Mehmed II was twenty-one when he did what no attacker1 had managed in over two centuries: he took Constantinople. The fall of the great Christian capital in 1453 ended the Roman Empire in the East, shook Europe to its core, and turned the Ottoman state into a world power straddling two continents2. He spent the rest of his reign extending it by war.
The young sultan
Mehmed came to the throne for good in 14513, a young ruler determined to seize the prize that had defied his ancestors: Constantinople, the ancient capital of the Byzantine Empire, ringed by the strongest walls in the world. He prepared with cold method, building a fortress to cut the city off3 and commissioning enormous cannon to break its defences.
Rumeli Hisarı on the European shore of the Bosphorus, the fortress Mehmed built in 1452 to cut Constantinople off from the Black Sea, seen across the strait from Otağtepe. CC0 (public domain)
The fall of Constantinople
In the spring of 1453 Mehmed's army and its giant guns pounded the walls of Constantinople for weeks. After a final assault the defences broke and the city fell4, and with it the last remnant of the Roman Empire that had endured since antiquity. Mehmed rode into the city and made it his capital, taking for himself the title of Caesar.
Mehmed II, portrait by Gentile Bellini. Public domain.
At twenty-one he took the city whose walls had held against almost every assault since antiquity.
Conqueror of two continents
Constantinople was only the beginning. Over the next decades Mehmed conquered Serbia3, most of Greece and much of Anatolia, seized the Genoese ports of the Crimea and made the Crimean Khanate his vassal, fighting Venice and Hungary and pushing the empire in every direction. A patron of learning who invited the painter Gentile Bellini to his court5, he was as much a statesman as a warrior.
The measure of the man
Mehmed died in 1481 while setting out on yet another campaign3. He had turned a strong regional state into an empire and given it a capital worthy of the name; to Ottomans ever after he was simply Fatih, the Conqueror.
The Ottoman Empire from 1451 to 1481, Mehmed II's reign, with the lands he added in the Balkans, Anatolia and the Crimea. Map from William R. Shepherd's Historical Atlas, 1911. Public domain
He was the Ottoman sultan (1432 to 1481) known as the Conqueror, famous for capturing Constantinople in 1453 and making the Ottoman Empire a world power.
What is Mehmed II famous for?
For the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, which ended the Byzantine Empire, and for extending Ottoman rule across the Balkans, the Crimea and Anatolia.
How did Mehmed II conquer Constantinople?
He blockaded the city, battered its ancient walls with enormous cannon for weeks, and took it by assault in 1453, ending over a thousand years of Roman and Byzantine rule.
Why is Mehmed II called the Conqueror?
'Fatih', the Conqueror, was the title he earned for taking Constantinople; it is how Ottomans have remembered him ever since.
Did Mehmed II claim to be a Roman emperor?
Yes. After taking Constantinople he adopted the title 'Kayser-i Rum', Caesar of Rome, presenting himself as heir to the Roman and Byzantine emperors.
How old was Mehmed II when he took Constantinople?
He was twenty-one in 1453, having come to the throne two years earlier.
Sources and notes
Numbered notes in the text point to the works below.
Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (trans. Ralph Manheim, ed. William C. Hickman) (Princeton University Press, 1978). ↩
Halil İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973). ↩
