antithesis of her thin-spermed half-brother Enrique, who harassed her to marry a rash of unsuitable husbands – including a hunchbacked Englishman (the duke of York, future Richard III). Isabella defied him and, as the family feud went against Enrique, he recognized her as heir.