Part of the Turkish Ottoman empire from the 16th century, Algeria was conquered by the French in 1830 and was given the status of a "departement".

BBC: Algeria profile

They also opened in Syria, especially in the cosmopolitan city of Aleppo, and then in Istanbul, the capital of the vast Ottoman Turkish Empire, in 1554.

BBC: Coffee and qahwa: How a drink for Arab mystics went global

These two slightly dusty inland towns are notable for their Turkish-speaking minorities, holdovers from the Ottoman Empire, who still purvey succulent Eastern sweets such as lokum and baklava.

BBC: Driving Greece's modern ancient highway, the Egnatia Odos

Regarding the latter, the progressive, centuries-long, gradual decline of Islam as a dominant force and civilization reached its nadir in 1924, when Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) simultaneously did away with the Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire by overnight transforming the latter into a secular Turkish republic.

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