Mehmed Ii

Front 1

The era of Mehmed's birth made him:

Back 1

Dedicated by the era of his birth to become the sickle-wielding reaper for what can fairly be described as the ‘sick man of Europe’ of its day, Mehmed’s ‘prophecy-fulfilling’ greatness could be seen as almost an inevitability from the second he landed on earth. He was the Roman-crushing hero foreseen by the Prophet, but the glory he brought to Islam was as much fortuitous (and allowed for by the propitiousness of circumstance) as shepherded into being by the crook of the hero himself.

Front 2

The Mehmed legacy:

Back 2

His life and subsequent death (not even a Conqueror is immortal) precipitated a cult which took root at the very heart of the Ottoman identity. In the subsequent centuries, to be Ottoman was to be a descendant of Mehmed as much as it was to be a descendant of Osman. Monarchs, their pretenders and everyone in between employed his image, his legacy and his precedent as thread for their personal mustering banners or as means of justification for the autocratic cruelty that many an Ottoman potentate was not above engaging in.

Front 3

His parents and lineage:

Back 3

Born the son of Murad II and Huma Hatun in Edirne, 1432, Mehmed’s potential throne was one which had been restored by the gargantuan efforts of both his father and grandfather, Mehmed I.

Front 4

Reason for the possibility of his taking the throne

Back 4

His brother, Aleaddin, died at a young age. Before his thirteenth birthday, his father abdicated (unprecedented decision). Finkel on why Murad retired: Caroline Finkel speculates that it may have been nothing more than the fact that ‘after an active reign of more than twenty years, he [Murad] was simply tired.’

Front 5

The interregnum, what foreign aggression happened?

Back 5

The Hungarian army crossed the Danube and reached Varna on the Black Seat coast. The crusading army were just a few weeks from Edirne. Panic broke loose in the city, with an ascetic sect under Sheikh Bedreddin inflaming the panic. Buildings were put to flames and the trenches dug to defend Edirne were sabotaged in a frightening display of their institutional extremity.

City saved by Murad's return with army in tow. There was difficulty subduing them, even without the Frankish crusader force that had not yet made Byzantium.Franz Babinger claims that ‘this bold incursion... into the heart of Ottoman territory... made a lasting impression.’

Front 6

Teenaged Mehmed's faux pas

Finkel on the same

Back 6

He debased the currency by up to 10%, which , as Finkel says, ‘had the undesirable effect of causing hardship to salaried state servants’. This insult extended to the empire’s greatest asset - its janissaries. It is an observable truth that the might of the Ottoman empire found its crux in this military force and the only claim to power that a sultan could truthfully make was bound with utter inextricability to their cooperation. Mehmed was unwise to hurt their pay when border defence was becoming such a vital facet of imperial stability - the reason for debasement had been to meet the rising costs of defensive requirements in the first place.

Front 7

The janissary rebellion

Back 7

They mounted it. Demanded Mehmed be removed from power. The boy retired with fury, denoting something deeper in his character than youth. He set about striking coins in his own name at a mint in western Anatolia and broke the terms of an agreement with Venice by launching raids on their ports. His reign was prevented from running away with itself by vizier Candarli Halil, whose mollifying influence was noted by commentators. He was kept from the imperial capital at Edirne

Front 8

Murad's death when - Mehmed's accession

Back 8

Murad died within a few years, in 1451 when Mehmed was but 19. The news of Murad's death was carried quietly; fear was rife of reprisal from the janissaries who knew the boy to be detrimental to their stipends.

Front 9

Mehmed's maintaining of his personal persona.

Back 9

Likely buoyed by his formative experience on the wrong end of public opinion, his airborne pretensions likely formed because he knew that grand gestures were needed to reform his reputation. Mehmed did away with the old public persona of a sultan, no longer could the Sultan be seen in public to celebrate victory, or on the way to prayer with his people. He withdrew from public view - Allah could not be seen, why should he?

Front 10

The base on which this bluster stood:

Back 10

Was strong. He had a perspicacity unmatched, able to discern foreign policy needs with ease: It is true that ‘in the West, Mehmed had acquired the reputation of an incompetent boy who could never be expected to carry on the successful military career traced for him by his father,’ as Babinger states, and this expectation was duly exploited. The West was locked in its internecine conflicts and failed to implement any measures against the newly appointed lamb.

Front 11

Reasons to covet constantinople:

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It served as a bastion for Black Sea basin trade, while symbolically it would be the triumph of the 'true' faith and expunging of Western European authority from a site that had long represented the pinnacle of the infidel. The 1439 Council of Florence and Bull of Union between Orthodox/Catholic union drew the city a scalpel from which crusaders could launch attacks into the heart of Ottoman territory.

Front 12

Seizure of Constantinople.

Back 12

One part a result of European weakness, one part the brilliance of the sultan himself. The gustsy siege and eventual subjugation demonstrated his military verve, and capacity for astute diplomacy previously unmanifest.

He had prepared by renewing treaties with Venice and Serbia as well as arranging a brand new one with the regent in Hungary, John Hunyadi. The pre-emption lulled Europe into believing the empire's dormancy.

Front 13

The state of Europe

Back 13

The French and English were weakened by the Hundred Years' War, Spain was in the final part of the Reconquista, the internecine fighting in the German Principalities continued and Hungary and Poland had been defeated at the Battle of Varna in 1444

Some troops from northern Italy made it to Byzantine, but they were not enough to turn back OTtoman strength.

Front 14

The state of the Byznatines

Back 14

In the words of Babinger, there were but 'remnants' left to the Byzantines. Internecine strife, latent ethnic hatreds - from the Greek massacre of the Latins in 1182 and the Latin massacre of the Greeks in 1204 at the sack of Constantinople. Declining population, etc

Front 15

Transformation of Constantinople

Back 15

The defining moment of his vision. The first Friday Prayer after the conquest was undertaken in Justinian's Imperial church, with Christian trimmings torn down and its interior already undergoing its transformation to functional mosque. Carpets supposedly having once belonged to Mahomet were laid out.

Front 16

Mehmed's refinement

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Much been made of it; demonstrated by his allowing his army three days of sacking the city, but personally unertook measures on the fourth day to protect relics, architecture and manuscripts. He is said to have had a working knowledge of Greek, a library of Greek books. His entourage included Italian humanist Ciriazzo Pizzocoli of Anacolia and the Greek humainst, Critobolous. The latter - his biographer - mentions his interest in Greek artifacts, history and according to Bernand Lewis, conferred upon his master the title 'Philhellene' after witnessing his enthralment at the base of the parthenon.

Front 17

Practical advantages of his refinement:

Back 17

He understood the value of symbols as few monarchs did. The Hagia Sophia was one of six churches he had refashioned in the shape of Islam after the conquest, and to justify the continued existence of so much Byzantine architecture, he had constructed a mythical history of the Byzantine emperors Solomon, Constantine and Justinian who were written as steps on the path to Muhammad. The supposed discovery of Ayyub Ansari's tomb was likely a highly intelligent construction on the part of the sultan and lend his conquest an air of religious impermeability. Here was Mehmed - subduer of the Christian Roman tyranny and prophet-afilliated to boot. Great architectural programmes were untaken, including the building of a tomb fitting the grandeur of the companion of the prophet.

Front 18

The 'New Palace'

The slave system there

Back 18

Mehemd's self concept became clear. Placed him behind three layesr of wall - first two reserved for public ceremony, while the nucleus of imperium was reserved for the Sultan and those closest to him. Each wall was opened on to by a giant iron gate. Palace was founding beachhead of the new social order - a rigid hierarchical system dictating respect owed to the sultan.

In plan the Palace resembled the old royal residence at Edirne, consisting of an Inner – enderûn – and Outer – bîrûn – section. Over the imperial council room was erected a tower called the ‘Mansion of Justice’, to symbolise the idea that the ruler should see all injustices committed against his subjects.

The sultan’s Palace was the real centre of government. Governors, military commanders and all who exercised the royal authority came from the Palace and were the sultan’s slave-servants. Thus the Palace was more than a royal residence. In it the sultan’s slaves received a special education, after which they were appointed to the high offices of state. This system, known as the kul – slave – system, was the foundation stone of the Ottoman state. Writing in 1537, P.Giovio described a kul as ‘one who, blindly and unquestioningly obeys the will and commands of the sultan’.

Front 19

The new hierarchical system.

Back 19

The order in which his entourage should kiss Mehmed's hand at festivals, the titles by which they should be addressed and how long those were allowed to look at the sultan. All standardised so all knew their place. When consulting with his statesmen, the king was to be shrouded, by a curtain. The ultimate hauteur.

Front 20

Repopulating the city

Back 20

Mehmed instituted a policy of constructing a mosque within every district of the city so that the influx of migrants to Constantinople did not swamp its newly Islamic character - the recruiters were hardly scrupulous when it came to searching for possible candidates. Often the buildling would include a tertiary school or bath-house, all allowing for the cult of Mehmed's propagation. At the time of his death, the population of Constantinople was half as large again as it had been when he took the city in 1453.

Front 21

What value did capturing constantinople have?

Back 21

Possession of Constantinople had also a compelling symbolic value – the confirmation of empire and the victory of faith. The city featured in both sacred and secular Muslim legend, and conquest by the Ottomans would fulfil a tradition of the Prophet Muhammad, a version of which they loved to quote: ‘One day Constantinople will certainly be conquered. A good emir and a good army will be able to accomplish this.’1 Constantinople was also the ‘Red Apple’ – an expression the Ottomans used to describe their ultimate aspiration. By striking at the Byzantine imperial city, Sultan Mehmed II aimed to pluck an alien presence from the heart of his realm.

Front 22

The military precursors to the siege were what

Back 22

Once the fortress of Boğazkesen had been completed, Sultan Mehmed returned to Edirne to oversee final preparations for the siege, then marched on Constantinople. His army numbered some 160,000 men according to the Venetian merchant Niccolò Barbaro, who was present at the siege. The Byzantine statesman George Sphrantzes estimated the defenders at fewer than five thousand plus the few thousand Latins who came to the aid of the city. Sultan Mehmed came before the walls on 5 April 1453 and, with the help of his navy, surrounded Constantinople on all sides except along the Golden Horn where a boom had been laid to deny the Ottoman navy entry.

Front 23

The campaign and the breach

Back 23

Unrelenting Ottoman bombardment rent the walls on the landward side; within, Latins and Greeks were at odds over who should man the breaches. Ottoman mining operations were met by the defenders with counter-mines. Skirmishes continued on land and sea until 29 May when what proved to be the final assault on the ruined land-walls began three hours before daybreak. The third wave of the assault succeeded. With his janissaries the Sultan entered a barbican, only to be temporarily driven back before more cannon-fire opened a large breach, through which the victorious Ottoman troops flooded into the city.

Front 24

What acts of daring are included in accounts of the siege?

Back 24

European and Byzantine accounts of the siege alike dwell on the daring measures taken by Sultan Mehmed to achieve his aim: the huge cannon made for him by a renegade Hungarian cannon-founder in Edirne,fn3 the building of a siege-tower higher than the walls of the city, the dragging of his galleys uphill from the Bosporus shore near the present-day palace of Dolmabahçe, and down into the Golden Horn to avoid the boom laid across its mouth, and the construction of a pontoon bridge across the harbour from Galata to Constantinople which enabled the Ottoman forces to attack the walls on that side of the city and surround it completely.

Front 25

And what was the most important element to the Ottomans?

Back 25

For the Ottomans, the part played by the Sultan’s spiritual guide, the mystic Sheikh Akşemseddin, was the most significant contribution to the final outcome. The Ottomans lost many troops in a confrontation in which four grain ships – three Genoese and one Byzantine – managed to run the Ottoman blockade and convey their load into the Golden Horn. Following this reverse, Akşemseddin wrote to the Sultan of the divine signs he had seen prophesying victory, which soothed Mehmed’s despair and raised the morale of the besieging army.

Front 26

First major conquest after Constantinople?

Back 26

During the first decade after the Conquest, Sultan Mehmed focused his attention almost exclusively on the Balkans. His first major campaign after 1453 was against Serbia, the buffer between Ottoman and Hungarian territory and the route by which Hungarian influence could penetrate the Balkans and Hungarian armies threaten his north-western frontier.

Front 27

How long did it take and what set them back in the first year?

Back 27

The conquest of Serbia and its full incorporation into Mehmed’s empire took five years. Although the Ottomans captured and briefly held a couple of Serbian fortresses in the Morava valley in 1454, they failed to take Smederevo, the important stronghold guarding the Danubian route east of Belgrade.

Front 28

Smart moves and another setback the following year

Back 28

The objective of the following year’s campaign was very different: the Ottoman army moved through the south of Serbia to capture the silver-mining district of Novo Brdo, providing themselves with an essential resource in short supply elsewhere in their territory. In 1456 Mehmed commanded the siege of Belgrade, the fortress whose strategic position at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers made it the key to Hungary: that he failed to take it in a combined land and amphibious operation owed more to its impregnable and strongly-fortified site than to the numerous but motley crusader army which came to its relief. It remained in Hungarian hands until 1522.

Front 29

How did it finally enter Ottoman hands? (You know this, but added here for posterity's sake)

Back 29

The leader of the pro-Ottoman faction in Serbia was Michael Angelović, brother of Mehmed’s recently-appointed grand vezir, Mahmud Pasha. These brothers belonged to a minor branch of the Serbian despotate; Mahmud Pasha had probably entered Ottoman service very young following his capture by the Ottomans during the reign of Sultan Mehmed’s father, Murad II, in 1427. It is likely that Michael Angelović, who became joint regent of Serbia following Lazar’s death, invited Ottoman intervention in Serbia to thwart Hungarian designs, for by spring 1458 Mahmud Pasha was on his way to the fortress of Smederevo. In the meantime, however, the pro-Hungarian faction in Smederevo revolted, and Michael was captured by Lazar’s wife Helen (one of his co-regents), imprisoned and sent to Hungary. The defenders of Smederevo refused to surrender and Mahmud Pasha attacked the fortress, capturing the city but not the citadel; he also made a number of other strategic conquests along the Danube. The threat of a Hungarian advance caused Mahmud Pasha to join the Sultan at Skopje in Macedonia whither Mehmed had retired after his Peloponnese campaign earlier in the year, and they checked a Hungarian attack with the help of Mehmed’s exhausted troops.43 In 1459 representatives of the pro-Ottoman faction in Smederovo handed the keys of the citadel to Mehmed who ordered its occupation. Thus Serbia finally became an integral part of the Ottoman domains.

Front 30

Whose provocations caused what invasion?

Back 30

The failure of the Ottoman vassal state of Wallachia to send the annual tribute to Istanbul, and subsequent provocative actions of the voyvode Vlad Drakul, ‘the Impaler’, prompted Mehmed to send Mahmud Pasha across the Danube ahead of him to restore order in 1462. A successful campaign followed and Vlad’s more co-operative brother Radul, who had been held hostage in Istanbul as guarantee of Vlad’s good behaviour, was confirmed as voyvode in his place. Vlad himself fled to Hungary.

Front 31

Which territory was next seized? in 1463

And who converted, what did it mean for the faith?

Back 31

North-west of Serbia and south of the Sava lay Bosnia, an Ottoman vassal state whose king, Stephen Tomašević, had also refused to send tribute to the Sultan. In 1463 Stephen petitioned for and was granted a fifteen-year truce but almost immediately the Ottoman army set off for Bosnia, entering the country from the south. Stephen fled but Mahmud Pasha caught up with him at Ključ, where he surrendered on the promise that he could go unharmed. Like Serbia, Bosnia became an Ottoman province – although it had to be defended against Hungarian attack the following year – and Mahmud Pasha next seized neighbouring Herzegovina.

The bad faith which had allowed the Ottomans to attack Bosnia despite a truce was again evident when Sultan Mehmed ordered Stephen of Bosnia to be executed; but his captured half-brother Sigismund converted to Islam and, as Kraloğlu (‘Son of the King’) İshak Bey, became a companion of the Sultan.47 The son of the lord of Herzegovina also converted to Islam, and as Hersekzade (‘Son of the Prince’) Ahmed Pasha served as grand vezir under both Mehmed’s son and heir Bayezid II (whose daughter he married) and his grandson Selim

Front 32

Some mediterranean exploits against which Italina empire?

Back 32

In 1455 the Ottomans had seized Genoese colonies in the Aegean: Old and New Phokaia (Foça) on the Anatolian coast north of İzmir, which controlled rich alum mines whose product was essential to the European cloth trade for its dyeing processes, and Enos (Enez), at the mouth of the Maritsa in Thrace, which derived its revenues from the salt trade.

Front 33

An Aegean triumph

Back 33

In the same year Athens was captured from its Florentine lord by the marcher-lord Ömer Bey, son of Turahan Pasha. Venetian Naxos and the Genoese islands of Lesbos and Chios agreed to pay tribute to the Sultan in 1458. Following the conquest of Serbia in 1459 Sultan Mehmed returned to Istanbul and then travelled overland to reduce the Genoese colony of Amastris (Amasra) on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia with the aid of a naval force sent from Istanbul. In 1462 Lesbos capitulated to an Ottoman siege while Mehmed was fortifying the Dardanelles to improve the security of Istanbul. He built a pair of fortresses here, at Çanakkale, formerly known as Sultanhisar (‘Royal Castle’), on the Anatolian shore, and at Kilitülbahr (‘Lock of the Sea’) opposite it on the Rumelian shore. With the southern approaches to Istanbul now firmly in Ottoman hands, the city was protected from naval attack.

Front 34

Remnant Byzantine possessions

Back 34

Even after the loss of Constantinople, a few fragments of the Byzantine Empire survived. These anachronistic entities included the Comnene kingdom of Trebizond which became an Ottoman vassal in 1456, and the despotate of the Morea which was ruled jointly by Thomas and Demetrius Palaeologus, who were rarely able to work together in support of a common cause.

Front 35

What action caused the invasion of one of these territories?

Back 35

Long Ottoman vassals, for three years the Despots failed to pay tribute before Sultan Mehmed’s army invaded in 1458. Last-minute payment of this levy failed to divert Mehmed from his purpose, and he marched south. Corinth, on the isthmus, capitulated after a three-month siege, and Ottoman administration was extended to most of the Peloponnese. Despot Thomas tried half-heartedly to recover some of his former possessions but became embroiled in a war with his brother.

Front 36

And all but a few Venetian colonies in the where were brought to their knees?

Back 36

In 1460 Mehmed himself again led an army which by the end of the year had brought all the Peloponnese, with the exception of the few remaining Venetian colonies, under Ottoman control. Contemporary Greek sources report that Demetrius’ daughter Helen entered the female quarters of the Sultan’s inner household, his harem, as had Tamar, daughter of George Sphrantzes, a chronicler of Mehmed’s reign.

Front 37

Which important trading city was argued over?

Back 37

Trebizond, the maritime outlet for the trade of Tabriz, the capital of Uzun Hasan, the leader of the Akkoyunlu tribal confederation (later to be overthrown by the Safavids). Uzan Hasan considered Trebizond to be within his own influence, and warned Mehmed against going after it himself. Mehmed ignored this warning and with Muslim confederates in tow he marched towards the city.

Front 38

What was the first clash between the two powers?

Back 38

Uzun Hasan sent troops to hinder his progress, but little was achieved on either side in this first confrontation between these two ambitious rulers.

Front 39

The great problems which the Ottomans and their march faced in the _______ lands

Back 39

The Comnene lands were cut off from the Anatolian hinterland by high, inhospitable mountains. A janissary who served with the Ottoman army on the Trebizond campaign recalled the difficulties of the march – the distance, the hostility of the local population to the Ottoman advance in a region where the steep, forested terrain favoured the nimble rather than the heavily-armed soldier, hunger, and the incessant rain which turned the route to mud. He related how a camel laden with gold coins fell on the pass down to the city, scattering the treasure everywhere: Sultan Mehmed gave the order for anyone who could to pick up the gold pieces and keep them. But this was insufficient incentive:

Front 40

How and when did the city fall?

Back 40

Trebizond surrendered after a six-week siege by Ottoman land and sea forces. In Islamic law, those who surrender in a military engagement should be allowed to go free; initially, therefore, the Emperor and his family were spared, and held in Edirne – but (except for his daughter Anna who entered Mehmed’s harem)51 were executed two years later.

Front 41

What did this final conquest conclude?

Back 41

With the removal of the Comnene dynasty from Trebizond, Mehmed completed the reunification under Ottoman rule of all but a few pockets of the territory which had been ruled by Byzantium from Constantinople until the time of the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

Front 42

Why did Mehmed now want to face off against the Venetians?

Back 42

Annexation of the Venetian maritime colonies remained an Ottoman objective, for although Venice was unable to pose a direct strategic threat to the Ottomans after their capture of Constantinople, it retained a nuisance value because of its strong navy.

Front 43

What had the OTtoman-Venetian relationship been marked by thus far? And what changed their 'dormant' relationship?

Back 43

The Ottoman–Venetian relationship had always been dogged by mutual suspicion, but full-scale war had usually been avoided. Commercial considerations and the knowledge that the other crusading powers would doubtless leave it isolated made Venice reluctant to provoke the Ottomans, until their conquest of Bosnia in 1463 endangered Venetian possessions on the Adriatic.

Front 44

What happened in the beginning of the war?

Back 44

In the early stages of the war much of the Peloponnese again came under Venetian control.

Though the Venetians failed to recapture the north Aegean island of Lesbos from the Ottomans in the same year, it was seen merely as a setback, and Venice was not inclined to accept the peace overtures of Grand Vezir Mahmud Pasha.

Front 45

What other Christian powers got involved and what impact did they have?

Back 45

In the autumn of 1463 King Matthias of Hungary invaded Bosnia and the next year his troops defeated an army commanded by Mehmed who retired on hearing that the King was again moving south across the river Sava. The Pope and the Duke of Burgundy made a three-year commitment to an anti-Ottoman crusade (albeit this venture was short-lived: by the end of 1464 it, like so many other alliances in crusading history, had crumbled in discord).

Front 46

Which rogue colony was a trimmer and used the war to break free?

Back 46

Alabania, of Scanderbeg. He had re-embraced Christianity with the patronage of the Duke of Naples, but with the death of King Alfonso in 1468 he had to once again recognise Ottoman suzerainty. The Otto-Venetian war gave them opportunity to once again declare themselves independent.

Front 47

How was the region brought under foot?

Back 47

After a couple of years of localized warfare, Mehmed launched a full-scale campaign against Scanderbeg and in the summer of 1466, in only 25 days, the Ottomans built the great fortress of Elbasan where the main route linking the Ottoman Balkans with the Adriatic coast, the former Via Egnatia, reaches the coastal plain. Scanderbeg’s stronghold of Krujé lay isolated to the north, no longer able to make overland contact with Venetian forces on the coast. During the winter Scanderbeg sought material help in Italy, and in the following year attacked the Ottoman besiegers of Krujé. This prompted a second campaign by Mehmed which resulted in all Albania – bar a few Venetian outposts – coming under Ottoman rule. Scanderbeg himself, for so long the leader of Albanian resistance to the Ottomans, fled to Venetian territory where he died in 1468. Although the exercise of Ottoman authority in this inhospitable region was tenuous, Hungary and Venice were no longer able to exploit the volatility of the lesser Albanian lords to their advantage.

Front 48

What is MEhmed incorrectly presumed to have been by many historians?

Back 48

Although Mehmed II is thought of by western historians primarily as the architect of the Ottoman push into Europe, he spent much of his reign defending his eastern frontier.

Front 49

What the Akkoyunlu leader want to do against the Ottomans?

Back 49

Uzun Hasan’s caution to Mehmed over Trebizond in 1460 proved the precursor to a more aggressive policy, for he soon sent an envoy to Venice to propose co-operation in Venice’s war against the Ottomans. The strongest card in his suit was his promise to repeat Tamerlane’s success in breaking up the Ottoman domains: Venice agreed that he should keep whatever territory he could win in Anatolia.

Front 50

The 'opening' of which state gave the impetus to war?

Back 50

By the mid-fifteenth century the long and acrimonious relationship between the Ottoman and Karamanid states had reached an impasse. The death in 1464 of Mehmed’s vassal İbrahim Bey of Karaman left Karaman open to the competing claims of the Ottomans and the Akkoyunlu. Uzun Hasan seized the chance to regain the initiative against the Ottomans by intervening in Karaman on behalf of İbrahim’s eldest son İshak and delivering the state to him. Both Uzun Hasan and İshak accepted Mamluk protection hoping for an ally against Mehmed’s inevitable response, which was not long delayed: with Ottoman support, another of İbrahim’s sons, Pir Ahmed, drove İshak to seek refuge with Uzun Hasan. The death of İshak soon afterwards deprived Uzun Hasan of his pretext for intervention in Karaman and temporarily halted his plans to emulate Tamerlane.

Front 51

What massive lands was Uzun Hasan creating rule over?

Back 51

Soon, however, while the cream of the Ottoman army was engaged on the western fringes of the empire, Uzun Hasan, on the eastern frontier, was adding huge swathes of territory to that he had acquired through his annexation of the lands of the rival Karakoyunlu tribal confederation in 1467. Over the next two years he established his rule over Azerbaijan, Iraq, Fars and Kirman and beyond, into the Timurid homelands further east, which radically altered the balance of power in eastern Anatolia, and made Uzun Hasan a vastly more formidable rival than when he had been merely a tribal chief.

Front 52

Mehmed invaded where?

Back 52

The Karamanid lands, when the vassal there, Pir Ahmed, failed to provide troops for his levy to march into Mamluk Syria. It is not clear what prompted Pir Ahmed to make such a wrong-headed decision, because the forces of Karaman were no match for Mehmed, who succeeded in bringing most Karamanid territory north of the Taurus mountain range under his control. Uzun Hasan was preoccupied with his own imperial designs in the east and could not intervene to help Pir Ahmed.

Front 53

The growing ideological and power of Uzun Hasan

Back 53

From 1469, once he had despatched the Timurid ruler Abu Sa‘id, Uzun Hasan was lord of the most extensive territories in the region and successor to the Karakoyunlu and Timurid states. With domains comprising most of modern Iran and Iraq and much of eastern Anatolia, Uzun Hasan was master of an empire to rival that of Sultan Mehmed and in June of that year he stated his claims to be the sole legitimate Islamic sovereign in a proclamation to Qa’it Bay.

Front 54

Who was this a challenge to, and how did Mehmed perceive his religious role?

Back 54

This was a challenge both to the Mamluks, as guardians of the Holy Places of Islam in Mecca and Medina to which all Muslims were required to make pilgrimage, and to Sultan Mehmed’s aspirations to leadership of the Islamic world.

Even after his conquest of Constantinople Mehmed had been content to leave matters relating to the pilgrimage to the Mamluks, seeing his own duty as temporal, that of extending the Islamic lands.

Front 55

The ideological challenge that Uzun Hasan presented, and who was he comparing himself to?

Back 55

Uzun Hasan’s psychological warfare intensified. He competed with Mehmed at the spiritual as well as the temporal level, referring in a letter to the Sultan of 1471 to his recent conquest Shiraz, in southern Iran, as ‘the throne of the caliphate’.63 This claim did not greatly exercise Mehmed, for the office of caliph had long fallen into abeyance, but Uzun Hasan’s evocation of the spectre of Tamerlane was more alarming. One of Uzun Hasan’s commanders wrote to the Ottoman governor of Sivas drawing a comparison between the Akkoyunlu leader and Tamerlane – he found Uzun Hasan superior on fourteen counts, which included the full range of attributes desirable to support a ruler’s claims to legitimacy in this part of the world. Uzun Hasan made his concerns topical, by criticizing the administrative policies of the Ottomans, such as the collection from Muslim tribesmen of the poll-tax – which was only supposed to be paid by non-Muslims – and the forced sedentarization of the tribes to make them part of the settled peasantry, which was an important aspect of the Ottoman policy of subduing eastern Anatolia.

Front 56

Proper aggression, though indirect, between the two

Back 56

In July 1472 Uzun Hasan again announced his intention to intervene to save what remained of Karaman from the Ottomans, demanding that Mehmed withdraw and also that he hand over Trebizond. Like Tamerlane’s court, Uzun Hasan’s gave refuge to dispossessed Anatolian princes who there planned the reconquest of their former territories under the eye of a powerful patron: at this time Pir Ahmed of Karaman was one such and Uzun Hasan’s nephew, son of the dispossessed ruler of Sinop on the north Anatolian coast, another. By the time Mehmed left Istanbul, he had learned that an army under the command of another of Uzun Hasan’s nephews, Yusuf Mirza, was approaching the former Ottoman capital of Bursa, having made substantial territorial gains in its progress across Anatolia. Superior Ottoman strength forced a retreat, Yusuf Mirza was captured, and Pir Ahmed of Karaman, who was with him, fled.

Front 57

Prominent motions by Uzun Hasan and why did it give cause for fear

Back 57

He marched into the northern mamluk lands and took the pass giving access to the mediterranean As a result of this campaign Uzun Hasan temporarily gained control of the Taurus passes to the Mediterranean where his seaborne Venetian allies were active.67 Uzun Hasan’s aggressive posturing gave Sultan Mehmed good reason to fear the Venetian–Akkoyunlu pact, but his invitation to Venice and Hungary to send envoys to Istanbul to discuss peace may have been a feint to isolate Uzun Hasan from his European allies.

Front 58

Campaigns amongst the two and how did they win?

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Uzun Hasan’s incursion into Mamluk Syria in 1472 led Sultan Mehmed to think the time ripe for a full-scale campaign against the Akkoyunlu leader. On 4 August 1473 the two armies met on the Euphrates east of Erzincan in an inconclusive encounter which caused the Ottomans great loss. A week later, on 11 August, they met again at Başkent, in the mountains to the north; Uzun Hasan fled at the sight of an Ottoman army well-supplied, unlike his own, with cannon and hand-guns, and his forces were routed.68 For a quarter of a century Ottoman familiarity with the weapons of the gunpowder age gave them the advantage over their eastern rivals.

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All the consequences of the Ottoman victory, material, propagandistic, etc

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Uzun Hasan lost little territory by his defeat, as Sultan Mehmed did not follow up his victory. For the Ottomans, the determined resistance of foes who were opposed to the extension of their rule in this direction was compounded by the logistical challenge of conducting military operations in the inhospitable terrain of their eastern frontiers. Aware of the problems of holding their gains here, Ottoman commanders often pulled back to more defensible borders. Uzun Hasan’s defeat at the hands of a ruler who, like him, claimed divine inspiration had the significant effect of undermining his prestige and his claims, and Mehmed’s reputation was correspondingly enhanced. As was customary after a victory, letters announcing his success to the princes of the Islamic world were despatched. Weapons in the propaganda war, these letters appropriated to Mehmed the hyperbolic epithets formerly applied to Uzun Hasan when his power seemed to be in the ascendant. Internal rebellion was a more immediate and practical consequence of Uzun Hasan’s defeat.

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Finally trying to annex the Karaman lands, but failing

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Uzun Hasan’s removal from the scene gave the Ottomans the opportunity to annex the ever-troublesome state of Karaman once and for all and in 1474 the commander Gedik (‘Fortress-builder’)70 Ahmed Pasha was sent with an army to conquer the Karamanid heartland in the Taurus mountains and to take the fortresses captured by the Karamanids with the help of their crusading allies. Ottoman administrative policy sought to reduce tribal chiefs to the status of provincial cavalrymen and to encourage their followers to settle in villages and towns, but the tribal population of Karaman – particularly the Turgudlu and Varsak Turcomans – proved especially reluctant to accept the new order. Hard to pacify, they held out in their mountain fastnesses beyond the turn of the century, evading Ottoman inspectors sent as and when local conditions permitted to assess the taxable resources of the new province.

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The interplay of the navies on the mediterranean prior to Mehmed

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Sultan Mehmed gave the development of his navy a high priority. From earliest times the Ottomans and the other Anatolian emirates had used the seas as a line of defence. The Ottomans had built dockyards when they first gained a coastline on the Sea of Marmara in the mid-fourteenth century; once they had crossed into Thrace, the need to defend themselves against the Venetians in particular gave naval matters a new urgency. A large dockyard at Gelibolu in the 1390s71 was augmented by the dockyards built in the emirates of the Anatolian Aegean coast once these were annexed by the Ottomans. Yet although the Ottoman navy gradually began to enjoy successes against the Venetians and Genoese in coastal waters, and could carry out raiding expeditions over longer distances, it was no match for the warships of these two trading powers in close battle in the open seas.

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What did Mehmed do navally and how did it affect the balance of power?

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After he took Constantinople Sultan Mehmed established a large dockyard in the Golden Horn, using the fleet of war vessels built there to gain control of the Black Sea basin, and also to carry his ambition further afield across the Mediterranean. The new balance of power coming into being demanded versatility, and Mehmed had to meet the challenge of projecting Ottoman might over ever-greater distances at sea as well as on land.

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Large Naval motions that were undertaken against the Venetians

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In 1475 an armada under the command of Gedik Ahmed Pasha, now grand vezir, sailed to the Crimea and annexed Caffa and other lesser Genoese possessions as well as the Venetian port at Tana. Following the establishment of a presence in the Crimea, a smaller Ottoman fleet sailed for the north-eastern Black Sea and captured the fortresses of Kuba, near the outlet of the Sea of Azov, and Anapa, on the coast to the east of the Crimea, from their Latin lords.72 The southern littoral of the Crimean peninsula was thereafter an Ottoman sub-province which probably also included Tana (now Azov), Kuba and Anapa.

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What did they possess over the Crimea? How did possession of black sea vassaldom help?

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The Crimean khan recognised them. As descendant of GEnghis Khan he had benefits; did not have to pay tribute as other vassals, in fact received stipends. Following their conquest of Constantinople and hold on the Straits the Ottomans were the strongest power in the Black Sea basin. It seems that they understood that attempting to conquer and hold the boundless, arid steppelands to the north of the Black Sea would be out of the question, and in the succeeding years they efficiently took over the Latin trading colonies situated at strategic points around its coasts to give them control of the commerce passing through them. After Crimea became an Ottoman client, Ottoman influence in the affairs of the northern Black Sea region and the ability to manipulate them to its own advantage increased.

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Continuing pressure on the Venetians and the close the war?

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Although Mehmed’s attempts to reduce Nafpaktos failed, Krujé and Shkodër in northern Albania surrendered to the Ottomans in 1478 and 1479 respectively, the latter despite determined resistance from its Venetian garrison. Attacks on Venice – intended to forestall any Venetian military operations on the Ottoman north-west frontier – increasingly took the form of devastating raids which, in the mid-1470s, penetrated deep into Friuli towards the city itself. Uzun Hasan’s death in 1478 contributed to Venice’s decision to sue for the peace which was concluded in 1479.

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New raids into new lands as Ottomans took preponderant stand and the import of which cavalry division?

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Following the peace with Venice, Ottoman raiding took a new and aggressive direction, into Transylvania and what is today southern Austria. These raids were conducted by the irregular light cavalry known as akıncı, who were rewarded with the lion’s share of the booty they captured. A vital part of the Ottoman military, they numbered some 50,000 men, both Muslim and Christian, during Mehmed’s reign.

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The naval expedition against whom?

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Rhodes and Otranto, against the kingdom of Naples, on the Italian mainland.

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Rhodes was what to the Ottomans and what had it done to stick its neck out?

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Otranto on the Italian mainland during the summer of 1480. Rhodes was the most dangerous of the remaining Latin outposts in the Ottoman southern seas, and an anachronism in Ottoman eyes; moreover, it had aided Venice in the recent war. Apart from the nuisance value of its piracy, the strategic location of the island on the sea route from Istanbul to Egypt gave Mehmed reason enough to wish to conquer it. The Ottomans now felt as confident at sea as their Mediterranean neighbours, and the reduction of Rhodes was seen as an essential preliminary to naval operations against Egypt and Syria in support of the land invasion of Mamluk territory which the Sultan was said by Tursun Bey to have been planning.

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But the siege ended in

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failure. The Knights had long anticipated a siege and had reinforced the defences of the island accordingly. The Ottoman fleet was commanded by a Byzantine renegade, Mesih Pasha. He reached the harbour of Marmaris, on the Anatolian mainland opposite Rhodes, on 23 May and ferried the army of 60,000 men – who had marched overland from Istanbul – to the island, where they camped overlooking the town. After two failed assaults the Ottoman cannon and mortars bombarded the town and miners dug trenches. The defenders still resisted and rejected Mesih Pasha’s offer of peace. A further Ottoman assault on 28 July failed, and the besiegers retreated with great loss of life. By mid-August two ships sent to the aid of the Knights by King Ferrante of Naples reached the island with the news that the Pope had promised to send help. This caused Mesih Pasha to embark his troops and sail back to Istanbul.

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At the same time, what did the Ottomans do on the mainland?

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At the very time that Ferrante’s two ships were sailing to assist the Knights, an Ottoman fleet under Gedik Ahmed Pasha was setting out from the southern Adriatic port of Vlorë (Valona) to attack his territory. The fortress of Otranto, only a day’s sail away, fell within two weeks.

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What did this assault precipitate diplomatically on the peninsula?

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The arrival of Ottoman troops on Italian soil induced frantic diplomatic activity among the Italian states, who seemed inclined for once to forget their rivalries and unite in their common defence.78

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Where is there a question mark over whether or not MEhmed planned to invade?

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Whether this attack on the south Italian mainland was a first step towards the fulfilment of an ambition to capture the seat of the popes at Rome remains a matter of speculation, since Mehmed had died before his intentions became clear. Among the titles Sultan Mehmed claimed for himself was that of ‘Roman Caesar’, signifying his aspiration to succeed to the mantle of the Byzantine Empire at the height of its greatness under Constantine and Justinian; whether it was also intended to communicate that he had designs on Rome itself is disputed.

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What did Rome represent and what was the next move after Otranto?

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After Constantinople, the capture of Rome represented the ultimate ultimate prize. If Rome was Mehmed’s goal, it is surprising that it was not mentioned by Aşıkpaşazade, a chronicler decidedly in favour of holy wars, and was referred to only in passing by other chronicles written in the fifteenth century.79 At the very least, Mehmed did not attempt to secure his foothold on the Italian peninsula as he might have been expected to do if he indeed had designs on Rome: the next year he headed east, not west.

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Where and how did he die?

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In the last days of April 1481, Sultan Mehmed crossed the Bosporus to the army mustering-ground at Üsküdar, ready to lead his army through Anatolia. On 3 May, only one stage further on, at a spot near Maltepe known as ‘Sultan’s Meadow’, he died, aged 49, possibly from complications associated with his gout.

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Finkel on the state of Mehmed's polity

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Rivals still threatened to east and west, but within the limits of Mehmed’s state a pax ottomanica brought a measure of internal security which was disturbed only by localized brigand activity on land and corsairs at sea.

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What did Mehmed do to match the straining costs of empire

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The rebuilding of Mehmed’s new capital and supplying it with goods and services was a heavy burden on the finances at his disposal. His search for ready cash led him to debase the coinage on six occasions, but there is no record of further protests by the janissaries like those which greeted his first debasement during his brief occupation of the throne at the time of his father’s abdication in 1444–6.93

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The power of which group diminished during Mehmed's tenure

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Another group whose influence also waned during Sultan Mehmed’s reign was the Anatolian Turkish religious scholar-aristocracy of which the Çandarlı family were the leading representatives. For a century from the reign of Sultan Orhan, the Çandarlı had acted as confidants to the Ottoman sultans. Kara Halil Hayreddin Çandarlı served as grand vezir to Murad I, and two of his sons also held this post. In 1443, the grand vezir appointed by Murad II was Kara Halil’s grandson Halil Pasha. Çandarlı Halil was kept on by Mehmed II as grand vezir after Murad’s death, but his attempts to dissuade Mehmed from besieging Constantinople hastened his end: he was said by Muslim and Christian writers alike to have been in league with the defenders of the city,100 and was executed soon after its capture. His untimely death can now be seen as symbolic of the diminishing role which the old Turkish families were to play in the future of the Ottoman state. Of Mehmed’s seven grand vezirs, one was a Turkish-born Muslim, two were Christian-born converts raised by the youth-levy, two were Christian-born scions of the Byzantine or Byzanto-Serbian nobility, and the last was also Christian-born but of unknown origin.

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Problems with janissary mutiny during Mehmed's reign

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At their head was the sultan, although his active role as foremost of the ‘warriors for the faith’ was increasingly tempered by his desire to establish a centralized bureaucratic state. Inspired by Çandarlı Halil Pasha’s manipulation of the janissaries in Edirne when his father Murad II was still alive, Mehmed strove to exert his authority over them, but was never able to bend them completely to his will. On his accession in 1451 he found it necessary to give in to their demands for a bonus to mark the event, a practice apparently begun by Bayezid I but from now on expected.104 Problems arose again when the janissaries mutinied in 1455 during the winter campaign to take the port of Enez, at the mouth of the Maritsa, from the Genoese, and again at the time of the unsuccessful siege of Belgrade in the following year.

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Mehmed's first law code

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Two law-codes are known from Mehmed’s reign: the first contains penal clauses as well as regulations to do with the taxation of the subject population; the second is concerned with the forms of government and the relationship between its parts. Allusions in the codes to ‘the ancient law’ or ‘the ancient custom’ make it clear that they largely dealt with the formalizing of regulations which were already current. It is a matter of scholarly debate, however, which parts of the extant versions of these law-codes do in fact date from Mehmed’s time and which clauses were inserted in later reigns by way of updating.

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The second law code

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Mehmed was the first sultan to promulgate laws applicable to areas of state life – such as public administration – which were not catered for in religious law; although neither of his codes refers to the religious law, and although their legality depended directly on the will of the sultan, their provisions do not contradict those of religious law.107 Reviewing Sultan Mehmed’s policies, the polemical, pro-dervish chronicler Aşıkpaşazade, who wrote between 1476 and 1502, held Karamani Mehmed responsible for the downturn in the fortunes of the dervishes and marcher-lords through his programme of returning state revenues to government control.

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S'more info on Mehmed's relations to the ancient

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He knew some Greek, and his interest in the ancients must have been widely known in contemporary political circles. It was alluded to in his own time by the Venetian Niccolò Sagundino, a native of Euboea, in his account of the Ottomans. Mehmed, wrote Sagundino, was fascinated by the Spartans, the Athenians, the Romans and the Carthaginians but identified above all with Alexander of Macedonia and Julius Caesar.

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From Mehmed in the Balkans

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From Mehmed in the Balkans

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What had many states done in response to Muslim encroachment?

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With heathen sovereignty an unthinkable ignominy to those with proud Christian heritages spanning over a millennium, many felt that their sole crutch was that provided by the Venetians and their powerful navy - backed up as this power was by the Venetian colonial bases at Negroponte, Crete, Modon and Corfu.

Greek princes and French crusading magnates began selling their property to the Venetians at slashed rates in the knowledge that they, standing alone, would be incapable of defending themselves against the flood of Turks who were sure to come crashing down the valley.

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Political development for the Venetian state

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As the needs of international diplomacy grew ever further important, so more power needed to be handed to the Senate, that they could be best equipped to deal with the outside world’s complex and illogical developments. The Forty had been absorbed and the Senate was allowed to cast the deciding vote in the financial matters which had previously so held back the republic’s development, miring it in the disagreements of those on opposite sides of a political fence.

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Who was causing problems for the Venetians at home?

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For Venice, however, military exploits were becoming more and more difficult to undertake and with growing Italian pressure from the Lord of Padua’s aggression within the country, they could but stretch themselves thin in the process of maintaining force enough to quell Turkish curiosity across the Aegean and engage in Italy’s increasingly heated conflict. Padua’s aggressive expansion was threatening to cut Venice’s Alpine trade routes and they felt themselves all but forced into a rocky alliance with their unstable neighbour, the ruler of Milan Gian Galeazzo Visconti.

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Mehmed's decision to cede much trade to the Florentines

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Venice’s strongest Italian rival, the flourishing Florence, was singled out for special treatment by the sultan and wherever possible would defer to their merchants if the opposing choice was to be a Venetian one. By 1454, Florentine ships laden with wool began calling at Istanbul and in 1462 a great many Venetians were expelled from government buildings across the Ottoman empire and Florentines were installed in their places.

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Whose help was sought during the Bosnian campaign?

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He turned to Bosnia and enlisted the help of the native ‘Bogomils’ of Bosnia, whose treatment as a minority religious group during the Hungarian occupation had been demeaning.

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The end of the Second Venetian war, what was it called the treaty and what happened?

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death of Uzun Hasan in 1478 was a large factor in the decision Venice took to sue for peace in 1479. The results were overwhelmingly negative for Venice, with their longest-standing protectorate Negroponte and several holdings all around Greece lost to the infidel.

The Treaty of Constantinople 1479.