Mehmed II, byname Mehmed Fatih (Turkish: Mehmed the Conqueror) (born March 30, 1432, Adrianople, Thrace,

Ottoman Empiredied May 3, 1481, Hunkrayr, near Maltepe, near Constantinople), Ottoman sultan from 1444 to 1446 and
from 1451 to 1481. A great military leader, he captured Constantinople and conquered the territories in Anatolia and the Balkans
that comprised the Ottoman Empiresheartland for the next four centuries.
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Early years and first reign
Mehmed was the fourth son of Murad II by a slave girl; at the age of 12 he was sent, as tradition required, to Manisa (Magnesia)
with his two tutors. The same year, his father set him on the throne at Edirne and abdicated. During his first reign (August 1444
May 1446), Mehmed had to face grave external and internal crises. The King of Hungary, the Pope, the Byzantine Empire, and
Veniceall eager to take advantage of the accession of a child to the Ottoman thronesucceeded in organizing a crusade.
Edirne was the scene of violent rivalry between the powerful grand vizier andarl Halil, on the one hand, and the
viziers Zaganos and ihbeddin, on the other, who claimed that they were protecting the rights of the child sultan. In September
1444 the army of the crusaders crossed the Danube. In Edirne this news triggered a massacre of the Christian-influenced Hurf
sect and conjured up an atmosphere of panic and arson. When the crusaders laid siege to Varna, the reigning sultans father was
urged to come back from retirement in Bursa and lead the army. The Ottoman victory at Varna under Murad II (November 10,
1444) put an end to the crises. Mehmed II, who had stayed in Edirne, maintained the throne, and after the battle his father retired
to Manisa. Zaganos and ihbeddin then began to incite the child sultan to undertake the capture of Constantinople, but andarl
engineered a revolt of the Janissaries and called Murad II back to Edirne to resume the throne (May 1446). Mehmed was sent
once more to Manisa with Zaganos and ihbeddin, newly appointed as his tutors. There Mehmed continued to consider himself
the legal sultan.
Second accession in 1451
On his fathers death, Mehmed ascended the throne for the second time in Edirne (February 18, 1451). His mind was filled with
the idea of the capture of Constantinople. Europe and Byzantium, remembering his former reign, were then not concerned much
about his plans. Neither was his authority firmly established within the empire. But he was not long in showing his stature by
severely punishing the Janissaries who had dared to threaten him over the delay of the customary gift of accession. Yet he
reinforced this military organization, which was destined to be the instrument of his future conquests. He devoted the utmost care
to all the necessary diplomatic and military preparations for the capture of Constantinople. To keep Venice and Hungary neutral,
he signed peace treaties favourable to them. He spent the year 1452 mainly in building the fortress of Boazkesen (later Rumeli
Hisar) for the control of the Bosporus, in building a fleet of 31 galleys, and in casting new cannon of large calibre. He made the
Hungarian master gunsmith, Urban, cast guns of a size unknown as yet even in Europe. Meanwhile, the grand vizier andarl
argued against the enterprise and during the siege of Constantinople (April 6May 29, 1453), the opposing views were voiced in
two war councils convened at critical moments. Zaganos vehemently rejected the proposal to raise the siege. He was given the
task of preparing the last great assault. The commander in chief, Mehmed II himself, on the day of the attack personally directed
the operations against the breach opened in the city wall by his cannon. The day after the capture of the city, andarl was
arrested and soon afterwards was executed in Edirne. He was replaced by Zaganos, who had become Mehmeds father-in-law.
Mehmed had had to consent to a three-day sack of the city, but, before the evening of the first day after its capture, he
countermanded his order. Entering the city at the head of a procession, he went straight to Hagia Sophia and converted it into a
mosque. Afterward he established charitable foundations and provided 14,000 gold ducats per annum for the upkeep and service
of the mosque.
One of the tasks on which Mehmed II set his heart was the restoration of the city, now popularly called Istanbul, as a worthy
capital of a worldwide empire. To encourage the return of the Greeks and the Genoese of Galata (the trading quarter of the city),
who had fled, he returned their houses and provided them with guarantees of safety. In order to repopulate the city, he deported
Muslim and Christian groups in Anatolia and the Balkans and forced them to settle in Constantinople. He restored the Greek
Orthodox Patriarchate (January 6, 1454) and established a Jewish grand rabbi and an Armenian patriarch in the city. In addition,
he founded, and encouraged his viziers to found, a number of Muslim institutions and commercial installations in the main
districts of Constantinople. From these nuclei, the metropolis developed rapidly. According to a survey carried out in 1478, there
were then in Constantinople and neighbouring Galata 16,324 households and 3,927 shops. Fifty years later, Constantinople had
become the largest city in Europe.
Mehmeds empire
The capture of Constantinople bestowed on Mehmed incomparable glory and prestige and immense authority in his own country,
so that he began to look upon himself as the heir of the Roman Caesars and the champion of Islm in holy war. It is not true that
he had preconceived plans for his conquests, but it is certain that he was intent upon resurrecting the Eastern Roman Empire and
upon extending it to its widest historic limits. His victory over the Turkmen leader Uzun asan at theBattle of Bashkent in
Erzincan (August 11, 1473) marked in Mehmeds life a turning point as important as the capture of Constantinople, and it sealed
his domination over Anatolia and the Balkans.
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Mehmed had assumed the title of Kayser-i Rum (Roman Caesar) and, at the same time, described himself as the lord of the two
lands and the two seas (i.e., Anatolia and the Balkans, the Aegean and the Black seas), a designation that reflected his idea of the
empire. During the quarter-century after the fall of Constantinople, he undertook a series of campaigns or expeditions in the
Balkans, Hungary, Walachia, Moldavia, Anatolia, the island of Rhodes, and even as far as the Crimean Peninsula and Otranto in
southern Italy. This last enterprise (1480) indicated that he intended to invade Italy in a new attempt at founding a world empire.
The following spring, having just begun a new campaign in Anatolia, he died 15.5 miles (25 km) from Constantinople. Gout,
from which he had suffered for some time, in his last days had tortured him grievously, but, there are indications that he was
poisoned.
During the autocrats last years, his relations with his eldest son Bayezid became very strained, as Bayezid did not always obey
his orders. Mehmeds financial measures resulted, toward the end of his reign, in widespread discontent throughout the country,
especially when he distributed as military fiefs about 20,000 villages and farms that had previously belonged to pious foundations
or the landed gentry. Thus, at his death, the malcontents placed Bayezid on the throne, discarding the Sultans favourite son, Cem
(Jem), and initiated a reaction against Mehmeds policies.
Achievements
The conqueror reorganized the Ottoman government and, for the first time, codified the criminal law and the laws relating to his
subjects in one code, whereas the constitution was elaborated in another, the two codes forming the nucleus of all subsequent
legislation. In the utterly autocratic personality of the conqueror, the classical image of an Ottoman padishah (emperor) was born.
He punished with the utmost severity those who resisted his decrees and laws, and even his Ottoman contemporaries considered
him excessively hard.
Nevertheless, Mehmed may be considered the most broadminded and freethinking of the Ottoman sultans. After the fall of
Constantinople, he gathered Italian Humanists and Greek scholars at his court; he caused the patriarch Gennadius II Scholarios to
write a credo of the Christian faith and had it translated into Turkish; he collected in his palace a library of works in Greek and
Latin. He calledGentile Bellini from Venice to decorate the walls of his palace with frescoes as well as to paint his portrait (now
in the National Gallery, London). Around the grand mosque that he constructed, he erected eight colleges, which, for nearly a
century, kept their rank as the highest teaching institutions of the Islmic sciences in the empire. At times, he assembled
the ulam, or learned Muslim teachers, and caused them to discuss theological problems in his presence. In his reign,
mathematics, astronomy, and Muslim theology reached their highest level among the Ottomans. And Mehmed himself left a
divan (a collection of poems in the traditional style of classical Ottoman literature).