Mehmed the Conqueror Dies: Ottoman Empire Builder Gone

Mehmed II was 21 when he conquered Constantinople on May 29, 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire and over a thousand years of Roman succession. Born on March 30, 1432, in Edirne, the Ottoman capital in Thrace, he had already served briefly as sultan at age 12 when his father Murad II temporarily retired, only to return when the boy proved unable to control the court. He ascended permanently after his father's death in 1451 and immediately began planning the siege. He commissioned the largest cannon ever built at that time from a Hungarian engineer named Orban, who had first offered his services to the Byzantine emperor Constantine XI but was turned away for lack of funds. The Ottoman siege lasted 53 days. Mehmed deployed approximately 80,000 troops and 69 cannons against a garrison of roughly 7,000 defenders. When a chain across the Golden Horn blocked his fleet from entering the inner harbor, he had 70 ships transported overland on greased logs through the hills behind Galata, bypassing the obstruction entirely. The city fell in a final assault on May 29. Constantine XI died fighting on the walls. Mehmed entered the city and immediately began transforming it into the Ottoman capital. He converted Hagia Sophia from a cathedral to a mosque, repopulated the city by importing merchants and artisans from across his empire, and launched an ambitious building program. He spent the remaining 28 years of his reign expanding Ottoman territory across the Balkans, Greece, Crimea, and into Anatolia. He called himself Kayser-i Rum, Caesar of Rome. He was a polyglot who read in six languages and collected Greek and Latin manuscripts. He died on May 3, 1481, at age 49, probably poisoned.