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Mehmed II

Name: Mehmed II

Nickname/Alias: Mehmet II; Mehmed Fatih; Mehmed the Conqueror; Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror

Achievements: Captured Constantinople (now Istanbul);  Extended Ottoman empire

Born: March 30, 1432; Edirne,  Turkey

Died: May 3, 1481; Hunkarcayiri, near Istanbul, Turkey (Aged 49)

Field & Discipline: Royalty; Military; Commander; Ruler

Language: Turkish

Father: Murad II

Mother: Huma Hatun

Siblings: Ahmet; Ala ed-Din

Spouse: Sitt Hatun

Children: Bayezid; Cem; possibly others

Education: Private tutors

Life & Times:

When Mehmed was 12, his father Murad made peace with his traditional enemy, the King of Hungary, and retired to Bursa, putting Mehmed on the throne at Edirne.  Seeing that a child was leading the Ottoman Empire, the Turks' Christian enemies mounted another of their periodic crusades against Islam. 

One month after Mehmed became Sultan, The Pope, the King of Hungary (who broke an agreed truce), the Venetian Republic, and the Byzantine empire joined forces, crossed the Danube, and laid siege to Varna.   Murad was called back to lead the Ottoman defense.  After defeating the Crusaders at Varna, he went back to retirement.

Mehmed's advisors urged him to capture Constantinople, the city on the Bosphorus which was then part of the Christian Byzantine empire. Mehmed was willing, but his Grand Vizier thought the plan would be disastrous, organized a revolt of the Sultan's crack Janissary troops,  and insisted that Murad return to the throne. 

When Murad did return, Mehmed was sent to Manisa with his  tutors.  Now about 18, he fathered a child with a slave girl.  Angered, his father ordered an immediate marriage for Mehmed with Sitt Hatun, the daughter of a rich Turkoman prince.

In 1451, Murad died and Mehmed, now 19, regained the throne.  Determined to capture Constantinople, he regained his authority over the Janissaries and ordered them to prepare for battle.

In 1452, he built the fortress of Bogazkesen on the Bosphorus and assembled an armada off Gallipoli.  Craftsmen were set to work making  helmets, shields, breastplates, swords, arrows, ballistas and battering rams.  Mehmed hired a Hungarian engineer, Urban, to make cannon larger than any seen before. 

On the diplomatic front, he offered peace terms to Venice and Hungary so favorable that their neutrality in any war with Constantinople would be guaranteed.

The siege of Constantinople began in early April, 1452.  At the end of May, Mehmed himself led the attack as the monster cannon breached the walls of the city.  Although he had agreed his troops could sack Constantinople for three days, he rescinded the order on the first evening. 

He marched in procession to the Church of St. Sophia, announcing that it was now a mosque and made endowments for its upkeep.  The city became popularly known as Istanbul and Mehmed was determined to make it a capital worthy of a great empire.  

He encouraged religious diversity. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate was restored and Mehmed also established a Jewish Grand Rabbi and an Armenian Patriarch.  Christians were all guaranteed protection and property rights,  as were Jews (who would later become very influential; one of them, [finance adviser was] Nasi*,  acting as virtual Finance Minister). 

Mehmed also persuaded the Greeks and Genoese, who had fled from the trading quarter, Galata, to return to their houses and promised them safety.

It was the ethnic and religious diversity of Constantinople that made it a great trading center.  To increase the city's population, Mehmed forced Anatolian and Balkan Muslims and Christians to move to the city.  He founded Muslim institutions as well as charitable and commercial organizations.  He revised criminal law and the constitution, producing two codes which established the  basis for all subsequent legislation in the Ottoman empire.  He built colleges and encouraged the development of the Islamic sciences of mathematics and astronomy.

Mehmed delighted in debating religion with learned Muslim teachers.  He asked the Patriarch to write a discourse on the Christian faith, which was translated into Turkish.  He gathered around him Greek scholars and Italian humanists.  He collected works in Greek and Latin and wrote poetry.  He invited Venetian artist, [employed] Gentile Bellini* to paint his portrait and to decorate the walls of his palace.

Once settled amid splendor, Mehmed decided to extend his empire. He began to see himself as the natural heir to the Caesars of Rome,  and  the defender of Islam.  He described himself as the lord of two lands and two seas: Anatolia and the Balkans, the Aegean and the Black Sea.  He campaigned in the Balkans and Hungary, Moldavia and Anatolia and the island of Rhodes. 

So successful was Ottoman trade that the Italian cities became seriously worried.  Mehmed and Venice fought a continuous battle from 1463-1479.   By defeating the leader of the Turkmen, Uzun Hasan, at the Battle of Bashkent  in 1473, Mehmed consolidated his domination over Anatolia and the Balkans.  In 1480, he fought in the Crimea and at Otranto in southern Italy, but died the next year.

Extra Connections: Corresponded with [corresponded with] Cosimo de’Medici The Elder*

Administration and culture

Main article: Millet (Ottoman Empire)

Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror with patriarch Gennadius II depicted on an 18th-century mosaic

Mehmed II introduced the word Politics into Arabic "Siyasah" from a book he published and claimed to be the collection of Politics doctrines of the Byzantine Caesars before him. He gathered Italian artists, humanists and Greek scholars at his court, allowed the Byzantine Church to continue functioning, ordered the patriarch Gennadius to translate Christian doctrine into Turkish, and called Gentile Bellini from Venice to paint his portrait[84] as well as Venetian frescoes that are vanished today.[85]

He collected in his palace a library which included works in Greek, Persian and Latin. Mehmed invited Muslim scientists and astronomers such as Ali Qushji and artists to his court in Constantinople, started a university, built mosques (for example, the Fatih Mosque), waterways, and Istanbul's Topkapı Palace and the Tiled Kiosk. Around the grand mosque that he constructed, he erected eight madrasas, which, for nearly a century, kept their rank as the highest teaching institutions of the Islamic sciences in the empire.

Mehmed II allowed his subjects a considerable degree of religious freedom, provided they were obedient to his rule...

Patronage of Renaissance artists

Portrait of Mehmed, by Nakkaş Sinan Bey (Topkapı Palace albums)

Aside from his efforts to expand Ottoman dominion throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, Mehmed II also cultivated a large collection of Western art and literature, many of which were produced by Renaissance artists. From a young age, Mehmed had shown interest in Renaissance art and Classical literature and histories, with his school books having caricaturistic illustrations of ancient coins and portraiture sketched in distinctly European styles.

Furthermore, he reportedly had two tutors, one trained in Greek and another in Latin, who read him Classical histories including those of Laertius, Livy, and Herodotus in the days leading up to the fall of Constantinople.[97]

From early on in his reign, Mehmed invested in the patronage of Italian Renaissance artists. His first documented request in 1461 was a commission from artist Matteo de' Pasti, who resided in the court of the lord of Rimini, Sigismondo Malatesta. This first attempt was unsuccessful, though, as Pasti was arrested in Crete by Venetian authorities accusing him of being an Ottoman spy. Later attempts would prove more fruitful, with some notable artists including Costanzo da Ferrara and Gentile Bellini both being invited to the Ottoman court.[97]

Aside from his patronage of Renaissance artists, Mehmed was also an avid scholar of contemporary and Classical literature and history. This interest culminated in Mehmed's work on building a massive multilingual library that contained over 8000 manuscripts in Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Latin, and Greek, among other languages.[98] Of note in this large collection was Mehmed's Greek scriptorium, which included copies of Arrians' Anabasis of Alexander the Great and Homer's Iliad.[97] His interest in Classical works extended in many directions, including the patronage of the Greek writer Kritiboulos of Imbros, who produced the Greek manuscript History of Mehmed the Conqueror, alongside his efforts to salvage and rebind Greek manuscripts acquired after his conquest of Constantinople.[99]...

Assessment: Founded an Ottoman empire, from the Danube to the Euphrates, that lasted 400 years.

Oneliner: Mehmet II, Sultan of Turkey

Bibliography:

 Wikipedia

Pantheon rank 236

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