Who Was Mehmed the Conqueror? The Conquest of Istanbul

Mehmed the Conqueror (1432–1481) was the seventh Ottoman sultan, who conquered Constantinople in 1453 and brought the Byzantine Empire to an end. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, he came to the throne twice: in 1444–1446 and in 1451–1481. In his second reign he united Anatolia and Rumelia in an empire centred on Istanbul. In Turkish his name, Fatih Sultan Mehmed, is also written Fatih Sultan Mehmet.

Quick Summary

• Mehmed the Conqueror was born in Edirne on 30 March 1432; he was the fourth son of Murad II.
• He came to the throne for the first time in 1444 at the age of twelve, and for the second time in 1451 at the age of nineteen.
• He took Constantinople on 29 May 1453, at the end of a siege that lasted 54 days, and made it his capital.
• He took Serbia, the Morea, Trebizond, Bosnia and Karaman; in 1473 he defeated Uzun Hasan at Otlukbeli.
• He built a centralist government with viziers of kul origin (men raised as the sultan’s servants) and had the Semaniye madrasas built.
• He died on 3 May 1481 at Hünkârçayırı, between Üsküdar and Gebze.

Contents

• Birth, family and years as a prince
• His two reigns
• The conquest of Constantinople: preparation and siege
• Istanbul after the conquest
• His main campaigns
• State order and economy
• His contribution to cultural and scholarly life
• His death and successors
• Frequently asked questions

Mehmed the Conqueror’s Birth, Family and Years as a Prince

According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, Mehmed II was born in Edirne on 30 March 1432. He was the fourth son of his father, Sultan Murad II. The claim that he was appointed governor of Amasya at the age of six, however, is doubtful. What is certain is that in the spring of 1443 he was sent to Manisa as governor, together with his lalas (tutors) Kassabzade Mahmud and Nişancı İbrahim Bey.

At the end of the same year his elder brother, Prince Alaeddin Ali Çelebi, the governor of Amasya, died. The young prince thus became the sole heir to the throne. According to the encyclopedia, his first acquaintance with Western culture also began in these years, at the palace in Manisa.

His Two Reigns: 1444–1446 and 1451–1481

Why was his first reign so short?

In the summer of 1444 Murad II, having made peace with the Hungarians and with the Karamanid ruler, decided to give up the throne. In August 1444, on the plain of Mihalıç, he announced that he was formally leaving the throne to his son. Leaving the state to an inexperienced twelve-year-old, however, led to a great crisis; some of the places taken in the time of Murad II were lost.

The palace, too, was split in two. Şehabeddin Pasha, Nişancı İbrahim Pasha and Zağanos Pasha gathered around the young sultan against the grand vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha. When the Crusader army crossed the Danube in September 1444, Çandarlı and his supporters called Murad II back to take charge again. The Ottoman army under the command of Murad II defeated the Crusaders at the Battle of Varna.

After Varna, Murad II did not remove his son from the throne and withdrew to Manisa. According to the encyclopedia, in these years the young sultan, under the influence of Zağanos, began to regard the conquest of Constantinople as the first condition of his sultanate. However, after a Janissary uprising known as the Buçuktepe Incident broke out in Edirne in 1446, Murad II took the throne again in August 1446.

The Manisa years and the second accession

Mehmed II was sent to Manisa, and Zağanos Pasha and Şehabeddin Pasha were assigned to him as atabegs (guardians). In the Battle of Kosovo in 1448 he fought on the right wing of his father’s army. In 1450 he married Sitti Hatun, the daughter of Dulkadıroğlu Süleyman Bey.

When Murad II died in February 1451, Çandarlı sent a secret letter to Manisa. Mehmed the Conqueror came to the throne for the second time on 18 February 1451, at the age of nineteen. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, as soon as he took the throne he had his brother Ahmed, who was still a baby, strangled. With the ruling he laid down, “It is permissible to kill one’s brothers for the sake of the order of the world”, he also aimed to secure the indivisibility of sovereignty.

The Conquest of Constantinople: How Did Mehmed the Conqueror Take the City?

When Mehmed the Conqueror came to the throne for the second time, his first target was the capital of Byzantium. According to the encyclopedia, he regarded this conquest as the guarantee of the state’s future and as the basis of the universal policy he wished to establish. The city lay in a position that constantly blocked the link between Rumelia and Anatolia. The hadith tradition foretelling the conquest would also give the sultan who achieved it great spiritual strength.

Preparation: Rumelihisarı and diplomacy

The first step in the preparations was to build a fortress at the narrowest point of the Bosphorus. Construction of Rumelihisarı (the Rumeli Fortress), also known as Boğazkesen (“Throat-cutter”), began in the first months of 1452 and was completed in August 1452. According to the Byzantine historian Doukas, Mehmed II entrusted the building of the three great towers to three pashas; Çandarlı Halil Pasha had the tower on the shore built. For the other two towers the names of Sarıca Pasha and Zağanos Pasha are given. The fortress was to cut Constantinople off from the supplies coming from the Black Sea and to serve as a base for the besieging army.

When the fortress was finished, Mehmed II told the emperor to surrender the city or prepare for war. The treaty with Venice had been renewed in September 1451, and a three-year truce had been signed with the Hungarians in November 1451. For this reason Byzantium’s efforts to find help in the West came to nothing. At the great consultative council in Edirne, the cautious statesmen also gave way to the sultan’s insistence.

According to the encyclopedia, Mehmed II planned the siege himself. The besieging army numbered around 100,000 or somewhat more; a quarter of it consisted of Janissaries and kapıkulu troops (the sultan’s salaried household soldiers). In the city, by contrast, there were about 5,000 soldiers, and with the auxiliary units this number rose to 8,000–9,000. The most effective weapons of the Ottoman army were the great cannon placed in batteries.

How did the siege unfold?

The Ottoman vanguard appeared before the walls on 2 April 1453; on the same day a chain was stretched across the entrance to the Golden Horn. On 6 April, in keeping with Islamic tradition, Mehmed II called on the city to surrender, and the offer was refused. Thus began the siege, which was to last 54 days. The breaches opened by the cannon, however, were immediately repaired by the defenders.

The first assault, on 18 April, failed because of the resistance of the defence commander Giustiniani. On 20 April three Genoese ships and one Byzantine ship carrying supplies broke through the Ottoman fleet and entered the Golden Horn. After this failure Çandarlı argued for accepting the Byzantine offer of peace. Akşemseddin, Zağanos Pasha and Molla Gürani, however, insisted that the siege should continue.

According to Feridun Emecen, Mehmed the Conqueror may have hesitated for a time during this debate, but he decided to continue the siege. He then put into effect a plan prepared in advance to bring pressure on the weaker walls along the Golden Horn. On the night of 21 to 22 April some 60–70 ships were hauled overland and lowered into the Golden Horn. According to the encyclopedia, it is thought that the ships were pulled on slipways for several days and lined up on the heights of Kasımpaşa. This move raised the morale of the Ottoman soldiers and caused great astonishment in Byzantium.

In May the bombardment grew heavier; the tunnels that were dug were discovered and collapsed by the defenders, and on 18 May a siege tower was also burned. On 23 May Mehmed II sent an envoy once more; he announced that the lives and property of the people would not be touched and that the emperor would be given the Despotate of the Morea. The offer was rejected once again.

In the fourth week of May, news that the Hungarians and a Crusader fleet were on the move caused anxiety in the army. In the council of war Çandarlı again spoke in favour of a settlement, and Zağanos Pasha opposed him. The decision for a general assault was taken, and the choice of the day was left to Zağanos. We described the pasha’s role in the siege separately in our article on Zağanos Pasha.

What happened on 29 May 1453?

The final assault began on all fronts towards dawn on Tuesday, 29 May; its centre of gravity was the ruined walls between the Topkapı and Edirnekapı gates. The wounding of Giustiniani and his removal to his ship shook the defence. Ottoman soldiers entered the city through the breach at Topkapı and from around Edirnekapı. The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI, also died in the fighting; his death is described in different ways in the sources.

Under Islamic custom, a city taken by force of arms gave the soldiers the right to three days of plunder. After entering the city, Mehmed II went to Hagia Sophia and converted it into a mosque. According to Halil İnalcık, on 30 May he declared that the state of war was over, the plundering stopped, and with the words “Istanbul is my throne” he made the city the centre of the state. In Emecen’s words, Mehmed II had now earned the title Fatih, meaning “the Conqueror”.

How Was Istanbul Rebuilt After the Conquest?

Before the siege many people had left the city, and most of those who remained had been taken captive. Three days after the conquest Mehmed II proclaimed aman (a guarantee of safety): he allowed those who had fled to return and announced that those who came back could live in their own houses and were free in their religion. He also settled the captives who had fallen to his own share, together with their families, on the shore of the Golden Horn, gave them houses and exempted them from taxes for a time.

Galata was handed over by the Genoese on 1 June, and they were granted the right of free trade. Mehmed II appointed Karışdıran Süleyman Bey, with 1,500 Janissaries, as subaşı (military governor) of the city and Hızır Bey as its qadi (judge); he ordered the walls to be repaired and Yedikule (the Fortress of the Seven Towers) to be built. To draw the Greeks to the city, on 6 January 1454 he recognized Gennadios (Gennadius) Scholarios, an opponent of the Latins, as patriarch by a berat (warrant of appointment). According to the encyclopedia, he also settled the Armenian patriarch and the Jewish chief rabbi in his capital.

The most effective way of repopulating the city was sürgün (forced resettlement). Well-to-do Muslim, Christian and Jewish families from Rumelia and Anatolia were sent to Istanbul; according to a document published by Iorga, 4,000 families were to be settled from each of the two regions. Settlement progressed slowly at first, but the census of 1477 recorded 16,326 households.

Mehmed the Conqueror also gave the city the infrastructure of an Ottoman-Islamic city. The Bedesten, the Grand Bazaar that grew up around it, the khans (commercial inns) and the kapans (wholesale markets) were attached to the waqfs of Hagia Sophia. According to Kritovoulos, in 1459 he asked his statesmen to build mosques, khans, baths and markets in different parts of the city that would bear their own names. He himself chose Sarayburnu (Seraglio Point) for the New Palace (Topkapı Palace).

According to the encyclopedia, the conquest was the fundamental event that prepared the definitive establishment of the Ottoman state and the great conquests that followed. In Europe, meanwhile, Pope Nicholas V called on Christians to undertake a new crusade.

The Main Campaigns of Mehmed the Conqueror

After the conquest of Constantinople, Mehmed II saw himself as the master of a world empire. According to the encyclopedia, this belief became the starting point both of his policy of continuous conquest and of his centralist government.

The Balkans and Venice

Campaigns were made against Serbia in 1454 and 1455; in 1455 the silver mines of Novo Brdo were taken. In 1456 the siege of Belgrade failed, and Mehmed II was wounded in the forehead as he threw himself into the fighting in person. With the surrender of Smederevo in June 1459, Serbia came under direct Ottoman rule. The Morea was taken completely in 1460, except for the coastal fortresses belonging to Venice.

Entering Wallachia in 1462, Mehmed II put to flight Vlad Dracula (the Impaler), who had allied himself with the Hungarian king, and placed his brother Radu in his stead. In the same year Lesbos was taken, and in 1463 Bosnia. The war with Venice that began in 1463 lasted sixteen years; Negroponte (Euboea) was captured in 1470. Under the peace of 25 January 1479, Venice agreed to pay 10,000 gold pieces every year in return for freedom of trade.

The Black Sea and Crimea

Having gained control of the Straits, Mehmed the Conqueror tried, in the encyclopedia’s words, to turn the Black Sea into a Turkish lake. Amasra was taken in 1459, and Sinop and Trebizond in 1461. On 6 June 1475 the grand vizier Gedik Ahmed Pasha received the surrender of Caffa (Kefe), the centre of the Genoese colonies. The Crimean Khanate was bound to the Ottomans; in 1476 the sultan also campaigned in Moldavia.

Anatolia and the Battle of Otlukbeli

The strongest rival in the east was the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan, who supported the Karamanids and sought an alliance with Venice against the Ottomans. When Aq Qoyunlu forces plundered Tokat in 1472, Mehmed the Conqueror prepared for a great campaign. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, the Ottoman army won the battle fought at Otlukbeli near Tercan on 11 August 1473.

The superiority of Ottoman cannon and muskets decided the outcome of the battle; Uzun Hasan fled the battlefield. The victory secured full Ottoman control over the Anatolian lands on this side of the Euphrates. The Karaman question, too, was largely resolved by campaigns that continued until 1474.

Rhodes and Otranto

In the last years of his reign Mehmed the Conqueror set his sights on Rhodes and Italy. In 1480 the ninety-day siege before the fortress of Rhodes ended without result. Gedik Ahmed Pasha, on the other hand, took Otranto in southern Italy on 11 August 1480; according to the encyclopedia, this campaign was regarded as a first step towards the conquest of Rome.

State Order and Economy

After the conquest Mehmed the Conqueror established an absolute and centralist government. His first act was to remove Çandarlı Halil Pasha, who in practice limited his power. The grand vizier was dismissed on 30 May 1453 and executed forty days later. All the later grand viziers, except the last of them, Karamani Mehmed Pasha, were of kul origin; of these, he also had Mahmud Pasha and Rum Mehmed Pasha executed.

Mehmed II reorganized the kapıkulu army, which was bound directly to him. He raised the Janissaries’ pay, renewed their weapons and doubled their numbers. He also placed the frontier beys (uç beyleri) directly under his own command. According to the encyclopedia, in this period men of kul origin gained the upper hand in the government and in the army.

Continuous campaigns and the rebuilding of the capital greatly increased expenditure. Mehmed II issued new akçe (the Ottoman silver coin) in 1451, 1460, 1470, 1475 and 1481, and exchanged the old akçe at a loss of one fifth. Through tax farming (iltizam) he placed everyday necessities such as salt, soap and candles under monopoly. In his last years many private and waqf lands were converted into state land (mîrî) and distributed to the timariot sipahis (cavalrymen holding land grants).

These measures particularly disturbed the ulema, the sheikhs and the old bey families, and the new akçe also caused discontent among the people. For this reason, when Bayezid II came to the throne he returned the confiscated properties and waqfs to their owners. According to the encyclopedia, one of the conditions he was made to accept on his accession was not to issue new akçe more than once.

His Contribution to Cultural and Scholarly Life

The encyclopedia describes Mehmed the Conqueror as a powerful soldier who aimed at world dominion and as a broad-minded man of culture. He was well versed in Arabic and Persian; according to a Western source, he knew Turkish, Greek and Slavonic. He took a special interest in geography, mathematics and astronomy. He wrote poems under the pen name “Avni”; his small divan (collection of poems), containing seventy ghazals, is in the Millet Library.

His teachers included leading scholars of the age such as Molla Gürani and Hocazade Muslihuddin. After the conquest he converted eight churches into madrasas and opened the Hagia Sophia Madrasa. In 1470 he had the Semaniye (Sahn-ı Seman) madrasas built on both sides of his mosque; he personally inspected the madrasas and listened to the lessons.

According to the encyclopedia, scholars representing the East and the West, such as Ali Qushji, Hocazade, Amiroutzes and George of Trebizond, gathered in his presence. He had Amiroutzes and his son translate Ptolemy’s work into Arabic, and he had a world map made. The Venetian painter Gentile Bellini also stayed in Istanbul between September 1479 and January 1481.

Mehmed II built the complex that bears his name on the site of the Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles. Construction began in March 1463 and lasted until December 1470; its architect was Atik Sinan. Around the mosque stood madrasas, a tabhane (hospice for travellers), a darüşşifa (hospital), a market and a bath. According to the encyclopedia, the complex became the most important religious and cultural centre of Istanbul. The present mosque, however, was built in place of the original building destroyed in the earthquake of 1766 and was opened for worship in 1771.

His Death and Successors

Mehmed the Conqueror died at Hünkârçayırı on 3 May 1481, after crossing to Üsküdar for a new campaign. This place lies between Üsküdar and Gebze, near present-day Maltepe. According to the encyclopedia, his death is attributed to gout (nikris). Claims that he was poisoned rest on an interpretation of a piece of information in Aşıkpaşazade and are not confirmed by other sources. His tomb is in the hazire (enclosed graveyard) of the mosque that he built and that bears his name.

After his death a struggle for the throne began between his sons Bayezid and Cem, and Bayezid II won it. We discussed the details of this rivalry in our article on Cem Sultan. His other son, Prince Mustafa, had died in 1474, before his father. The two daughters whose names are known from the sources are Ayşe and Gevherhan. With his death the Italian campaign was also left unfinished, and the Ottoman soldiers in Otranto surrendered on 10 September 1481.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Mehmed the Conqueror, in brief?

He was the seventh Ottoman sultan, who conquered Constantinople in 1453. He was born in Edirne in 1432, came to the throne twice and died in 1481. In the sources he appears as Mehmed II; in Turkish the spelling Fatih Sultan Mehmet is also common.

How old was Mehmed the Conqueror when he became sultan?

He became sultan for the first time in 1444 at the age of twelve, and for the second time on 18 February 1451 at the age of nineteen.

How old was Mehmed the Conqueror when he conquered Constantinople?

Since he was born on 30 March 1432, he was 21 years old on 29 May 1453.

How did Mehmed the Conqueror die?

He died at Hünkârçayırı on 3 May 1481. The encyclopedia attributes his death to gout; the claim that he was poisoned is not confirmed by other sources.

Where is Mehmed the Conqueror buried?

His tomb is in the hazire (graveyard) of the mosque he built in Istanbul, which bears his name.

Conclusion

During his second reign, which lasted thirty years, Mehmed the Conqueror transformed the Ottoman state into an empire. He took Constantinople, made it his capital and rebuilt the city through policies of resettlement, waqfs and construction. He extended the frontiers in the Balkans, on the Black Sea and in Anatolia, and created a centralist order resting on administrators of kul origin. According to the encyclopedia, in his person the “Ottoman sultan” was born, combining the Turkish, Iranian, Islamic and Roman traditions of rulership.

Sources

• TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Mehmed II”
• TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “İstanbul” (sections on the conquest and the Turkish period)
• TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Rumelihisarı” (Rumeli Fortress)
• TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Otlukbeli Savaşı” (Battle of Otlukbeli)
• TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Fâtih Camii ve Külliyesi” (Fatih Mosque and Complex)
• TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Çandarlı Halil Paşa”