Tenedos was occupied by Sultan Mehmet II in 1455, two years after his Conquest of Constantinople ending the Byzantine empire. It became the first island controlled by the Ottoman Empire in the Aegean sea. The island was still uninhabited at that time, almost 75 years after it had been forcefully evacuated. Mehmet II rebuilt the island's fort. During his reign the Ottoman navy used the island as a supply base. The Venetians, realizing the strategic importance of the island, deployed forces on it. Giacopo Loredano took Tenedos for Venice in 1464. The same year, Ottoman Admiral Mahmud Pasha recaptured the island. During the Ottoman regime, the island was repopulated (by granting a tax exemption). The Ottoman fleet admiral and cartographer, Piri Reis, in his book "Kitab-i-Bahriye", completed in 1521, included a map of the shore and the islands off it, marking Tenedos as well. He noted that ships heading north from Smyrna to the Dardanelles passed usually through the seven-mile strip of sea between the island and the mainland.