1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West

by Roger Crowley

It was the iconic moment at which he assumed the name by which he has always been known in Turkish – Fatih, the Conqueror – and the instant at which the Ottoman Empire came fully into its own. He was twenty-one years old.

Even the Venetians, with their spies and their endless flow of diplomatic information back to the Senate, were largely unaware of the military capabilities available to Mehmet. “Our Senators would not believe that the Turks could bring a fleet against Constantinople,” remarked Marco Barbaro on the tardiness of the Venetian rescue effort. Nor had they understood the power of the guns or the determination and resourcefulness of Mehmet himself.

The sultan regarded himself not only as a Muslim ruler but as the heir to the Roman Empire and set about reconstructing a multicultural capital in which all citizens would have certain rights.

The Spanish Jews themselves were encouraged to migrate to the Ottoman Empire – “the refuge of the world” – where, within the overall experience of Jewish exile, their reception was generally positive.

It was a stark contrast to the religious wars that fragmented Europe during the Reformation. The flow of refugees after the fall would be largely one way: from the Christian lands to the Ottoman Empire. Mehmet himself was more interested in building a world empire than in converting that world to Islam.

The French scholar Pierre Gilles saw some portions of it there in the sixteenth century. “Among the fragments were the leg of Justinian, which exceeded my height, and his nose, which was over nine inches long. I dared not publicly measure the horse’s legs as they lay on the ground but privately measured one of the hoofs and found it to be nine inches in height.” It was a last glimpse of the great emperor – and of the outsize grandeur of Byzantium – before the furnace consumed them.