Mehmed II and the conquest of Constantinople (1453)

Part oneInto the Balkans

Orhan's son Murad I took Edirne, the old Adrianople, in the 1360s, and it became the Ottoman capital in Europe. His armies pushed into Bulgaria and Serbia. In 1389 at Kosovo they met a Balkan army under the Serbian prince Lazar and won, but Murad was killed in the battle. His son Bayezid took command on the field. He moved so fast in his campaigns that he was called Yildirim, the Thunderbolt.

Bayezid took most of western Anatolia, annexed Bulgaria, and in 1394 began the first Ottoman blockade of Constantinople. In 1396 a crusade under King Sigismund of Hungary marched to stop him, and at Nicopolis on the Danube Bayezid destroyed it. To mark the victory he ordered the Great Mosque of Bursa. Under him the devshirme became a fixed institution: boys were taken from Christian families, mostly in the Balkans, raised as Muslims and trained for the army and government. The Janissary infantry came from this system.

Part twoAnkara and the civil war

Then Bayezid met a greater conqueror. Timur, the Turco-Mongol ruler of Central Asia, claimed lordship over Anatolia. At Ankara on 28 July 1402 Timur's army won, partly because Tatar horsemen in Bayezid's army changed sides. Bayezid was captured and died in captivity the next year. The beyliks he had taken became independent again.

What followed was worse. For eleven years, from 1402 to 1413, four of Bayezid's sons fought each other for the throne. In the end Mehmed I won and began to put the state back together. Historians ask how the Ottoman state survived such a shock. The Turkish historian Halil Inalcik answered that the central government gave it a strong frame, and the officials raised through the devshirme kept it running while the princes fought.

Mehmed's son Murad II spent his reign restoring Ottoman power. He beat rival claimants, retook western Anatolia and fought Hungary for the Balkans. In 1444 he handed the throne to his twelve-year-old son Mehmed and retired. When a crusade broke the peace, Murad returned and beat it at Varna on the Black Sea. In 1446 he came back to rule for good, and in 1448 he won a second battle at Kosovo. When he died in 1451, the Balkans were quiet, and Constantinople stood alone.

Part threeThe siege

Mehmed II was nineteen when he became sultan for the second time. He was well educated and spoke several languages, Greek among them, and from his first reign he had gathered advisers who wanted Constantinople. Muslims had besieged the city twice under the Umayyads, and many had hoped to be the ones to take it. The Ottomans knew the narration recorded by Ahmad that praises the leader and the army who would conquer it.

From the hadith

ʿAbdullāh b. Bishr al-Khathʿamī narrated from his father that:

He heard the Prophet ﷺ saying, "Constantinople will surely be opened. How blessed is its Amir, and how blessed is its army!" Muslimah bin Abdul Malik called me and asked me, so I informed him. Then he waged war against Constantinople.

Mehmed planned for almost two years. He built a fortress, Rumeli Hisari, on the European shore of the Bosphorus to cut the city off from the Black Sea. He hired a cannon-maker and cast huge guns. In April 1453 the siege began. The Byzantines had stretched a great chain across the Golden Horn, the harbour on the city's north side, so Mehmed had dozens of ships dragged overland on greased logs, behind Galata, and launched into the harbour behind the chain.

For fifty-three days the cannon pounded the land walls. On Tuesday 29 May 1453 the Ottomans made their final assault, and Janissaries entered through a breach. The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI, died in the fighting. Mehmed rode into the city and went to Hagia Sophia, the great church of Justinian, which became a mosque. From then on he was known as Fatih, the Conqueror.

There was bloodshed and looting in the first days. Afterwards Mehmed set out to rebuild and fill the city. He brought in settlers from across his lands, gave the Greek Orthodox Church a patriarch under his protection, and invited Muslims, Christians and Jews to live there. It became the third Ottoman capital, after Bursa and Edirne. The name Istanbul comes from Greek words meaning "into the city". After 1492 Muslims and Jews driven out of Spain found refuge there too.

On 29 May 1453 a sultan of twenty-one rode into the city that had defied Muslim armies for eight centuries.

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The mapWhere it happened

• Edirne
• Kosovo
• Nicopolis
• Varna
• Ankara
• Rumeli Hisari
• the Golden Horn
• Constantinople

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter