1453 – Fall of Constantinople 1453 to 1550 – Classical Age of the Ottoman Empire 1501 to 1736 – Safavid Iran 1516 to 1517 – Ottoman-Mamluk War, Ottomans seize Cairo in 1517 1526 to 1585 – Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf, a Syrian polymath who built the Constantinople observatory, the largest observatory of the medieval world. He described a steam turbine with the practical application of rotating a spit in 1551. He also had his own method of finding coordinates of stars that was most precise at the time, and he proved the law of reflection observationally. He authored more than ninety books on a variety of different subjects 1550 to 1700 – Transformation of the Ottoman Empire 1700 to 1789 – Ottoman ancien régime 1709 to 1738 – Hotak dynasty of Iran and Afghanistan 1751 to 1794 – Zand dynasty of Iran Contemporary Middle East 2nd millennium AD 1789 to 1925 – Qajar Iran 1798 – Napoleon Bonaparte leads a campaign in Egypt and Syria 1828 to 1914 – Decline and modernization of the Ottoman Empire 1828 – Al-Waqa'i' al-Misriyya, oldest newspaper ever established in Egypt 1830 to 1950 – Nahda or "Arab cultural renaissance" 1831 to 1833 – First Egyptian-Ottoman War, Egypt under Muhammad Ali seizes the Levantine provinces 1834 to 1835 – Syrian Peasant Revolt takes place in the Levant, but is suppressed 1837 – The first newspaper in Iran, Kaghaz-i Akhbar (The Newspaper), was created for the government by Mirza Saleh Shirazi 1838 – 1838 Druze revolt 1839 to 1841 – Egypt loses control over the Levantine provinces after the Second Egyptian-Ottoman War 1840 – Oriental Crisis of 1840 1840 – Convention of London 1851 – Darul Funun, one of the oldest modern universities in the Middle East, is established by Amir Kabir 1860 – Al-Jinan, an Arabic-language political and literary bi-weekly magazine established in Beirut by Butrus al-Bustani, continues until 1886 1860 – 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war 1861 – Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate is established 1862 to 1892 – development of the internal combustion engine rivals the steam engine, and ultimately makes petroleum an important political factor in the following century 1869 – Construction of the Suez Canal is completed 1875 – Al-Ahram, second oldest and widest newspaper in circulation in Egypt is established 1882 – British troops occupy Cairo, Egypt becomes British protectorate 1888 – Ibrahim al-Yaziji, a Lebanese Christian writer, philologist, poet and