Fatih Sultan Mehmet [II.Mehmed]

II.Mehmed [Fatih Sultan Mehmed]

II.Mehmed or Fatih Sultan Mehmed or Fatih or Grand Turko [Büyük Türk] was the 7th sultan of the Ottoman Empire. In historical sources, his name is mentioned in the form of Muhammad, like the other sultans named Mehmed.

He 1st ruled for a short period between 1444-1446, then for 30 years from 1451 until his death in 1481.

II.Mehmed ended the 1480 year old Roman Empire by conquering Istanbul at the age of 21 and this event was accepted by many historians as the end of middle ages as the beginning of the New Age. After the conquest, “Ebû’ l-Feth”, which means the Father of the conquest, was remembered with the titles ابو الفتح in Ottoman Turkish and in later periods “The Ruler of the Age” and “Kayser-i Rûm”. [Roman Emperor, Ottoman Turkish: قیصر روم]

Fatih, the prophet of Islam, muhammad said, “Constantinople will surely be conquered. What a goof commander to conquer it, what a beatiful army it is.” Nail the tradition today because it is a large part of Turkey and the Islamic World “Heroes” as it accepted.

Fatih Sultan Mehmed was known as Sultanü’l-Berreyn and hakanü’l-Bahrain. [Ruler of two lands and two seas]

Princehood of II.Mehmed

On Sunday, 27 Rajab 835 [30 March 1432], at dawn, in Edirne, the capital of the state,  He was born as the fourth  son ​​of II.Murad. According to his mother Hüma Hatun, historian Babinger and author Lord Kinross, he is a non-Muslim slave. According to Babinger, after his death, the bird of paradise in Iranian legends was named Huma Hatun after his death.

 After staying in Edirne until the age of 2, Mehmed was sent to Amasya, where his 14-year-old elder brother, Ahmed, was Greek sancakbeyi, together with his nursery and younger brother Alaeddin Ali in 1434.

After his brother Ahmed died at an early age, Mehmed became a Greek sancakbeyi at the age of 6 [suspect according to İnalcık].

His other brother, Alâeddin Ali, became the sancakbeyi of Saruhan in Manisa. After 2 years, their father II. With the instructions of Murad, the two brothers changed places and Mehmed Saruhan became the sancakbeyi.

His father assigned various teachers for the education of Mehmed. However, it was not easy to educate Mehmed, who is a smart and combative child.

Finally, his father appointed Molla Gürani, an imposing and authoritative scholar. According to the story, Murad gave Gürani a stick and told him to use it if Mehmed disobeyed.

Molla Gürani had Mehmed examined a literary sentence about the beating of a student who did not take his lesson into consideration, and Mehmed started to give importance to his education by grasping the seriousness of the situation.

In addition to the madrasah-origin teachers of Şehzade Mehmed, there were also Western figures from whom he learned. At the Saruhan [Manisa] palace, the Italian humanist Ciriaco of Ancon and other Italians at the palace initiated him to read books on European history and the lives of ancient Greek philosophers.

This situation gave Şehzade Mehmed a multiculturalism. In the Topkapı Palace archive, II.

There are Latin letters, Arabic letters, human drawings resembling Roman busts and Ottoman figures in the scrapbook belonging to the years of Mehmed’s prince.

In addition, Fatih Sultan Mehmet’s knowledge of Latin, Greek and Italian as well as Arabic and Persian is based on his relations in this period.

II.Mehmed’s 1st time being a Sultan

II. When Murad returned to Edirne in October after defeating Karaman bey Ibrahim in Anatolia in the summer of 1443, he received the news that a Christian army under the leadership of János Hunyadi, Hungarian King Ladislas and Serbian Despot George Branković began to invade the Ottoman lands south of the Danube.

In the same period, news came from Amasya that Prince Ali had died. As a result of the early deaths of his two brothers, Mehmed became the heir to the throne. Murad had Mehmed brought from Manisa to Edirne during the negotiations that started after the Christian army was stopped in İzladi on December 25.

One month after signing a treaty with the Hungarians in Edirne on June 12, 1444, he left his son Mehmed as the “district governor” under the control of Grand Vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha in Edirne, and went to Anatolia to march on the Karaman people who occupied the Hamidian lands. made a deal. After leaving Yenişehir, in August Mihaliç announced to the janissary agha Hızır Ağa and other gentlemen that he had officially withdrawn from the throne in favor of his son, and while his army returned to Edirne, he remained in Bursa.

II. Murad’s abdication in the summer of 1444, thinking that he had achieved peace in the east and west, created an authority vacuum in Edirne and dragged the state into depression.

A rivalry arose between Grand Vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha, who preferred to be cautious in foreign policy, and Şahabeddin, Zaganos and Turahan pashas who gathered around Mehmed. This competition has been one of the determining factors of the main political developments in the Ottoman Empire between 1444-1453.

At the beginning of August, King Ladislas declared that he would embark on a new Crusade by disregarding the peace made with the Ottomans, causing panic in the capital Edirne and the people started to leave the city.

Orhan Çelebi, who was under the protection of the Greeks in Constantinople and claimed the Ottoman throne, also attempted a rebellion by moving to Inceğiz and Dobruja near Çatalca. This attempt was prevented by Şahabeddin Pasha and Orhan Çelebi fled to Constantinople. At the same time, he had gathered a lot of supporters from an Iranian people in the capital who introduced himself as ambassador of Hurufi supporters.

Mehmed was also interested in the teaching of the Iranian and took him under his protection. However, upon the reaction of Mufti Fahreddin and Grand Vizier Halil Pasha to this situation, Mehmed had to withdraw his support soon and finally a Hurufi massacre took place in the capital.

When a fatwa was issued by Fahreddin-i Acemi stating that the Hurufis should be taken on the grounds that they were “infidels”, the Hurufis were burned alive and killed. Meanwhile, in the fire that broke out in the city, 7,000 houses were destroyed, along with the bedesten.

At the end of September, while the Christian army led by King Ladislas crossed the Danube and marched towards Edirne, a Venetian fleet closed the Dardanelles Strait.

With the call of Grand Vizier Halil Pasha, II. Murad went to Rumelia from the point where the Anatolian Fortress was located, and came to Edirne and defeated the Christian army in Varna on 10 November 1444.

Although Mehmed did not abdicate during and after the War of Varna, the sultan was de facto Sultan II. It was Murad. Zağanos and Şahabeddin pashas wanted to take Mehmed to the War of Varna in order to strengthen the authority of the young sultan, but Grand Vizier Halil Pasha prevented this and II. He treated Murad as a real sultan.

However, II. After the war, Murad withdrew to Manisa without making the actual situation a real conundrum in order not to weaken his son’s position against Orhan Çelebi in  Constantinople.

Painting by Jan Matejko depicting the War of Varna in 1444. In May 1446, Murad returned to the throne of Edirne once again with the call of Grand Vizier Halil Pasha. The reason for this was that Mehmed was planning to attack Constantinople. While Halil Pasha opposed this attack with the thought that it would weaken his own power, Zağanos and Şahabeddin, who were followers of Mehmed, supported this plan.

Eventually, Halil Pasha organized a janissary revolt and removed Mehmed and his followers from power. Upon Murad’s reinstatement, Mehmed withdrew to Manisa, and Zağanos Pasha was exiled to Balıkesir.

Manisa Period

There is not much information about what Mehmed did in his early years in Manisa. He did not participate in his father’s expedition to Mora in 1446. In late 1447 or early 1448, he had a son named Bayezid, who would become a sultan in the future, from Gulbahar Hatun, a Christian slave of Albanian origin. Made with the Hungarians in 1448 II. He took part in a war for the first time in the Kosovo War, accompanied by his father under the leadership of Anatolian troops.

When he was 17, he was married to Sitti Hatun, the daughter of Süleyman Bey from the Dulkadir dynasty, by his father, who did not approve of his association with Gülbahar Hatun. While Mehmed was in Manisa, he acted quite independently. With his consent, Turkish pirates were attacking Venetians in the Aegean.

He had printed coins in his name in Selcuk in 852 [1448/1449] with the Hijri calendar. His mother died in August or September 1449. In 1450, he participated in his father’s Albanian campaign against Skanderbeg and the unsuccessful siege of Akçahisar.

In the will of his father, who wanted to be buried next to his deceased son Ali, he said, “Whoever dies from my family and my family with my family after me, they will not bring coma next to me, they will not bring them to my floor”, although it can be inferred that the relationship between the two was broken, Mehmed’s marriage in 1450 It shows that the relations between Manisa and Istanbul have improved.

II.Mehmed’s 2nd time being a Sultan

II. Murad died on February 3, 1451. Mehmed received the news of his father’s death in a letter sent by Grand Vizier Halil Pasha to Manisa with a private messenger. According to the narration, “Whoever loves me should come after me!” he had jumped on his horse and set off for the north.

Mehmed ascended the throne for the second time in Edirne on February 19, 1451.He kept Çandarlı Halil Pasha as grand vizier, appointed İshak Pasha as the Governor of Anatolia and sent him to Bursa to accompany his father’s funeral.

Later, he drowned his father’s eight-month-old son, Small Ahmed, who was from Isfendiyaroğulları bey’s daughter. In this way, the law of sibling murder was put into practice. The funeral of Ahmet Çelebi was sent to Bursa along with that of his father Murad.

Although Mehmed left Çandarlı Halil Pasha in his post, the real power was in the hands of the warrior section led by his tulips Şahabeddin Pasha and Zağanos Pasha. Mehmed’s aim was to establish the centralist empire that his great-grandfather Yıldırım Bayezid was trying to create by taking the Balkan lands south of the Danube and the Anatolian lands to the west of the Euphrates. However, unlike Bayezid, he thought he had to take Constantinople first to do this.

On the other hand, both in the West and in Eastern Rome, the new sultan was not perceived as a significant threat at first due to his young age and inexperience.

This view was reinforced by Mehmed’s renewal of the treaties made by his father with Venice, the Genoese Republic, Hungary and the Serbian Despotate in 1451.

Mehmed had informed Eastern Rome that he would continue the friendly relations during his father’s period and that Süleyman Çelebi allocated 300 thousand coins annually for his son Orhan in Constantinople.

It was not just Christians who thought that Mehmed was an inadequate ruler. After the throne, the people of Karaman rose up to revive the local principalities and captured Seydişehir and Akşehir.

Thereupon, in the of 1451, Mehmed went to Anatolia and quashed this rebellion in a short time. Meanwhile, the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine, who took advantage of Mehmed’s presence in Anatolia, threatened that Süleyman Çelebi’s grandson Prince Orhan’s allowance was not made, and if the allowance was not doubled, he would allow Orhan to claim the Ottoman throne.

Mehmed sent the envoys saying that he would solve the problem, but after returning to Edirne, he confiscated the revenues reserved for Orhan and ordered the blockade of Constantinople.

Constantinople / conquest of Istanbul

Mehmed started his siege preparations in late 1451. He gave the order to build the Rumeli Fortress, which was called Boğazkesen at that time, opposite the Anatolian Fortress built by his great-grandfather Bayezid on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus. Emperor Konstantinos sent ambassadors to inform Mehmed that he needed his permission for the construction of the fort, but Mehmed did not accept the ambassadors.

The emperor last sent his envoys for peace talks in June 1452, but Mehmed again refused the envoys. This means fought. The fortress was completed in August 1452. Thus, the control of the Bosphorus passed into the hands of the Ottomans. Ships that would pass through the strait had to pay a pass from now on.

Otherwise, the ships would be sunk by artillery fire. In late 1452, a Venetian ship that refused to pay was sunk, and its captain and crew were arrested. The balls in question were made by a ball founder named Erdelli Urban. Mehmed asked him if he could make a cannon strong enough to destroy the walls of Constantinople, and Urban said, “Neither Constantinople nor Babylon can build a cannon that can resist.”

On the other hand, in the face of these developments, Emperor Konstantinos desperately asked the Pope and the Italian cities for help, but they were fruitless. Only Genoa decided to send aid in November 1452, and Genoese galleys carrying 700 soldiers under the command of Giovanni Giustiniani arrived in Constantinople on 26 January 1453. Emperor Konstantinos made Giovanni Giustiniani the chief of land forces.

The number of soldiers in Constantinople was around 8 thousand, there were 26 warships in the port. 7 ships from Crete and Venice, which previously carried 700 Italians, fled the city in February. The number of soldiers in the Ottoman army was at least 50 thousand. In addition, Mehmed had prepared a fleet thinking that it would not be enough to only encircle the land. This navy reached the Marmara entrance of the strait in the spring months.The Ottoman army departed from Edirne on 23 March and arrived in Constantinople on 2 April. On the same day, the entrance to the Golden Horn was closed with a chain. Mehmed, who established his headquarters in Maltepe opposite the Romanus gate, made a last call for surrender, but the emperor refused.

6 Nisan sabahı ilk saldırı başladı. Kuşatma, aralıklı çatışmalarla 53 gün sürdü. İmparator Konstantinos, Giustinani ile birlikte Romanus kapısını savunuyordu. Şehzade Orhan da Marmara kıyısındaki kıtalardan birini yönetiyordu. 20 Nisan günü Papa’nın gönderdiği 3 Ceneviz gemisi ve Sicilya’dan gelen bir Rum yük gemisi şehrin açıklarında belirdi. Marmara denizinde yapılan savaşın sonunda akşam saatlerinde 4 gemi Haliç’e girmeyi başardı. Donanmasını bir şekilde Haliç’e indirmesi gerektiğini anlayan Mehmed gemilerini karadan geçirmeye karar verdi. Bugünkü Dolmabahçe’den Kasımpaşa’ya uzanan güzergaha kalaslar döşendi ve 70 kadar gemi silindirler üstünde 22 Nisan sabahında Haliç’e indirildi. Böylece Haliç’in kontrolü Osmanlıların eline geçti. Öte yandan kuşatmanın 7. haftasında Osmanlılar hâlâ kesin bir sonuç alamamıştı. Bu noktada Halil Paşa son bir kez Mehmed’i teslim çağrısı yapmaya ikna etti ancak imparator teklifi yine reddetti. Bunun üzerine Mehmed 24 Mayıs’ta ayın 29’unda karadan ve denizden büyük bir saldırı yapacağını duyurdu.Zağanos Pasha prepared the preparations for the last attack.The Ottoman army started the offensive in the first hours of May 29th. The Ottomans carried out the last attack in three waves. For the first two hours, the irregulars attacked the walls, then Anatolian troops took their place. Finally, the janissaries stepped in to strike the fatal blow. Meanwhile, the wounded Giustiniani leaving the battlefield caused great morale among the defenders of the city.Finally, in the morning, the Ottoman soldiers managed to enter through the door called Kerkoporta and erected the Ottoman banner on the sign above the door.

Mehmed entered the city on the afternoon of the first day of the conquest. He went to Hagia Sophia and prayed and min-bad (from now on) my throne is Istanbul he said.

Thoughts of Lord Kinross, author of The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire and Atatürk, on the Conquest of Istanbul:

“The fall of Istanbul only determines the end of the Byzantine Empire and the death of the last influential emperor. Because the emptiness left by Byzantium with the Ottoman raids that have been going on for 150 years was already gradually filled. In those days, Byzantium was no different from a Christian island in the Islamic ocean. “

The city was taken by force, so it could be plundered according to religious law. The looting lasted 3 days. The fate of the Emperor Constantine is unknown. While some sources say the body was not found, some historians such as Babinger write that the emperor’s body was identified from purple shoes. Alphonse Lamartine states that in his work, the body of the emperor was found and that the Conqueror held a Christian funeral for Constantine. Prince Orhan, on the other hand, was captured and executed while trying to leave the city disguised as a monk. He ensured the return of Greeks and Genoese who had fled Galata, the commercial center of the Fatih city. He allowed the reopening of the Greek Patriarchate; He also established an Armenian Patriarchate with a Jewish rabbi. II. Mehmed aimed to make Istanbul a capital city where people from different religions live together, and a center of trade and culture. After conquering Istanbul, Fatih Sultan Mehmet took the title of Kayser-i Rûm, in other words the Roman Emperor. He used the title of “Byzantine Emperor” in Greek on the new coins. This title was accepted by the Western world, which is one of the rare examples of Renaissance art in 1481 and  The title of “Byzantine Emperor” is placed on the Medici Medallion, which was presented to II. Mehmet. II. Mehmet saw himself as the Roman Emperor and considered his state heir to the Roman Empire. In line with this ideal, his second target after Istanbul was the city of Rome.

Establishing the new capital

Immediately after the conquest, Mehmed started the restoration of the city. His aim was not to destroy Eastern Rome, but to revive it within the Ottoman structure. The empire he was going to establish would have a cosmopolitan structure like Eastern Rome, although it would be an Islamic state. Fatih allowed the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, the Armenian Patriarchate and the Jewish chief rabbi. On January 6, 1454, Yorgo appointed Skolaris as the new Orthodox patriarch. Since Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque, Havariyun Church was given to the Patriarchate as the official seat. He appointed Moshe Kapsali as the chief rabbi of the Jews in the city. In 1461, Bursa Bishop Hovakim was appointed as the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul. Mehmed initiated the construction of his first palace at the site of the Theodosius Forum. In the following years, he built the Topkapı Palace in Sarayburnu.

The execution of Çandarlı Halil Pasha

Fatih executed Çandarlı Halil Pasha in Edirne on 10 July 1453, due to his attitudes when he first took the throne and during the conquest of Istanbul. According to some sources, Çandarlı found Fatih impatient and inexperienced. With this incident, Fatih strengthened his authority and everyone submitted to the young right.

Çandarlı Halil Pasha was imprisoned for 40 days at the Golden Gate in Yedikule during the process leading to his execution after the conquest. On July 10, he was taken to his eyes and was later executed. It is claimed that he stared at Hakan where he would bow down. Later, he was taken to Iznik by his son İbrahim Pasha and buried in his tomb. Çandarlı Halil Pasha is the first Ottoman grand vizier to be executed.

New conquests

After the conquest of Istanbul, Serbs, who declared their loyalty to the Ottomans and returned some of the castles they captured, started to show their hostility again by cooperating with the Hungarians. Thereupon, between 1454-1457, trips were organized to Serbia three consecutive times. All Serbian lands except Belgrade were captured.

Benefiting from the throne struggle that started with the death of Serbian King Bronkovic, the Ottomans taxed the Serbs. As the throne fights flared up again, the Conqueror, who was on the Mora expedition, ordered the Serbian issue to be ended. Mahmud Pasha captured their capital Semendire in 1459 and formed the Sancakbeyligi of Semendire. Thus, 350 years of Ottoman rule in Serbia began.

After the conquest of Istanbul, Byzantine Emperor XI. Konstantinos’ brothers sought the help of the Ottomans in Morea against their rival, the Kantakuzen family. Turahanoğlu Ömer Bey intervened with his raiders and the opponents were eliminated. But this time the struggle between the two brothers started. Knowing the intention of the countries in the region to invade the Mora, Fatih took action in 1458. Conqueror, who captured Korent, connected a part of the Mora to the center and formed a banner here. Athens and other regions accepted Ottoman rule. After Thomas, who had the support of Albanians against his brother Dimitrios, broke the agreement with the Ottomans, a second campaign was organized to the Peloponnese. Thomas had to flee to the Pope. A large number of Turks were settled in the region. Venetians were trying to revolt the people of the region against the Ottomans. However, Venice, who could not succeed in this, was defeated by the Ottoman forces (1465).

Fatih Sultan Mehmet took the Crimean Khanate under the rule of the Ottoman Empire in 1477. He took Sinop in the hands of Candaroğulları.

He took Amasra, one of the important bases of the Genoese. He made a treaty in 1479 and ended the 16-year war with Venice. Venice left the castles in Albania to the Ottomans, and in return got the right to use some of the piers in the Peloponnese. When the Conqueror reached an agreement with Venice, he declared war on the other important city states of Italy. In 1480 he captured the southern port of Otranto in Italy. This incident had a great impact in Europe, as Otranto was a bridgehead on the way to Rome.

The Photograp Of II. Mehmed