With a plague running in his camp and food and water being very scarce, Mehmed was forced to retreat. The Albanian resistance in Albania between and led by George Kastrioti Skanderbeg İskender Bey , an Albanian noble and a former member of the Ottoman ruling elite, prevented the Ottoman expansion into the Italian peninsula. The final act of his Albanian campaigns was the troublesome siege of Shkodra in , the final siege that Mehmed II led personally and of which early Ottoman chronicler Ashikpashazade —81 wrote, "All the conquests of Sultan Mehmed were fulfilled with the seizure of Shkodra.
Mehmed II invaded Italy in The intent of his invasion was to capture Rome and "reunite the Roman Empire", and, at first, it looked like he might be able to do it with the easy capture of Otranto in but Otranto was retaken by Papal forces in after the death of Mehmed. Mehmed II amalgamated the old Byzantine administration into the Ottoman state. He first introduced the word Politics into Arabic "Siyasah" from a book he published and claimed to be the collection of Politics doctrines of the Byzantine Caesars before him.
He gathered Italian artists, humanists and Greek scholars at his court, allowed the Byzantine Church to continue functioning, ordered the patriarch to translate Christian doctrine into Turkish, and called Gentile Bellini from Venice to paint his portrait. Mehmed II allowed his subjects a considerable degree of religious freedom, provided they were obedient to his rule. After his conquest of Bosnia and Herzegovina in he issued a firman to the Bosnian Franciscans, granting them freedom to move freely within the Empire, offer worship in their churches and monasteries, and to practice their religion free from official and unofficial persecution, insult or disturbance.
His standing army was recruited from the Devshirme, a group that took first-born Christian subjects at a young age that were destined for the sultans court. The less able, but physically strong were put into the army or the sultan's personal guard, the Janissaries. Within Constantinople, Mehmed established a millet or an autonomous religious community, and appointed the former Patriarch as religious governor of the city.
His authority extended only to the Orthodox Christians within the city, and this excluded the Genoese and Venetian settlements in the suburbs, and excluded Muslim and Jewish settlers entirely. This method allowed for an indirect rule of the Christian Byzantines and allowed the occupants to feel relatively autonomous even as Mehmed II began the Turkish remodeling of the city, turning it into the Turkish capital, which it remained until the s.
Another son of his was Cem Sultan, who died in Another source states that: "The likeliest possibility is that Mehmed was also poisoned by his Persian doctor. Despite numerous Venetian assassination attempts over the years, the finger of suspicion points most strongly at his son, Bayezit. After the fall of Constantinople, he founded many universities and colleges in the city, some of which are still active.
Mehmed II is also recognized as the first Sultan to codify criminal and constitutional law long before Suleiman the Magnificent and he thus established the classical image of the autocratic Ottoman sultan.
His thirty-one year rule and several wars expanded the Ottoman Empire to include Constantinople, and the Turkish kingdoms and territories of Asia Minor, Bosnia , Kingdom of Serbia, and Albania. His many internal administrative and legal reforms put his country on the path to prosperity and paved the way for subsequent sultans to focus on expansion into new territories.
Mehmed left behind an imposing reputation in both the Islamic and Christian worlds. His name and picture appeared on the Turkish lira note between to He is the eponymous subject of Rossini's opera Maometto II. After a long, brutal, and bloody siege that almost exhausted both parties, Negropont capitulated on July This was a terrible blow to Venice and a grave portent of danger to the rest of Europe.
In the area of the Black Sea, Mehmed was also successful. Since early in his reign, he had forced tribute from the various Genoese colonies, later occuping them outright. By , he had made the Crimea a vassal state of the Empire, making the entire sea virtually an Ottoman lake.
Despite recent successes, was a relatively quiet year for Mehmed, perhaps because of the greatly distressing death of his favorite son, Mustapha, or perhaps because of his own illness.
Nevertheless Ottoman forces continued to raid Albania, Walachia, and even Hungary with some Ottoman raiders appearing within sight of Venice itself. By , well enough again to lead his armies, Mehmed almost completely overran Albania. Peace was concluded with Venice in , ending what had become a long, troublesome struggle.
Although the Italian city-state maintained many of its former trading privileges, it was forced to pay tribute to the sultan. Mehmed now looked beyond Venice. On August 11, , Otranto in the south of Italy was overrun, and all the male inhabitants were killed by the invading forces. From this base, the Turks laid waste to the countryside for miles around, threatening the entire Italian peninsula. Ottoman forces were concurrently involved in many other areas.
They were storming the Aegean Islands and laid siege to the fortress on Rhodes. There were continuing raids into the Balkans, but most significantly, the Empire was involved in another struggle in southeastern Anatolia with the sultan of Syria and Egypt. Despite the military success of the Empire, Mehmed himself was not well. Throughout his life, the sultan increasingly suffered from gout and rheumatism.
An abscess had recently grossly disfigured his leg, a divine affliction it seemed to some for a life of gluttony. This pushed the moody Mehmed further into seclusion from the public eye. Now, on May 1, , as he prepared for further conflict against the Egyptian sultan, he was struck with severe abdominal pains and died two days later.
Since Mehmed had always feared being poisoned and dined alone, there was immediate suspicion that he had been murdered, perhaps even by his son and heir Bayezid, who was eager to secure his position quickly. Although Mehmed II died unsatisfied in his goal to build a universal empire, he had established the primacy of the Ottoman Turks within the Muslim world.
In his dedication to conquest, he extended Ottoman influence east as far as the Euphrates and west throughout the Balkans and even onto the Italian peninsula. Whether reviled for his brutality and his fervor or saluted for these successes, Mehmed II, the Conqueror, affirmed the authority of the sultanate and secured the character of the Ottoman Empire.
From the remains of Byzantium, he built a vibrant capital of a growing Turkish Empire which would be a major world power over the next four centuries. Babinger, Franz. Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time. Parry, V. Inalcik, A. Kurat, and J. A History of the Ottoman Empire to Edited by Michael Cook. Cambridge University Press, Pears, Sir Edwin.
Macmillan, Kinross, Lord. Jonathan Cape, All rights reserved. Creasy, E. History of the Ottoman Turks. His father, Murad II , tried to abdicate when Mehmet was only 12 years old, but in the wake of the son's unsuccessful first reign, the father returned to power. When the more mature Mehmet ascended the throne once more after Murat 's death , he tried to create a world empire like that of the Romans. He first conquered Constantinople in from the Byzantines and rebuilt it into the prosperous Ottoman capital of Istanbul.
To counter the power of the Turkish aristocracy, Mehmet continued his father's policy of expanding the Janissary infantry corps.
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