Mehmed II

Mehmed II was born on March 30, 1432, in Edirne, son of Sultan Murad II. Murad abdicated for him in 1444 at age twelve, but a European crusade and janissary revolt forced the father back; the boy lost the throne in 1446. The humiliation, and vizier Halil Pasha's role in it, fixed a grudge that later cost the vizier his head.

In February 1451, on hearing of his father's death, Mehmed (19) cried, "Let those who love me follow me," and rode for Edirne. He had his infant half-brother strangled — an act later codified in the Kanunname as legitimate succession practice, casting a long shadow on every later transition.

His defining achievement came on May 29, 1453. It was the third Ottoman siege of Constantinople, but the first using Hungarian engineer Orban's giant cannons against the Theodosian walls. The city fell in 53 days. After three days of plunder he restored order, installed Gennadios II as Orthodox patriarch over the Greek community, and reaffirmed Genoese privileges. He took the title Kayser-i Rûm (Caesar of Rome), heir to Alexander and Justinian — a hybrid claim that gave Ottoman rule its imperial register.

Over 28 years he absorbed Serbia, Bosnia, Trebizond, the Karamanids and most of Albania, and vassalised the Crimean Khanate. A 1456 defeat at Belgrade, where a papal crusade broke the army and Mehmed was wounded, was the major setback. He sidelined the old Turkic aristocracy in favour of devşirme slave officials (kapıkulu) and issued the 1477–1481 Kanunname as the empire's first systematic legal code. Salt and soap monopolies raised revenue but alienated commoners; Bayezid II repealed them.

Culturally Mehmed was anomalous. He spoke Arabic, Persian and some Greek, invited Gentile Bellini for 16 months to paint his portrait, and wrote a 77-poem Ottoman divan under the pen name Avni. He patronised Greek scholars and rebuilt Istanbul as a multi-ethnic capital. He died on May 3, 1481, on his final campaign. The empire he forged outlasted him by 442 years.