The city of Thessaloniki, also known as Thessalonica, is located in Greece today and the different rulers to whom it belonged are reflected in the city's multiethnic and multicultural identity today. The city of Thessalonica was named after a daughter of Philip II of Macedonia, who had married Cassander - one of Alexander the Great's generals - who founded the city and dedicated it to his bride in 315 BC. Thessaloniki was then the main European port of the Byzantine Empire. However, by the first half of the 15th century, the Byzantine Empire had reached its end and, some thirty years before its fall, Sultan Murad II - father of Mehmet the Conqueror - set out to conquer Thessaloniki. This was because the Ottoman Empire was still a purely land-based political entity and conquering such a strategic port for the Aegean Sea - and the Mediterranean in general - was crucial for Ottoman expansion. It has to be said that the Ottomans were extremely open-minded towards Christianity: in fact, one of the characteristics that then distinguished the Ottoman Empire was religious tolerance, since Christians and even Jews had the dignity to profess their own religion, albeit on an unequal footing with Islam, the official region. The city of Thessaloniki capitulated in 1430 after an eight-year siege: even the Venetians had intervened to prevent the Ottomans from conquering the city, but without success. Since the inhabitants of the city had refused to surrender peacefully after being given the opportunity by the sultan, Murad ordered the sacking of the city and the enslavement of the inhabitants. After this traumatic conquest, the city of Thessaloniki became the main Ottoman port in Europe; in fact, a large number of Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century came to this city, making it not only a multi-ethnic centre, but also a refuge within the Ottoman Empire for religious confessions persecuted in Europe.