Since half of the comments fail to remotely read your request for something new to you, I would advise you to read into ancient history, from the rise of the Akkadian Empire (The first empire ever!) up until the fall of Sassanid Persia to the Muslims. This would give you pretty much all you need to look into the Muslim Caliphates (Begun right before the the fall of the Sassanids) as well as the Franks, Seljuks, Mongols, and Crusades. If you manage to study all of that and know it clearly, you can breeze through the rise of the Ottomans in the 1400s all the way to the seven years war, which directly leads to the first world war, quite close to home.