(July 20, 1402;seeBattle of Ankara), and captured Smyrna from the Knights of Rhodes. Having received offers of submission from the sultan of Egypt and fromJohn VII(then coemperor of theByzantine EmpirewithManuel II Palaeologus), Timur returned to Samarkand (1404) and prepared for an ...
Painters and architects moved from one empire to the other, especially from Iran to India; Ottoman princes wrote Persian poetry, and Safavid rulers spoke Turkish. But most of all, they were aware of the fact that they were much closer to each other than to any non-Islamic cultural entity....