Mehmed II

Mehmed II the Ottoman sultan (1432-1481) known as the Conqueror, who took Constantinople in 1453 and brought the Byzantine Empire to an end, making the city the capital of a new imperial age. A ruler of wide learning and ferocious energy, he remade the Ottoman state into a world power.

Youth and First Reign

Mehmed was born in 1432 at Edirne, the son of the sultan Murad II. As a boy he was educated in the palace and, at the age of eleven, was sent to govern the province of Amasya, where he gained experience of administration under the guidance of tutors including the scholar Aksemseddin, who remained a lifelong influence.

His father abdicated in 1444 and retired to a religious life, leaving the young prince as sultan. Faced with a Crusader invasion and internal opposition, Mehmed was unable to maintain his position, and Murad returned to command the army at the battle of Varna. Mehmed was then sent back to his province, learning from the crisis the arts of patience and command.

When Murad died in 1451, Mehmed succeeded him a second time, now a young man of nineteen with a clear purpose. He set out at once to reorganise the state, to strengthen the army and to prepare for the great enterprise that had obsessed Muslim rulers for centuries: the capture of Constantinople.

The Conquest of Constantinople

Mehmed prepared the siege with meticulous care. He built a fortress on the European shore of the Bosphorus to cut the city off from the Black Sea, and he assembled a vast army and a fleet. He also engaged a Hungarian founder, Urban, to cast cannon of enormous size capable of battering the ancient walls.

The siege began in April 1453. The defenders, led by the emperor Constantine XI, held the land walls for fifty-three days, and a chain across the Golden Horn protected the harbour until Mehmed hauled his ships overland on greased logs to bypass it. After weeks of bombardment and repeated assaults, the walls were broken on 29 May and the city fell.

The fall of Constantinople ended an empire that had lasted more than a thousand years and stunned the Christian world. Mehmed entered the city and, according to the conventions of the age, permitted a period of plunder, but he soon restored order, made the city his capital, and granted protection to the Christian population and the office of the patriarch.

The Conqueror's Government and Law

Mehmed rebuilt Constantinople as the seat of a revived empire, repopulating it by transferring settlers from conquered lands, restoring its walls and markets, and building the great mosque and palace complex known from his name. He encouraged trade and attracted merchants, artists and scholars to the new capital.

He reorganised the government on a more centralised basis, reducing the power of the old noble families and relying on officials and slaves of the palace, the kapikulu, who owed their loyalty to the sultan alone. He codified the laws of the state in two codes, one for the government and administration and one for the organisation of the subjects.

He took an active interest in the administration of justice and in the machinery of the state, and he was feared for his severity with officials who abused their office. The institutions he established gave the Ottoman state the disciplined central government that would sustain its expansion for generations.

Later Conquests

Mehmed continued his campaigns after 1453. He conquered Serbia and much of Greece, took Trebizond in 1461 and ended the empire of the Grand Komnenoi, subdued the Crimean khanate in 1475 and brought the Black Sea under Ottoman control, and campaigned against the Venetian colonies in the Aegean and the Peloponnese.

He also fought a long war against Uzun Hasan, the ruler of the Ak Koyunlu confederation in Persia, defeating him at Otlukbeli in 1473. In the west he advanced into Bosnia and into Italy itself, landing at Otranto in 1480, though the expedition was abandoned after his death. His armies and fleets made the Ottoman state the dominant power of the eastern Mediterranean.

These campaigns, conducted almost without pause, imposed heavy burdens on the population and provoked resistance in conquered territories. Yet they transformed the Ottoman realm from a regional Balkan state into an empire straddling three continents and commanding the principal trade routes between Europe and Asia.

Learning, Character and Legacy

Mehmed was a ruler of unusual intellectual curiosity. He was learned in several languages, took an interest in philosophy, theology and the sciences, and gathered at his court Greek and Italian scholars as well as Muslim ones. He commissioned translations and engaged in theological debate, and a famous painting records a discussion with the patriarch and visiting Christians.

He was austere in some habits and luxurious in others, generous to those who served him and merciless to those who opposed him. Contemporaries describe a man of relentless energy and imperious will, capable of both cruelty and magnanimity, who governed the empire in person and worked long hours on matters of state.

He died in 1481 while preparing a new campaign, and his successors carried forward the imperial system he had built. The conquest of Constantinople made the Ottoman sultan the master of a city that had ruled the Mediterranean world for a millennium, and it secured for him the memory of the greatest of the conquerors of his age.

See also

• Fall of Constantinople
• Hagia Sophia
• Ottoman Empire
• Constantine XI