Sheikhdom of Kuwait (provincial sub-governors) of the Ottoman government. The independence of Kuwait was also highlighted by the statement made by Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah to the German team who requested an audience with him over the extension of the Berlin-Baghdad railway to Kuwait in which Mubarak said that he would not sell or rent any piece of his land to a foreigner, and that he did not acknowledge the authority of the Ottomans over Kuwait. The convention ruled that Shaikh Mubarak had independent authority over an area extending out to a radius of 80 km, from the capital. This region was marked by
Rise of the Ottoman Empire while others remained Christian. Of great symbolic importance for Ottoman centralization was the practice whereby Ottoman rulers would customarily stand upon hearing the sound of martial music, indicating their willingness to participate in "gaza". Shortly after the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II discontinued this practice, indicating that the Ottoman ruler was no longer a simple frontier warrior, but the sovereign of an empire. The empire's capital was shifted from Edirne, the city symbolically connected with the frontier warrior ethos of "gaza", to Constantinople, a city with deeply imperial connotations due to its long history as the capital of