The capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantinople was conquered
by the Ottoman Army, under the command Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II on 29th May
1453. With this conquest Ottomans became an Empire and one of the most powerful
empires. After the Constantinople conquest, 21 years old Ottoman Sultan II.
Mehmed also took the title “The Conqueror”, which was added to his name.
Built just before the 1453 siege of Byzantine Constantinople, Rumeli
Hisarı (the Rumelian castle) on the European shore of the Bophorus was used
along with the Anadolu Hisarı (the Anatolian castle) to seal off the city from
the straights and deny it any possible relief.
Mehmed II (Mehmed Fatih; Mehmet II; Mehemmed II) (b. 1432-d.
1481) (r. 1444-1446; 1451-1481) Ottoman sultan Mehmed II was the fourth son of
Murad II (r. 1421-44; 1446-51) and the seventh Ottoman ruler, whose first reign
covered the period from 1444 to 1446 and whose second reign spanned three
decades, from 1451 to 1481. Mehmed was born on March 30, 1432 in Edirne, which
was then the Ottoman capital. The name and ethnicity of his mother have been
the subject of much fruitless speculation but her identity remains unknown; she
must in any case have been of non-Muslim slave origin. Mehmed’s early years are
equally obscure. According to some sources, in 1434 he was sent with his mother
to Amasya, where Mehmed’s half-brother Ahmed Çelebi (1420-37, the eldest son of
Murad II) was governor, and where Murad’s second son, Alaeddin Ali Çelebi (b.
1425?-43), also appears to have been in Mehmed’s retinue. When Ahmed Çelebi
died suddenly in 1437, the five-year-old Mehmed became the provincial governor
of Amasya and Alaeddin Ali Çelebi was sent to govern Manisa, in western
Anatolia. Two years later, in 1439, both princes were brought to Edirne for their
circumcision, after which Murad had his sons switch positions, sending Mehmed
to Manisa and Alaeddin Ali to Amasya. It is widely believed that Alaeddin Ali,
who participated with his father in a successful campaign against Ibrahim Bey,
the ruler of Karaman, was the sultan’s favorite, but in the spring of 1443,
shortly after the campaign against Ibrahim Bey, Alaeddin Çelebi was
assassinated. While the episode is shrouded in mystery, some historians believe
the assassination was the result of an order from Murad; others suggest it was
a consequence of political infighting among the sultan’s leading men.
Regardless of its cause, the death of Alaeddin Çelebi left nine-year-old Mehmed
as the sole living heir of Murad II. In July 1443 Murad brought his son from
Manisa to Edirne to reside at court and gain experience in affairs of state.
In the later months of 1443 a crusading army, which had left
the Hungarian capital of Buda, advanced deep into the Balkans and was finally
halted by the Ottoman army in a bitter winter battle between Sofia (capital of
present-day Bulgaria) and Edirne in December. Although hostilities were
terminated in June 1444 by a 10-year truce signed by Murad at Edirne, to be
ratified later by the king of Hungary, the truce was soon broken by Hungary
under papal dispensation and an even larger crusading army was assembled and
began its march toward Ottoman territory. Already engaged in another military
campaign against Ibrahim Bey of Karaman in Anatolia, Murad II swiftly defeated
the Karamanids, returned by forced march to Edirne, and went on with his army
to confront and defeat the crusaders at the Battle of Varna (November 10,
1444).
In Edirne, the sultan had left the 12-year-old Mehmed as
regent of the state’s Balkan territories. At this time Mehmed was under the
tutelage of his father’s chief vizier, Çandarli Halil Pasha, and his kadiasker
(army judge), Molla Hüsrev. During this period the young regent was exposed to
several crises, including the death of the leader of the radical Hurufiyya Sufi
movement who gained many adherents as well as the protection of Prince Mehmed
himself before being proscribed by the authorities and executed. During the
same period, a Janissary revolt ended in the burning of the market quarter and
the attempted destruction of one of Mehmed’s special advisors, Sihabeddin
Pasha, a man of the devsirme, or child levy. When Murad returned from fighting
the crusaders in late November or early December 1444, he abdicated in favor of
his young son, retiring to Manisa and leaving Mehmed to rule as sultan under
the tutelage of Çandarli Halil Pasha and Molla Hüsrev.
Mehmed’s first reign as sultan was as troubled and difficult
as had been his earlier regency; little more than 18 months after his
enthronment and accession ceremony Mehmed was deposed and packed off to Manisa
and Murad II resumed the sultanate. It is not clear why Murad was recalled to
Edirne by Halil Pasha. It may have been that Mehmed was planning an offensive
against Constantinople which would have been supported by men of the devsirme
while being vehemently opposed by Çandarli Halil Pasha; it may have been that
the Janissaries were unhappy with Mehmed. Despite being deposed, Mehmed
continued to work with his father, taking part with him in military campaigns in
1448 against a further Hungarian invasion (the second Battle of Kosovo, October
1448) and again in 1450 in Albania. He seems to have ruled western Anatolia
intermittently from Manisa as a virtual fiefdom, from which he undertook naval
campaigns against Venetian possessions in the Aegean.
When Murad II died at Edirne in February 1451, Mehmed was
once again in Manisa. His second reign began when he acceded to the throne in
Edirne on February 18, 1451, confirming all his father’s ministers in their
posts, including Çandarli Halil as grand vizier, and ordering the judicial
murder of the youngest son of Murad II, then an infant, in an act that
historians have seen as the initiation of the so-called Ottoman “law of
fratricide,” although considerable doubt remains on this point. Mehmed was
now 19, marked by the traumatic experiences of his childhood and youth, and
determined to exercise absolute authority as sultan.
The first months of his reign were apparently tranquil:
existing truces with Serbia, Venice, and lesser Aegean and Balkan entities were
renewed, a three-year truce was negotiated with Hungary, and particular
assurances of Mehmed’s benevolence were accorded to the Byzantine Empire,
leaving Mehmed free to warn off Ibrahim Bey of Karaman from his pretensions to
Ottoman territory in Anatolia. Soon, however, the situation changed and the
determining features of Mehmed’s reign began to manifest themselves: a sharp
increase in state expenditure; lavish buildings works, including a vast new
palace complex at Edirne; and an aggressive foreign policy, manifested first
against the Byzantine Empire and signaled by the construction in 1452 of the
fortress of Rumeli Hisari on the European shore of the Bosporus, effectively
blockading the Straits and isolating the Byzantine capital of Constantinople.
Mehmed spent the autumn of 1452 and spring of 1453 in Edirne planning the final
conquest of Constantinople. He ordered the casting of huge siege guns,
assembled land and sea forces, and moved a vast array of soldiers and equipment
from Edirne to the land walls of the Byzantine capital.
Mehmed left Edirne late in March 1453 and began to besiege
Constantinople on April 6. The siege lasted 54 days, the outcome remaining
uncertain until the final storming of the city walls on May 29, after which
Mehmed gave the city over to his soldiers for three days of pillaging. Mehmed
entered the city later on May 29 and proceeded to the famed metropolitan church
of Hagia Sophia which he transformed into a Muslim mosque, called Aya Sofya.
Most of the surviving population of the city were enslaved and deported. The
Byzantine Empire was now effectively at an end, and Constantinople was renamed
Istanbul. The conquest of Constantinople also marked the end of the old,
paternalistic Ottoman state of Murad II. Within a brief time Çandarli Halil
Pasha, whose attitude toward the siege had been equivocal at best, was
dismissed and later executed. He was replaced as grand vizier by Zaganos Pasha,
a product of the devsirme, whose more aggressive attitudes would henceforth
dominate the affairs of the sultanate.
By the conquest of Constantinople Mehmed had realized an
Islamic ambition that dated back to the first sieges of the city by the Arabs
in the mid-seventh century. The Ottoman state was now an empire, controlling
the “two lands” (Anatolia and Rumelia) and the “two seas”
(the Black Sea and the Aegean). Mehmed himself was henceforth known by the
sobriquet “Fatih,” or “the Conqueror,” arrogating to
himself not only the Muslim title of sultan, first claimed by Bayezid I (r.
1389-1402), but two additional titles implying universal sovereignty, the old
Turkish title of Khaqan and the Roman-Byzantine title of Qaysar (Caesar). It is
in the light of his self-image as world-ruler and his ambitions for universal
monarchy, contrasted with the practical limitations on the realization of that
policy, that the complex record of Mehmed’s activities during his almost
30-year reign can be best understood.
In the first place, Istanbul was rapidly restored to its historic
position as a true imperial capital. The city was progressively redeveloped and
was repopulated by successive waves of forced immigration from newly conquered
areas. Moreover, Mehmed rebuilt the city through the development of new
residential and mercantile quarters grouped around a mosque complex or a
market. Edirne was quickly abandoned by Mehmed as an imperial residence in
favor of new palaces built within the walls of Istanbul, the first being the
so-called Old Palace and the second being the New Palace, better known as the
Topkapi Palace, built at the furthest extremity of the city, overlooking the
confluence of the Bosporus, the Golden Horn, and the Sea of Marmara.
Secondly, the almost continuous warfare that marked Mehmed’s
reign can be seen as an attempt to expand Ottoman territory by the elimination
or neutralization of all competing polities, Muslim as well as Christian, that
stood in the way of the realization of his imperial ambitions. The remaining
fragments of territory where Byzantine rule still endured were rapidly absorbed
by Mehmed’s burgeoning empire. Most of the Balkan states that still formed part
of the Christian Orthodox world were also incorporated by a combination of
warfare and diplomacy (Serbia, 1457; Bosnia, 1461-63), while Venetian
possessions in the east came under sustained Ottoman attack with the
Ottoman-Venetian war of 1463-79 and the capture of Negroponte in 1470. North of
the Danube River, the Ottomans were still not strong enough to take Belgrade
(although they besieged it unsuccessfully in 1456) or to do more than ravage
Hungarian territory by ceaseless razzias intended to preempt any hostile
presence on the lower Danube. The Balkan territories of Wallachia and Moldavia
remained a military danger zone for the Ottoman armies and an area of abiding
contention. Conversely, toward the end of his reign Mehmed was able to
eradicate the Genoese trading colonies in the Crimea and to bring the Giray
dynasty, the Crimean Khanate, into a vassal relationship (1478), thus controlling
territories on all sides of the Black Sea, which for almost three centuries was
given the sobriquet of the “Ottoman lake.”
In Anatolia, Mehmed went on to control most of the remaining
Muslim dynasties, employing a combination of strategies that included forced
annexation and dynastic marriages. These dynasties were themselves largely of
Turkoman origin, such as the Isfendiyarid in northern Anatolia, with its
valuable Black Sea port of Sinop and its copper mines in the vicinity of
Kastamonu. Karaman, long a thorn in the Ottomans’ side, was neutralized in 1468
and re-annexed in 1474; the eastern Anatolian Turkoman confederacy of the
Akkoyunlu (or “White Sheep” Turkomans), led by Uzun Hasan, proved
more difficult to subdue, but the confederacy was much diminished by Mehmed’s
1473 victory over Uzun Hasan in the Battle of Tercan (Otluk-beli).
In the latter years of Mehmed’s reign, when he was already
in poor health, the practical limitations of his policies became more apparent.
Success had brought its own problems, including confrontations with the
Egyptian Mamluk Empire and with Hungary, which would not be solved in the
Ottomans’ favor until the reign of Mehmed’s grandson, Selim I (r. 1512-20).
There is no doubt also that Mehmed harbored a deep desire to conquer Italy and
to bring Rome, as well as Constantinople, under his domination, but an
expedition mounted against southern Italy in 1480 was a disastrous failure, and
the Ottoman bridgehead at Otranto was abandoned the following year, after
Mehmed’s death. Likewise, a complex amphibious operation in the same year
against the crusading Knights of St John and their island fortress of Rhodes
was a costly failure.
While Mehmed Fatih is known primarily for his military
successes, especially for the conquest of Constantinople, and for his
impressive role in expanding the Ottoman Empire, there were other important
aspects of his long reign. Mehmed’s attempts to build up a unified and
centralized empire strained the state’s finances, forcing several devaluations
of the Ottoman currency and requiring the extension of the state’s monopolistic
and unpopular tax-farming system. Through these measures, and despite vast and
continuous military expenditure, the state treasury still contained some three
and a half million ducats of ready money at the time of the sultan’s death. At
the same time, these actions and the frequent confiscation of private lands by
the state alienated most of the old Ottoman landed families and society at
large, creating strong social discontent.
Altogether, it is difficult to arrive at a balanced account
of Mehmed’s reign. His complex personality has been endlessly discussed but
still defies satisfactory analysis. Mehmed seems to have been affected by both
the perils and humiliations of his early years and possibly by the influence of
what may be termed the “war party” at the outset of his reign.
Attempts to describe him as a renaissance figure and a free thinker must be
viewed with some misgivings in light of his preoccupation with enforcing strict
religious orthodoxy. The darker aspects of his nature continue to defy
analysis; although these are well documented, they stand in contrast to the
historical picture we have of both his father, Murad II, and his son, Sultan
Bayezid II (r. 1481-1512).
Mehmed II died on May 3, 1481 while encamped with his army
on the first stages of a campaign in Anatolia, possibly directed against Rhodes
or the Mamluk Empire. There is substantial circumstantial evidence that Mehmed
was poisoned, possibly at the behest of his eldest son and successor, Bayezid.
Mehmed’s death unleashed a short-lived but violent Janissary revolt and then a
lengthy succession struggle between Bayezid and his brother Cem, who long
contended for the throne. Although Bayezid immediately reversed many of his
father’s fiscal and military policies, Mehmed’s reign was one of undeniable
achievement, the conquest of Constantinople and its subsequent transformation
being foremost amongst his accomplishments.
Further reading:
Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time, translated by Ralph Manheim,
edited by William C. Hickman (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press,
1978), a work to be used with caution, and read in conjunction with Halil
Inalcik, “Mehmed the Conqueror (1432-1481) and His Time,” Speculum,
xxv (1960), 408-427, reprinted in Halil Inalcik, Essays in Ottoman History
(Istanbul: Eren, 1998), 87-110; Michael Doukas, The Decline and Fall of
Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks, trans. H. J. Magoulias (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1975); Colin Heywood, “Mehmed II and the Historians: The
Reception of Babinger’s Mehmed der Eroberer during Half a Century” (to
appear in Turcica, 2009); Halil Inalcik, “The Policy of Mehmed II towards
the Greek Population of Istanbul,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 23-24 (1969-70),
231-249; Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror, trans. C. T. Riggs
(Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1954); Bernard Lewis et al., The
Fall of Constantinople: A Symposium Held at the School of Oriental and African
Studies 29 May 1953 (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1955);
Julian Raby, “A Sultan of Paradox: Mehmed the Conqueror as a Patron of the
Arts.” The Oxford Art Journal, 6, no. 1 (1982), 3-8; Steven Runciman, The
Fall of Constantinople (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); Tursun
Beg, The History of Mehmed the Conqueror, edited and translated by Halil
Inalcik and Rhoads Murphey (Minneapolis: Bibliotheka Islamica, 1978).
