#ac rev

In Game:

The Crusaders were the Europeans who undertook the call-to-arms by the Papacy to participate in the Crusades, a series of religious wars enacted against the enemies of the Latin Church. The first three, and most prominent, of these conflicts involved a declaration of war upon the Muslim rulers of the Holy Land, aiming to forcefully reclaim it in the name of Christianity.

There were a number of Christian military orders who worked in unison with these European kingdoms. These orders were largely founded in the Holy Land itself, ostensibly to protect Christian pilgrims. Among their number were counted knightly orders such as; the Knights Hospitalier, the Knights Teutonic, and Knights Templar.

By the year 1191, the Crusaders were commanded by Richard I of England—better known as Richard the Lionheart—who sought to reclaimed Jerusalem during the Third Crusade.  The Knights Templar, who were a part of the Crusader army, besieged the Assassin fortress at Masyaf twice during the Third Crusade, although both attempts ended in failure.

The first, in the year 1189, was led by the Templar Haras, who was a part of the Assassin Order until he betrayed them, hoping to locate the Apple of Eden. The second, in 1191, was led by the Templar Grand Master himself, Robert de Sablé. In all, both sieges were quelled due to the efforts of the Assassin Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad.

By the year 1191, the Crusaders had conquered the cities of Jaffa and Acre, and were on the march towards Jerusalem. During this time, Crusader troops could be found patrolling through the wilderness that divided the cities of Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem.

The same year, Altaïr set out to eliminate several corrupt men, who were secretly Templars. Several of these men were important Crusaders and Saracens, which almost led to the two factions uniting in an attempt to try and destroy their common enemy. In order to prevent this, Altaïr set out to assassinate the Templar Grand Master, Robert de Sablé, and succeeded in killing him after a long duel, during the Battle of Arsuf, to convince Richard that the Templars were traitors to his army.

By 1191, the Crusaders controlled the city of Acre and had guards stationed throughout the Kingdom, the region between Acre, Jerusalem, Masyaf and Damascus.

In Real Life:

The Crusaders were the Europeans that traveled to the Holy Land during a series of religious wars sanctioned by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The most commonly known Crusades were the campaigns in the Eastern Mediterranean aimed at recovering the Holy Land from Muslim rule, but the term "Crusades" is also applied to other church-sanctioned campaigns, such as the crusade against the Cathars and the Baltic Crusades. These were fought for a variety of reasons including the suppression of paganism and heresy, the resolution of conflict among rival Roman Catholic groups, or for political and territorial advantage. At the time of the early Crusades the word did not exist, only becoming the leading descriptive term around 1760.

Despite the fact that the Crusades originally started when the Emperor of the Byzantine empire called upon Pope Urban II for aid which was under attack by Muslim Seljuk Turks, the main the emotional and spiritual motivation of the Crusades for many of the Crusaders was to “recapture” the Crusades from the Muslims.

Many of the Crusaders were not knights; in fact, many were actually peasants who were recruited into the wars through propaganda that promised they would receive both spiritual and earthly rewards should they “take up the cross.” The spiritual reward was the indulgence, or the forgiveness, of sins. The earthly rewards included plunder from conquest, forgiveness of debts, and freedom from taxes, as well as fame and political power. Crusaders did not only fight for control of the Holy Land; they also worked to secure the Church’s power in Europe. It was the French monk Guilbert of Nogent wrote in his twelfth century chronicle of the Crusades, “God has instituted in our time holy wars, so that the order of knights and the crowd running in its wake… might find a new way of gaining salvation. And so they are not forced to abandon secular affairs completely by choosing the monastic life or any religious profession, as used to be the custom, but can attain in some measure God’s grace while pursuing their own careers, with the liberty and in the dress to which they are accustomed.”

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One example of peasants joining the war was when a fanatical group of German peasants decided in 1096 that a goose had been “blessed by God.” They followed it around for a while, and along the way attacked and killed any Jewish people they encountered. There was also the Children’s Crusade in 1212, in which  thousands of children from France and Germany were marching to the Holy Land. It was probably more aimless shuffling of homeless people than a crusade, but a bunch of kids apparently did show up in Marseille to seek passage to the Holy Land. Most of them ended up being sold into slavery in North Africa.

This is not to say that there were only peasants participating in the crusades.  The Crusades set the stage for several religious knightly military orders, including the Knights Templar, the Teutonic Knights, and the Hospitallers. These groups helped attack the Holy Land and protected Christian pilgrims traveling to and from the region.

Millions of people, Christian and non-Christian, soldiers and noncombatants lost their lives during the Crusades. In addition to the enormous loss of life, the debt incurred and other economic costs associated with the multiple excursions to the Middle East impacted all levels of society, from individual families and villages, to budding nation-states. The wars also resulted in the destruction of cities and towns that lay in the crusaders’ wake.

In Game:

Haci Ahmed Muhiddin Piri, more commonly known as Piri Reis for his legendary stature in the Ottoman Navy, was a famed admiral and cartographer.

Unknown to most, Piri was also a member and a Master Assassin of the Ottoman Brotherhood of Assassins. Though not involving himself in missions of violence, Piri served the Assassins as a technician, primarily providing them with materials and methods for crafting bombs.

He was a trusted friend of the Ottoman Assassin leader Yusuf Tazim, and also later befriended Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the Mentor of the Italian Brotherhood.

In 1503, Piri resided in Constantinople in order to shift his interests to a more intellectual area, setting up a small studio in the Grand Bazaar, where he began to study cartography.

That same year, a group of Italian Assassins sent from Rome to Constantinople by Ezio Auditore infiltrated Piri Reis' shop to steal some of his maps detailing the New World, in order to match the Templars' expansion into the new lands

Despite his earlier conflict with the Assassins, Piri joined the Ottoman Assassin Brotherhood in 1506 to serve as a scholar and technician, and even eventually progressed to the rank of Master Assassin.

Having witnessed and grown tired of the many artificial boundaries that had divided the nations he had traveled to, Piri was drawn to the Assassin philosophy, which he saw as the "truest intellectual freedom."

Piri invented specialized bomb variants and casings, all specifically for the Assassins' use. These he offered for a price at his workshop, given that those who wished to buy them were willing to learn how to use them first.

In 1511, Piri heard of Ezio Auditore's arrival in Constantinople from Yusuf, and met the Mentor himself shortly afterwards. Yusuf had directed Ezio to Piri to ask for directions to the trading post of Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, which Piri readily gave. The cartographer also introduced Ezio to the variety of bombs he had for sale, as well as offered to instruct him in their use.

Over time, as the Assassins Guild completed contracts all over the Mediterranean, Piri would periodically ask for their help in surveying the region, in order to aid in his cartography efforts. Additionally, when any new city came under the control of the Assassins, Piri would receive special bomb ingredients from the region, and place them for sale in his Grand Bazaar shop.

Ezio discovered the delivery of several firearms to equip the Byzantine Templar army, and reported his findings to Prince Suleiman I. Suleiman ordered Piri to bring Ezio safely to Derinkuyu, where the Templars' headquarters was located.

Despite the Janissaries' attempts to stop any ships from leaving by raising the Great Chain across the Golden Horn, Ezio managed to destroy it with a bomb that had "fifty times the kick of [the Assassins'] regular bombs", and set the Ottoman fleet ablaze with Greek Fire. Piri only commented on Ezio's less than subtle approach, before setting sail.

After arriving at Cappadocia in 1512, Piri awaited Ezio aboard his ship, as the Mentor set off to kill the Byzantine heir and Templar Manuel Palaiologos, and to retrieve the last of the Masyaf Keys. After Ezio had succeeded, setting much of the underground city into chaos after destroying their armory, he returned to the ship, which Piri directed back to Constantinople.

In Real Life:

For many years, little was known about the identity of Piri Reis. The name Piri Reis means Captain Piri (Reis is not part of his proper name). Today, based on the Ottoman archives, it is known that his full name was "Hacı Ahmed Muhiddin Piri" and that he was born either in Gelibolu (Gallipoli) on the European part of the Ottoman Empire (in present-day Turkish Thrace), or in Karaman (his father's birthplace) in central Anatolia, then the capital of the Beylik of Karaman (annexed by the Ottoman Empire in 1487). The exact date of his birth is unknown. His father's name was Hacı Mehmed Piri. The honorary and informal Islamic title Hadji in Piri's and his father's names indicate that they both had completed the Hajj (Islamic pilgrimage) by going to Mecca during the dedicated annual period.

Piri began engaging in government-supported privateering when he was young, in 1481, following his uncle Kemal Reis, a well-known corsair and seafarer of the time, who later became a famous admiral of the Ottoman Navy. During this period, together with his uncle, he took part in many naval wars of the Ottoman Empire against Spain, the Republic of Genoa and the Republic of Venice, including the First Battle of Lepanto (Battle of Zonchio) in 1499 and the Second Battle of Lepanto (Battle of Modon) in 1500.

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Piri is the author of the Kitāb-ı Baḥrīye, or "Book of the Sea", one of the most famous cartographical works of the period. The work was first published in 1521, and it was revised in 1524-1525 with additional information and better-crafted charts in order to be presented as a gift to Suleiman I. The revised edition had a total of 434 pages containing 290 maps. 

Piri’s most famous work, however, is simply known as the “Piri Reis Map,” which was compiled in 1513 from military intelligence. Approximately one third of the map survives; it shows the western coasts of Europe and North Africa and the coast of Brazil with reasonable accuracy. Various Atlantic islands, including the Azores and Canary Islands, are depicted, as is the mythical island of Antillia and possibly Japan.The map's historical importance lies in its demonstration of the extent of global exploration of the New World by approximately 1510, and in its claim to have used a map of Christopher Columbus, otherwise lost, as a source. Piri also stated that he had used ten Arab sources and four Indian maps sourced from the Portuguese. More recently, the map has been the focus of pseudohistoric claims for the pre-modern exploration of the Antarctic coast.

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Piri Reis continued his naval campaigns for many years, even eventually rising  to the rank of Reis (admiral) as the Commander of the Ottoman Fleet in the Indian Ocean and Admiral of the Fleet in Egypt, headquartered in Suez. He then returned to Egypt, an old man approaching the age of 90. When he refused to support the Ottoman Vali (Governor) of Basra, Kubad Pasha, in another campaign against the Portuguese in the northern Persian Gulf, Piri Reis was beheaded in 1553.

In Game:

The Ottoman Empire was a Turkish state that ruled over most of the territories of the former Byzantine Empire and beyond, with Constantinople as its capital.

In 1476, the Ottomans under the Grand Vizier Ishak Pasha participated in a military crackdown on a Hungarian uprising, entering a war with Wallachia and defeating the rebel prince, a Templar named Vlad Tepes.

During the later half of the 15th century, the Ottomans brokered a truce with the Assassins, via their leader Ishak Pasha, who was also a secret Assassin himself. This act led Vali cel Tradat to defect to the Templars, after he had served the Assassins for nearly a decade, as he considered the truce with the Ottomans and Assassins as a betrayal of his Wallachian heritage.

Sultan Bayezid II led the Ottomans into a war with the remnants of the Byzantine Empire, led by Manuel Palaiologos, a Templar, who was attempting to reclaim the empire and restore it to its Byzantine roots.

While Bayezid had originally chosen his son Ahmet as the next Sultan, he soon faced fierce opposition from the Ottoman Janissaries, who supported his other son, Selim, and aided him in his bid for ascension to the throne. Selim then begun a tough war against his father in order to force him to abdicate the title of Sultan. In 1512, Bayezid eventually handed over the throne to Selim instead of Ahmet, and Selim became the new Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

As soon as he became the Sultan, Selim and his Janissary army marched their way towards Constantinople, where they found Selim's brother Ahmet facing off against the Assassin Ezio Auditore da Firenze. As he approached his brother, Selim revealed to Ahmet that their father had ultimately chosen him as his successor, before he began to strangle Ahmet and eventually pushed him off a nearby cliff, killing him.

It was his reasoning that Ahmet, who was secretly a high-ranked member of the Templars, had betrayed the Ottomans when he formed an alliance with the Byzantines.

In 1520, a tragedy robbed Selim of the Sultanate, and Suleiman, aged 26, succeeded him. His reforms greatly improved the Empire's bureaucratic system, which would later be described as a "well-oiled engine," despite its significant size.

During his rule, Suleiman expanded his Empire to its furthest points, stretching it from Algeria to the Persian Gulf, and from Austria down to Egypt. Respecting the diversity of those under his authority, he was always careful to honor their cultures, traditions, and religions.

In Real Life:

The Ottoman Empire was created by Turkish tribes in Anatolia (Asia Minor) that grew to be one of the most powerful states in the world during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Ottoman period spanned more than 600 years and came to an end only in 1922, when it was replaced by the Turkish Republic and various successor states in southeastern Europe and the Middle East. At its height the empire encompassed most of southeastern Europe to the gates of Vienna, including present-day Hungary, the Balkan region, Greece, and parts of Ukraine; portions of the Middle East now occupied by Iraq, Syria, Israel, and Egypt; North Africa as far west as Algeria; and large parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The term Ottoman is a dynastic appellation derived from Osman I (Arabic: ʿUthmān), the nomadic Turkmen chief who founded both the dynasty and the empire about 1300.

The first period of Ottoman history was characterized by almost continuous territorial expansion, during which Ottoman dominion spread out from a small northwestern Anatolian principality to cover most of southeastern Europe and Anatolia. The political, economic, and social institutions of the classical Islamic empires were amalgamated with those inherited from Byzantium and the great Turkish empires of Central Asia and were reestablished in new forms that were to characterize the area into modern times.

In their initial stages of expansion, the Ottomans were leaders of the Turkish warriors for the faith of Islam, known by the honorific title ghāzī (Arabic: “raider”), who fought against the shrinking Christian Byzantine state. The ancestors of Osman I, the founder of the dynasty, were members of the Kayı tribe who had entered Anatolia along with a mass of Turkmen Oğuz nomads. Those nomads, migrating from Central Asia, established themselves as the Seljuq dynasty in Iran and Mesopotamia in the mid-11th century, overwhelmed Byzantium after the Battle of Manzikert (1071), and occupied eastern and central Anatolia during the 12th century. The ghazis fought against the Byzantines and then the Mongols, who invaded Anatolia following the establishment of the Il-Khanid (Ilhanid) empire in Iran and Mesopotamia in the last half of the 13th century. With the disintegration of Seljuq power and its replacement by Mongol suzerainty, enforced by direct military occupation of much of eastern Anatolia, independent Turkmen principalities—one of which was led by Osman—emerged in the remainder of Anatolia.

Ottoman dynasts were transformed from simple tribal leaders to border princes (uc beys) and ghazi leaders under Seljuq and then II-Khanid suzerainty in the 13th and early 14th centuries. With the capture of Bursa, Orhan had been able to declare himself independent of his suzerains and assume the title of bey, which was retained by his successors until Bayezid I was named sultan by the shadow ʿAbbāsid caliph of Cairo following his victory over the Christian Crusaders at the Battle of Nicopolis (1396). Those title changes reflected changes in the position of the Ottoman ruler within the state and in the organization of the state itself.

As the territory of the Ottoman principality expanded, however, and the Ottomans inherited the administrative apparatus left by the Byzantines, that simple tribal organization was replaced by a more complex form of government. By the time the Ottoman rulers became sultans, they already had far more extensive power and authority than had been the case a half century earlier. The simple tribal organization of the Ottoman bey could suffice only while the state was small enough for the individual tribal leaders to remain on their lands to collect their revenues and fight the nearby enemy at the same time. As the empire expanded and the frontiers and enemies became further removed from previously conquered territory, the financial and administrative functions at home had to be separated from the military. Taxes had to be collected to exploit the conquered territories and support the officers and soldiers while they were away. The treasury of the sultan had to be separated from that of the state so that each would have an independent income and organization.

Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, therefore, the Ottoman state gradually reshaped its government and military institutions to meet the needs of administering and defending an expanding empire. That process naturally was influenced by those states that had preceded the Ottoman Empire, not only in the areas it came to rule but also in the lands of its ancestors. So it was that the developing Ottoman state was influenced by the traditions of the nomadic Turkic empires of Central Asia, particularly in military organization and tactics. It was also heavily influenced by the classical high Islamic civilization of the ʿAbbāsids, as passed through the hands of the Seljuqs, particularly in the development of orthodox Islam as the basis of its administrative, religious, legal, and educational institutions and in the organization of its financial systems. In the court hierarchy, the central financial structure, and the tax and administrative organizations developed in the European provinces, the Ottomans were influenced by the Byzantines and, to a lesser extent, by the Serbian and Bulgarian empires. Although conversion to Islām was not demanded of the conquered, many Christians and a few Jews voluntarily converted to secure full status in the new empire. Most, however, continued to practice their old religions without restriction.

A particularly important source of Christian influence during the 14th century came from the close marriage ties between the Ottoman and Christian courts. Orhan was married to the Byzantine princess Nilüfer, mother of Murad I. Murad married Byzantine and Bulgarian princesses, and Bayezid I married Despina, daughter of the Serbian prince Lazar. Each of those marriages brought Christian followers and advisers into the Ottoman court, and it was under their influence that Bayezid I abandoned the simple nomadic courts and practices of his predecessors and isolated himself behind elaborate court hierarchies and ceremonies borrowed primarily from the Byzantines, setting a pattern that was continued by his successors. The triumph of Sultan Mehmed I in 1413 was at least in part because of the support of the Turkish notables and Muslim religious orders of Anatolia, who strongly resented the Christian predominance in Bayezid’s court and attributed his abandonment of the ghazi tradition and attacks in Turkish Muslim Anatolia—as well as the defeat at the hands of Timur—to Christian influence. As a result, Turkish and Muslim influences dominated the Ottoman court during the 15th century, although the hierarchies, institutions, and ceremonies introduced in the previous century remained largely unchanged.

During the century that followed the reign of Mehmed II, the Ottoman Empire achieved the peak of its power and wealth. New conquests extended its domain well into central Europe and throughout the Arab portion of the old Islamic caliphate, and a new amalgam of political, religious, social, and economic organizations and traditions was institutionalized and developed into a living, working whole.

Whereas Bayezid had been put on the throne by the Janissaries despite his pacific nature and carried out military activities with reluctance, Selim I (ruled 1512–20) shared their desire to return to Mehmed II’s aggressive policy of conquest. But Selim did not wish to be dependent on or controlled by those who had brought him to power, so he killed not only all of his brothers but also all seven of their sons and four of his own five sons, leaving only the ablest, Süleyman, as the sole heir to the throne.

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Throughout Sultan Suleiman’s rule, the empire expanded and included areas of Eastern Europe. At its height, the Ottoman Empire included the following regions: Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Egypt, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, some of Arabia, and a considerable amount of the North African coastal strip.

Starting in the 1600s, the Ottoman Empire began to lose its economic and military dominance to Europe.

Around this time, Europe had strengthened rapidly with the Renaissance and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Other factors, such as poor leadership and having to compete with trade from the Americas and India, led to the weakening of the empire. In 1683, the Ottoman Turks were defeated at the Battle of Vienna. This loss added to their already waning status. Over the next hundred years, the empire began to lose key regions of land. After a revolt, Greece won their independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830. In 1878, the Congress of Berlin declared the independence of Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria.

During the Balkan Wars, which took place in 1912 and 1913, the Ottoman Empire lost nearly all their territories in Europe.

At the start of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was already in decline. The Ottoman Turks entered the war in 1914 on the side of the Central Powers (including Germany and Austria-Hungary) and were defeated in 1918.

Under a treaty agreement, most Ottoman territories were divided between Britain, France, Greece and Russia.

The Ottoman empire officially ended in 1922 when the title of Ottoman Sultan was eliminated. Turkey was declared a republic in 1923.

In Game:

Niccolò Polo was a Venetian merchant and explorer, the brother of Maffeo Polo, and the father of Marco Polo. Working with his brother for the majority of his life, they established trading posts in Constantinople, Sudak, and in the western part of the Mongol Empire.

In 1255, Niccolò and Maffeo met Darim Ibn-La'Ahad, a high-ranking member of the Levantine Assassins, and quickly befriended him. Eventually, their friendship resulted in Darim inviting the brothers to the Assassins' headquarters in Masyaf. In 1256, Niccolò and Maffeo sailed south to Acre, and proceeded onward to Masyaf some time later, arriving there around the January of 1257.

Arriving at Masyaf castle, the Polo brothers found themselves in the presence of the legendary Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, the Mentor of the Levantine Assassins and Darim's father. In July 1257, the Polo brothers were trained to become Assassins themselves by Altaïr and Darim, and Niccolò frequently met with Altaïr, hearing the Mentor's life story.

During their stay in Masyaf, Niccolò in turn told Altaïr's life story to Maffeo, who had at first grown a displeasure for the Assassins and Masyaf. Maffeo, moved by Altaïr's tragic life, became dedicated to the Assassins' cause, and Niccolò began to write a journal, detailing Altaïr's story and Niccolò's own conversations with Maffeo, which he would later title "The Secret Crusade".

In August 1257, Masyaf was attacked by the Mongols, who had destroyed several of the Assassins' fortresses in the Levant the previous year, under the command of Hülegü Khan. Having spent a little over a month in training, Niccolò and Maffeo made preparations to leave Masyaf and were given several of Altaïr's books to take with them.

Niccolò then met with Altaïr on Masyaf's castle wall, where he was handed Altaïr's personal Codex. Additionally, the Polos were tasked with the future of the Assassin Order, as Altaïr had burdened them with the objective to establishing various Assassins Guilds around the world.

Niccolò and Maffeo were personally escorted by Altaïr out of Masyaf, who used his "Apple of Eden" – an ancient artifact from the Isu – to fend off the attacking Mongols. Arriving at Masyaf's gate, Niccolò was finally given five Memory Seals, which Altaïr had turned into keys needed to open his personal library.

The Polos proceeded to make their way back to their home in Constantinople, though the brothers were attacked by a Mongol attacking party two days after leaving Masyaf. Niccolò and Maffeo, barely alive, saw the Mongols take the Codex from them, and they were left with the shame of losing the book.

Arriving in Constantinople a few weeks later, Niccolò finished his journal on 1 January 1258, and he and Maffeo started the long process of establish an Assassins Guild soon afterwards. The guild attracted people from various places in the Byzantine Empire, including Greeks, Turks, Albanians, Jews, Genoese and Arabs.

By 1259, the Assassins Guild was fully running, but the thought and shame of having lost the Codex was never far from Niccolò's and Maffeo's minds. The Polo brothers also hid the five Memory Seals given to them by Altaïr in several secret locations around Constantinople, and scattered his books around the various landmarks of the city.

In Real Life:

Niccolò Polo and Maffeo Polo (both born in 1230) were Italian traveling merchants best known as the father and uncle, respectively, of the explorer Marco Polo. The brothers went into business before Marco's birth, established trading posts in Constantinople, Sudak in Crimea, and in a western part of the Mongol Empire in Asia. As a duo, they reached modern-day China before temporarily returning to Europe to deliver a message to the Pope. Taking Niccolò's son Marco with them, the Polos then made another journey through Asia, which became the subject of Marco's account The Travels of Marco Polo.

Leaving Niccolò's infant son Marco behind, Niccolò and Maffeo left Venice for Constantinople, where they resided for several years. The two brothers lived in the Venetian quarter of Constantinople, where they enjoyed diplomatic immunity, political chances and tax relief because of their country's role in establishing the Latin Empire in the Fourth Crusade of 1204.

However, the family judged the political situation of the city precarious, so they decided to transfer their business northeast to Soldaia, a city in Crimea, and left Constantinople in 1259 or 1260. Their decision proved wise. Constantinople was recaptured in 1261 by Michael Palaeologus, the ruler of the Empire of Nicaea, who promptly burned and razed the Venetian quarter and reestablished the Byzantine Empire. Captured Venetian citizens were blinded, while many of those who managed to escape died aboard overloaded refugee ships fleeing to other Venetian colonies in the Aegean Sea.

As their new home on the north rim of the Black Sea, Soldaia had been frequented by Venetian traders since the 12th century. When the Polos reached it, it was part of the newly formed Mongol state known as the Golden Horde. Searching for better profits, the Polos continued their journey to Sarai, where the court of Berke Khan, the ruler of the Golden Horde, was located. At that time, the city of Sarai was no more than a huge encampment, and the Polos stayed for about a year. Finally, they decided to avoid Crimea, because of a civil war between Berke and his cousin Hulagu or perhaps because of the bad relationship between Berke Khan and the Byzantine Empire. Instead, they moved further east to Bukhara, in modern-day Uzbekistan, where the family lived and traded for three years.

In 1264, Niccolò and Maffeo joined up with an embassy sent by the Ilkhanate ruler Hulagu to his brother Kublai Khan, both grandsons of Genghis Khan. In 1266, they reached the seat of Kublai Khan, the leader of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, at Dadu, present day Beijing, China. In his book, The Travels of Marco Polo, Marco explains how Kublai Khan officially received the Polos and sent them back with a Mongol named Koeketei as an ambassador to the pope. They brought with them a letter from the Khan requesting 100 educated people to come and teach Christianity and Western customs to his people and oil from the lamp of the Holy Sepulcher. The letter also contained the paiza, a golden tablet a foot long and 3 inches (7.6 cm) wide, allowing the holder to acquire and obtain lodging, horses and food throughout the Kublai Khan's dominion. Koeketei left in the middle of the journey, leaving the Polos to travel alone to Ayas in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. From that port city, they sailed to Saint Jean d'Acre, capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

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The long sede vacante between the death of Pope Clement IV, in 1268, and the election of the new pope in 1271 delayed the Polos' attempts to fulfil Kublai's request. As suggested by Theobald Visconti, then papal legate for the realm of Egypt, in Acre for the Ninth Crusade, the two brothers returned to Venice in 1269 or 1270, waiting for the nomination of the new pope. Here Niccolò met up once again with his son Marco, now fifteen or sixteen, who had been living with his aunt and another uncle in Venice since the death of his mother at a young age.

As soon as he was elected in 1271, Pope Gregory X (the former Theobald Visconti) received the letter from Kublai Khan, remitted by Niccolò and Maffeo. Kublai Khan was asking for the dispatch of a hundred missionaries, and some oil from the lamp of Jerusalem. The two Polos (this time accompanied by the 17-year-old Marco Polo) returned to Mongolia, accompanied by two Dominican monks, Niccolò de Vicence and Guillaume de Tripoli. The two friars did not finish the voyage due to fear, but the Polos reached Kanbaliq and remitted the presents from the Pope to Kublai in 1274. It is usually said that the Polos used the Northern Silk Road although the possibility of a southern route has been advanced. The Polos spent the next 17 years in China. Kublai Khan took a liking to Marco, who was an engaging storyteller. He was sent on many diplomatic missions throughout his empire. Marco carried out diplomatic assignments but also entertained the Khan with interesting stories and observations about the lands he traveled. According to Marco's travel account, the Polos asked several times for permission to return to Europe but the Great Khan appreciated the visitors so much that he would not agree to their departure.

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Only in 1291 did Kublai entrust Marco with his last duty, to escort the Mongol princess Koekecin (Cocacin in Il Milione) to her betrothed, the Ilkhan Arghun. The party traveled by sea, departing from the southern port city of Quanzhou and sailing to Sumatra, and then to Persia, via Sri Lanka and India (where his visits included Mylapore, Madurai and Alleppey, which he nicknamed Venice of the East). In 1293 or 1294 the Polos reached the Ilkhanate, ruled by Gaykhatu after the death of Arghun, and left Koekecin with the new Ilkhan. Then they moved to Trebizond and from that city sailed to Venice.

In Game:

The Hagia Sophia, otherwise known as the Sancta Sophia or the Church of Holy Wisdom, was a former Eastern-Orthodox Christian basilica located in the Imperial District of Constantinople. Following the fall of the city in 1453 to Ottoman hands, it was converted into an Islamic mosque by Mehmet II, where it was also used as a library.

Ezio Auditore da Firenze recovered Ishak Pasha's scattered memoirs in 1511 and entered the mosque, where within minutes, he had climbed to the ceiling of the dome and activated an entrance to the armor's storage room, before taking the set back to the Galata headquarters.

While locating the second Masyaf Key, Ezio climbed one of the Hagia Sophia's minarets, where he used his Eagle Sense to locate a book on one of the landmark's rooftops.

Also in 1511, Sofia Sartor requested some white tulips from Ezio, and, after he tracked a florist to the Hagia Sophia, he learned that he could find some of the flowers in the courtyard. Following this, he also discovered that Sofia had prepared a picnic in the shadow of the great mosque before he handed the bouquet he had picked with his Hidden Blade over to her.

The Hagia Sophia was also a purchasable landmark in Constantinople, for the price of 60,400 Akçe.

In Real Life:

Hagia Sophia, Turkish Ayasofya, Latin Sancta Sophia, also called Church of the Holy Wisdom or Church of the Divine Wisdom,  cathedral built at Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in the 6th century ce (532–537) under the direction of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. By general consensus, it is the most important Byzantine structure and one of the world’s great monuments.

The Hagia Sophia was built in the remarkably short time of about six years, being completed in 537 ce. Unusual for the period in which it was built, the names of the building’s architects—Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus—are well known, as is their familiarity with mechanics and mathematics. The Hagia Sophia is a component of a UNESCO World Heritage site called the Historic Areas of Istanbul (designated 1985), which includes that city’s other major historic buildings and locations.

The original church on the site of the Hagia Sophia is said to have been built by Constantine I in 325 on the foundations of a pagan temple. It was damaged in 404 by a fire that erupted during a riot following the second banishment of St. John Chrysostom, then patriarch of Constantinople. It was rebuilt and enlarged by the Roman emperor Constans I. The restored building was rededicated in 415 by Theodosius II. The church was burned again in the Nika insurrection of January 532, a circumstance that gave Justinian I an opportunity to envision a splendid replacement.

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The structure now standing is essentially the 6th-century edifice, although an earthquake caused a partial collapse of the dome in 558 (restored 562) and there were two further partial collapses, after which it was rebuilt to a smaller scale and the whole church reinforced from the outside. It was restored again in the mid-14th century. For more than a millennium it was the Cathedral of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. It was looted in 1204 by the Venetians and the Crusaders on the Fourth Crusade. After the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II had it repurposed as a mosque, with the addition of minarets (on the exterior, towers used for the summons to prayer), a great chandelier, a mihrab (niche indicating the direction of Mecca), a minbar (pulpit), and disks bearing Islamic calligraphy. Kemal Atatürk secularized the building in 1934, and in 1935 it was made into a museum. Art historians consider the building’s beautiful mosaics to be the main source of knowledge about the state of the mosaic art in the time shortly after the end of the Iconoclastic Controversy in the 8th and 9th centuries.

In Game:

The Romani were a faction for hire that consisted of dancers, fire breathers, street performers, and musicians. With their spirited performances, they were sure to make an impression – and distract anyone. They replaced courtesans in AC: Revelations, as prostitution was not accepted in Ottoman society.

Fajera, a Romani fortune teller who primarily used tarot cards for her divination, had assumed the profession of a circus dancer in Damascus. In 1190, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad approached her for information regarding the keys to the fabled Temple of Sand, where the fabled Chalice was held, as she possessed one of the three keys.

Centuries later in 1511, six month's worth of profit was stolen from the Romani by Byzantines. While in deep melancholy, the Romani received a visit from the Assassin Ezio Auditore da Firenze. After arriving, Ezio offered to help the Romani as they attempted to gain infamy in the city, claiming it was better than being overlooked.

The Romani leader explained their plan to Ezio, in which he would have to stealthily assassinate each guard who held the chest containing their gold, to present the idea that it was cursed. Ezio agreed and left the headquarters to rendezvous with a group of Romani in the streets.

After he met up with the designated group, Ezio tailed each guard around the city, poisoning each guard as they carried the chest, to maintain the myth that the chest was cursed. Weaving his way around the city with his group of Romani, the Assassin took care of each guard, though he made sure to remain unseen. Eventually, the guards fled, confused and scared at the mysterious deaths. Following this, Ezio picked up the chest and reunited it with the leader of the Romani.

As Ezio walked the Romani leader back to their headquarters, she informed the Assassin of the origins of her people. Once they reached the headquarters, Ezio set the chest of profits down and the Romani thanked him, telling him the faction was available to him if he needed their help.

After this, for 150 Akçe, Ezio could hire a group of four Romani, who could assist him similarly to the courtesans of Italy. He could find these groups randomly throughout the streets of Constantinople, where they would be available. When not with him, they acted as street performers who were able to dance and play music, breathe fire, and provide other sources of entertainment.

Whenever combat arose, they would quickly flee from the area, which meant that they were unable to assist Ezio if he engaged in a fight, though they could distract guards. However, they would fight against civilians, should Ezio steal from them and get caught.

When distracting a guard, a Romani would often flirt with them and make gestures with her hands and clothing. This would also attract nearby guards' attention and cause them to abandon their posts, in order to approach the Romani. They were also able to remain with Ezio and help him blend in with the local crowd, making them useful whenever Ezio needed to access a restricted area.

In Real Life:

The Romani are a traditionally nomadic ethnic group, living mostly in Europe and the Americas and originating from the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent, although they are widely referred to as “Gypsies” by people in English speaking countries based upon the conception that they originated from Egypt; in their Romani language they are known collectively as Romane or Rromane (depending on the dialect).

Romani are widely dispersed around the world with their largest concentrated populations in Europe (an estimated four million in 2002), especially the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe and Anatolia, followed by the Kale of Iberia and Southern France. There are also an estimated 1,000,000 people with Romani ancestry who live in the United States.

They arrived in Europe from the Middle East in the 14th century. Genetic findings in 2012 suggest they originated in northwest India and migrated as a group. According to a genetic study in 2012, the ancestors of present scheduled tribes and scheduled caste populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Doma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma. Romani populations have a high frequency of a particular Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA that are only found in populations from South Asia. It is now thought that the Roma people migrated to Europe from India about 1,500 years ago.

By 1424, they were recorded in Germany; and by the 16th century, Scotland and Sweden. Some Romani migrated from Persia through North Africa, reaching the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. Their early history shows a mixed reception. Although 1385 marks the first recorded transaction for a Romani slave in Wallachia, they were issued safe conduct by Sigismund of the Holy Roman Empire in 1417. Romanies were ordered expelled from the Meissen region of Germany in 1416, Lucerne in 1471, Milan in 1493, France in 1504, Catalonia in 1512, Sweden in 1525, England in 1530, and Denmark in 1536. In 1510, any Romani found in Switzerland were ordered to be put to death, with similar rules established in England in 1554, and Denmark in 1589, whereas Portugal began deportations of Romanies to its colonies in 1538.Later, a 1596 English statute, however, gave Romanies special privileges that other wanderers lacked; France passed a similar law in 1683. Catherine the Great of Russia declared the Romanies "crown slaves" (a status superior to serfs), but also kept them out of certain parts of the capital. In 1595, Stefan Razvan overcame his birth into slavery, and became the Voivode (Prince) of Moldavia.

Around 1852, around Europe, the Romani were subject to ethnic cleansing, abduction of their children, and forced labor. In England, Romani were sometimes expelled from small communities or hanged; in France, they were branded and their heads were shaved; in Moravia and Bohemia, the women were marked by their ears being severed. As a result, large groups of the Romani moved to the East, toward Poland, which was more tolerant, and Russia, where the Romani were treated more fairly as long as they paid the annual taxes.

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Romani began emigrating to North America in colonial times, with small groups recorded in Virginia and French Louisiana. Larger-scale Roma emigration to the United States began in the 1860s, with groups of Romnaichal from Great Britain. The largest number immigrated in the early 1900s, mainly from the Vlax group of Kalderash. Many Romani also settled in South America.

During World War II, the Nazis and the Ustasa embarked on a systematic genocide of the Romani, a process known in Romani as the Porajmos. Romanies were marked for extermination and sentenced to forced labor and imprisonment in concentration camps.

In modern times, many fictional depictions of Romani people in literature and art present romanticized narratives of their supposed mystical powers of fortune telling or their supposed irascible or passionate temper paired with an indomitable love of freedom and a habit of criminality.

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The Romani ethnicity is often used for characters in contemporary fantasy literature. In such literature, the Romani are often portrayed as possessing archaic occult knowledge passed down through the ages. This frequent use of the ethnicity has given rise to 'gypsy archetypes' in popular contemporary literature. One of the most famous Romani fictional characters is Esmeralda, an important character in Victor Hugo’s, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

In Game:

Suleiman I was considered one of the Ottoman Empire's greatest rulers, and was known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent, as his reign helped to create what is known now as the Golden Age of Constantinople. He was also known by people in Turkey as Kanuni or the “Law Giver.”

In 1511, while returning to Constantinople from his Hajj, Suleiman met Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the leader of the Italian Assassins. Neither of them disclosed their identities to each other at the time, with Suleiman convincing Ezio that he was merely a student, and Ezio simply saying he was searching for inspiration.

Suleiman became the target of a supposed assassination attempt from the Byzantines during a cultural exposition he had organized at Topkapı Palace. Fortunately, the Turkish Assassins had infiltrated the party disguised as Italian minstrels and were quickly killing the would-be murderers.

Ezio and Suleiman then greeted each other warmly and introduced themselves by name. After Suleiman ordered the guards to remove the bodies and send the guests home, he requested Ezio's help

The next morning, Ezio returned and Suleiman requested him to spy on a meeting he had arranged between his uncle, Shehzade Ahmet, and Tarik Barleti, captain of the Janissaries. Suleiman explained that his grandfather wanted Ahmet to succeed him on the throne, but the Janissaries, the Sultan's elite soldiers, preferred Suleiman's father Selim.

Suleiman also requested the Italian Assassin’s assistance in investigating Tarik to see if he had been the one behind the attack, although when Ezio attacked him, he revealed with his dying words that he had merely been posing as a traitor in order to ambush the Byzantines at Cappadocia. Suleiman lamented that he should not have been so quick to judge.

Suleiman promised to arrange a ship to transport Ezio to the Byzantine base in Cappadocia. Ahmet appeared shortly afterward, distressed that the Janissaries had pinned Tarik's murder on him, and convinced that his father would banish him as a result.

Ahmet soon spotted Ezio, and apologized for interrupting their meeting. Suleiman introduced the Assassin as a European advisor named “Marcello.” Ahmet requested that he and his nephew be left alone to discuss matters, Suleiman assuring him that they would find the true killer.

When Ezio returned, he had learned that Ahmet was the Templar Grand Master, and had kidnapped his friend Sofia Sartor. After the Assassins stormed the Arsenal where Ahmet was hiding, Suleiman arrived and overheard his uncle's confrontation with Ezio. Ahmet declared his desire for a New World Order, by finding the Grand Temple and destroying the "superstitions that keep men divided." Later on, he would also admit to being behind the assault in Topkapı Palace, though he had not intended for Suleiman to be killed, merely captured, for him to be "rescued" by Ahmet afterward.

As Ahmet left, Suleiman came out of hiding to speak to Ezio. He admitted that he disagreed with the concept of removing the differences between men, saying that they should be celebrated instead of suppressed.

Suleiman requested Ezio to spare his uncle after rescuing Sofia, though he admitted that his father would not do the same in his position. When the new Sultan Selim returned with his army, he killed Ahmet and banished Ezio from the city, at Suleiman’s recommendation, instead of killing him.

In Real Life:

Suleiman I ( سلطان سليمان اول‎ in Ottoman Turkish and  I. Süleyman, Kanunî Sultan Süleyman or Muhteşem Süleyman in modern Turkish) was born in Trabzon along the east coast of the Black Sea to Şehzade Selim (later Selim I), probably on November 6th, 1494. When he was a child, he was well educated in science, history, literature, theology and military tactics in the schools of the Topkapı Palace in Constantinople.

After the death of his father, Selim I, in 1520, Suleiman ascended to the throne as the tenth Ottoman Sultan at the age of twenty-six. Selim I had conquered lands in Syria and Egypt, although his goal had been to spread further into Europe.

Upon succeeding the throne, Suleiman began a series of military conquests, eventually suppressing a revolt led by the Ottoman-appointed governor of Damascus in 1521. Suleiman soon made preparations for the conquest of Belgrade from the Kingdom of Hungary—something his great-grandfather Mehmed II had failed to achieve because of John Hunyadi's strong defense in the region. Its capture was vital in removing the Hungarians and Croats who had remained one of the only formidable forces who could block further Ottoman gains in Europe.

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When Suleiman ascended the throne, Constantinople was still somewhat a Christian city, which differed greatly from the Arab Muslim citizens of the empire. Suleiman had come from a Muslim family himself, however, and sought to make the city more Islamic. This was mainly achieved by the Ottomans bringing Islamic relics back to the city with them (many of which remain in Istanbul today) and by “fixing up” the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Suleiman was also a caliph (a successor to Prophet Muhammad), a title that he inherited from his father, which also aided in his goal to make Constantinople more Islamic.

While Sultan Suleiman was known as "the Magnificent" in the West, he was always Kanuni Suleiman or "The Lawgiver" (قانونی) to his own Ottoman subjects. This was because of Suleiman’s creation of Kanun Law, which involved legal codes similar to Sharia law, although it did have final say in legal decisions. It was created primarily to balance Sharia law with the needs of the Sultan.

Later on in life, Suleiman expanded the Ottoman Empire far into Europe, including into Hungary. He also had plans to capture Vienna, which would have made it easier to expand the empire into Spain and the Netherlands. Under his administration, the Ottoman state ruled over 15 to 25 million people.

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On September 6th, 1566, Suleiman, who had set out from Constantinople to command an expedition to Hungary, died before an Ottoman victory at the Battle of Szigetvár in Hungary and the Grand Vizier kept his death secret during the retreat for the enthronement of Selim II. Just the night before, he died in his tent, two months before he would have turned 72. The sultan’s body was taken back to Istanbul to be buried, while his heart, liver, and some other organs were buried in Turbék, outside Szigetvár. A mausoleum was constructed above the burial site, and came to be regarded as a holy place and pilgrimage site.