Mehmed the Conqueror

Mehmed II or Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (30 March 1432 – 3 May 1481) (Ottoman Turkish: محمد ثانى, Meḥmed-i s̠ānī; Turkish: II. Mehmet; also known as el-Fātiḥ, الفاتح, "the Conqueror" in Ottoman Turkish; in modern Turkish, Fatih Sultan Mehmet; also called Mahomet II[1][2] in early modern Europe) was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire twice, first for a short time from 1444 to September 1446, and later from February 1451 to 1481. At the age of 21, he conquered Constantinople and brought an end to the Byzantine Empire, transforming the Ottoman state into an empire. Mehmed continued his conquests in Asia, with the Anatolian reunification, and in Europe, as far as Bosnia and Croatia. Mehmed II is regarded as a national hero in Turkey, and Istanbul's Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge is named after him.

ehmed II was born on 30 March 1432, in Edirne, then the capital city of the Ottoman state. His father was Sultan Murad II (1404–51) and his mother Valide Sultan Hüma Hatun, born in the town of Devrekani, Kastamonu.

When Mehmed II was eleven years old he was sent to Amasya to govern and thus gain experience, as per the custom of Ottoman rulers before his time. After Murad II made peace with the Karaman Emirate in Anatolia in August 1444, he abdicated the throne to his 12-year-old son Mehmed II. Sultan Murad II had sent him a number of teachers for him to study under.[3]

This Islamic education had a great impact in molding the mindset of Mehmed and reinforcing his Muslim beliefs. He began to praise and promote the application of Sharia law. He was influenced in his practice of Islamic epistemology by contemporaneous practitioners of science - particularly by his mentor, Molla Gürani - and he followed their approach. The influence of Ak Şemseddin in Mehmed's life became predominant from a young age, especially in the imperative of fulfilling his Islamic duty to overthrow the Byzantine empire by conquering Constantinople.[4]

In his first reign, he defeated the crusade led by János Hunyadi after the Hungarian incursions into his country broke the conditions of the truce Peace of Szeged. Cardinal Julian Cesarini, the representative of the pope, had convinced the king of Hungary that breaking the truce with Muslims was not a betrayal.[5] At this time Mehmed II asked his father Murad II to reclaim the throne, but Murad II refused. Angry at his father, who had long since retired to a contemplative life in southwestern Anatolia, Mehmed II wrote, "If you are the Sultan, come and lead your armies. If I am the Sultan I hereby order you to come and lead my armies." It was only after receiving this letter that Murad II led the Ottoman army and won the Battle of Varna in 1444.

Murad II's return to the throne was forced by Çandarlı Halil Paşa, the grand vizier at the time, who was not fond of Mehmed II's rule, because Mehmed II's influential lala (royal teacher), Akşemseddin, had a rivalry with Çandarlı. Çandarlı was later executed by Mehmed II during the siege of Constantinople on the grounds that he had been bribed by or had somehow helped the defenders.[citation needed]
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Conquest of Constantinople
Main article: Fall of Constantinople

Accession of Mehmed II in Edirne 1451.

When Mehmed II ascended the throne in 1451 he devoted himself to strengthening the Ottoman Navy, and in the same year made preparations for the taking of Constantinople. In the narrow Bosporus Straits, the fortress Anadoluhisarı had been built by his great-grandfather Bayezid I on the Asiatic side; Mehmed erected an even stronger fortress called Rumelihisarı on the European side, and thus having complete control of the strait. Having completed his fortresses, Mehmet proceeded to levy a toll on ships passing within reach of their cannon. A Venetian vessel refusing signals to stop was sunk with a single shot and all the surviving sailors beheaded.[6]

Sultan Mehmed II's entry into Constantinople, painting by Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845–1902)

In 1453 Mehmed commenced the siege of Constantinople with an army between 80,000 to 200,000 troops and a navy of 320 vessels, though the bulk of them were transports and storeships. The city was now surrounded by sea and land; the fleet at the entrance of the Bosphorus was stretched from shore to shore in the form of a crescent, to intercept or repel any assistance from the sea for the besieged.[6]

In early April, the Siege of Constantinople began. After several failed assaults, the city's walls held off the Turks with great difficulty, even with the use of the new Orban's bombard, a cannon similar to the Dardanelles Gun. The harbor of the Golden Horn was blocked by a boom chain and defended by twenty-eight warships.

On 22 April, Mehmed transported his lighter warships overland, around the Genoese colony of Galata and into the Golden Horn's northern shore; eighty galleys were transported from the Bosphorus after paving a little over one-mile route with wood. Thus the Byzantines stretched their troops over a longer portion of the walls. A little over a month later, Constantinople fell on May 29 following a fifty-seven day siege.[6] After this conquest, Mehmed moved the Ottoman capital from Adrianople to Constantinople. On his accession as conqueror of Constantinople, aged 21, Mehmed was reputed fluent in several languages, including Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Greek and Latin.[7][8]

Map of Constantinople and its land walls and harbor.

Reference is made to the prospective conquest of Constantinople in a hadith (a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad): "Verily you shall conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful leader will he be, and what a wonderful army will that army be!"[9] Ten years after the conquest of Constantinople Mehmed II visited the site of Troy and boasted that he had avenged the Trojans by having conquered the Greeks (Byzantines).[10]

Mehmed II and Gennadios.

When Mehmed stepped into the ruins of the Boukoleon, known to the Ottomans and Persians as the Palace of the Caesars, probably built over a thousand years before by Theodosius II, he uttered the famous lines of Saadi:[11][12][13][14]
The spider weaves the curtains in the palace of the Caesars;
the owl calls the watches in the towers of Afrasiab.

After the Fall of Constantinople, Mehmed claimed the title of "Caesar" of Rome (Kayser-i Rûm). The claim was not recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople, or Christian Europe. Mehmed's claim rested with the concept that Constantinople was the seat of the Roman Empire, after the transfer of its capital to Constantinople in 330 AD and the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Mehmed also had a blood lineage to the Byzantine Imperial family; his predecessor, Sultan Orhan I had married a Byzantine princess, and Mehmed may have claimed descent from John Tzelepes Komnenos.[7] He was not the only ruler to claim such a title, as there was the Holy Roman Empire in Western Europe, whose emperor, Frederick III, traced his titular lineage from Charlemagne who obtained the title of Roman Emperor when he was crowned by Pope Leo III in 800 - although never recognized as such by the Byzantine E

Conquests in Europe
Further information: List of campaigns of Mehmed the Conqueror

After the Fall of Constantinople, Mehmed would also go on to conquer the Despotate of Morea in the Peloponnese in 1460, and the Empire of Trebizond in northeastern Anatolia in 1461. The last two vestiges of Byzantine rule were thus absorbed by the Ottoman Empire. The conquest of Constantinople bestowed immense glory and prestige on the country.

Sword of Mehmed II

Siege of Belgrade (in Hungarian: Nándorfehérvár) 1456. Hünername 1584

Mehmed II advanced toward Eastern Europe as far as Belgrade, and attempted to conquer the city from John Hunyadi at the Siege of Belgrade in 1456. Hungarian commanders successfully defended the city and Ottomans retreated with heavy losses but at the end, the Ottomans occupied nearly all of Serbia.

In 1462 Mehmed II came into conflict with Prince Vlad III Dracula of Wallachia, who had spent part of his childhood alongside Mehmed.[15] Vlad had ambushed, massacred or captured several Ottoman forces, then announced his impalement of over 23,000 captive Turks. Mehmed II abandoned his siege of Corinth to launch a punitive attack against Vlad in Wallachia[16] but suffered many casualties in a surprise night attack led by Vlad, who was apparently bent on personally killing the Sultan.[17] Confronted by Vlad's scorched earth policies and demoralizing brutality, Mehmed II withdrew, leaving his ally Radu cel Frumos, Vlad's brother, with a small force in order to win over local boyars who had been persecuted by Vlad III. Radu eventually managed to take control of Wallachia, which he administered as Bey, on behalf of Mehmet II. Vlad eventually escaped to Hungary, where he was imprisoned on a false accusation of treason against his overlord.

In 1463, after a dispute over the tribute paid annually by the Bosnian kingdom, Mehmed invaded Bosnia and conquered it very quickly, executing the last Bosnian king Stephen Tomašević and his uncle Radivoj.

In 1456, Peter III Aaron, agreed to pay the Ottomans a annual tribute of 2,000 gold ducats, in order to ensure his southern borders, thus becoming the first of the Moldavian rulers to accept the Turkish demands.[18] His successor Stephen the Great rejected Ottoman suzerainty and a series of fierce wars ensued.[19] In 1475, the Ottomans suffered a great defeat at the hands of Stephen the Great of Moldavia at the Battle of Vaslui. In 1476, Mehmed won a pyrrhic victory against Stephen at the Battle of Valea Albă. He besieged the capital of Suceava, but could not take it, nor could he take the Castle of Târgu Neamţ. With a plague running in his camp and food and water being very scarce, Mehmed was forced to retreat.

The Albanian resistance in Albania between 1443 and 1468 led by George Kastrioti Skanderbeg (İskender Bey), an Albanian noble and a former member of the Ottoman ruling elite, prevented the Ottoman expansion into the Italian peninsula.[citation needed] Skanderbeg had united the Albanian Principalities in a fight against the Empire in the League of Lezhë in 1444. Mehmed II couldn't subjugate Albania and Skanderbeg while the latter was alive, even though twice (1466 and 1467) he led the Ottoman armies himself against Krujë. After death of Skanderbeg in 1468, Albanians couldn't find a leader to replace him and Mehmed II eventually conquered Krujë and Albania in 1478. The final act of his Albanian campaigns was the troublesome siege of Shkodra in 1478-9, the final siege that Mehmed II led personally and of which early Ottoman chronicler Aşıkpaşazade (1400–81) wrote, "All the conquests of Sultan Mehmed were fulfilled with the seizure of Shkodra."[20]

An Ottoman army under Gedik Ahmed Pasha invaded Italy in 1480. The intent of this invasion was to capture Rome and "reunite the Roman Empire", and, at first, it looked like it might be able to do it with the easy capture of Otranto in 1480 but after the death of Mehmed most of the troops returned and Otranto was retaken by Papal forces in 1481.
Personal life

Mehmed II had several wives: Emine Gülbahar Hatun, of slave background, who died in 1492,[23][24] Gevher Khātûn; Gülşah Hatun; Mûkrîmā (Sitt-î Mükrime) Hatun;[25] Çiçek Khātûn; Helenā Khātûn, who died in 1481, daughter of Demetrios Palaiologos and the Despot of Morea; briefly Anna Khātûn, the daughter of the Emperor of Trebizond; and Alexias Khātûn, a Byzantine princess. Another son of his was Cem Sultan, who died in 1495. He had 4 sons; Bayezid II, Sultan Cem, Korkud and Mustafa, and one daughter; Gevherhan.

Franz Babinger asserted that he was attracted to both women and men.[26] However these assertions met fierce criticism from Turkish historians, including Halil Inalcik one of the foremost scholars on Ottoman history.[27] Also, Ottoman sources do not mention this. This suggestion was originally recorded by the Byzantine Greek historian Doukas,[28] who was not living in Constantinople at the time of the fall of the city[29] and whose writings contain many insults to the Ottoman ruler,[30] stated that after the conquest of Constantinople, Mehmed II ordered the 14-year old son of the Grand Duke Lucas Notaras brought to him "for his pleasure". When the father refused to deliver his son to such a fate he had them both decapitated on the spot.[31] Another contemporary Greek source, Leonard of Chios, professor of theology and Archbishop of Mytilene, tells the same story in his letter to Pope Nicholas.[32] However this story does not appear in accounts by other Greeks who witnessed the conquest.[29] Nor does it appear in accounts of Ottoman historians. Some modern scholars believe that this tale is merely one of a long series of attempts to portray Muslims as morally inferior, and point to the story of Saint Pelagius as its probable inspiration.[29] Furthermore according to Ottoman sources Notaras and all the other Christian dignitaries in the city were executed for purely political reasons.[33] According to Michael Critobulus the sultan first planned to make Notaras prefect of the city but later Notaras was accused of treachery and trying to bribe the sultan with his hidden wealth.[34][35][36]
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Death

Mehmed died on May 3, 1481, at the age of forty-nine, and was buried in his Türbe in the cemetery within the Fatih Mosque Complex[37] Mehmed's primary doctor, Yakub Pasha, a Jewish convert to Islam was suspected of administering poison to Mehmed over a period of time. Another source states that: "The likeliest possibility is that Mehmed was also poisoned by his Persian doctor. Despite numerous Venetian assassination attempts over the years, the finger of suspicion points most strongly at his son, Bayezit."[38]
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Legacy
Main article: Bosnian Franciscans