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One of the most important figures in Ottoman history, Mehmed was the architect of victories that inspired fear throughout Europe and contributed to an image of the Turk prevalent in Western art and literature for many years. From the Western viewpoint, Mehmed was seen as the man who gave the death blow to Byzantium, destroying the last vestige of the Eastern Roman Empire. Not surprisingly, the Turks regard him as the greatest of all sultans, a figure unparalleled in the history of the world for military prowess, statecraft and patronage of the arts and sciences.
Five hundred years ago the great walled city of Constantinople fell under the relentless siege of the Ottoman Turks led by Sultan Mehmed II, Mehmed the Conqueror. Kristovoulos, one of the vanquished Greeks, later entered into the service of the Conqueror and began to write a history of the Sultan's life, starting with the year 1451, the beginning of Mehmed's 31-year reign. Death apparently prevented Kritovoulos from completing his account, but the manuscript covering the first seventeen years has been preserved and this exciting chronicle is here translated into English for the first time. Charles T. Riggs, who died in February 1953 at Robert College in modern Istanbul, was a missionary in t...
"Verily, you shall conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful leader will her leader be, and a wonderful army will that army be!" For eight centuries, Muslims made countless attempts to fulfill this prophecy made by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). In 1453, Sultan Mehmed II's conquest of Constantinople is believed to have realised and embodied this prophecy. At the age of twenty-one, Mehmed toppled one of the greatest empires, the Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantine. His military genius and his disciplined army were unmatched. For the next thirty years, he ruled and conquered much of Asia Minor and stretched Ottoman power into Europe reaching the borders of Hungary and Italy. Mehmed was the most admired and feared leader of the 15th century. His people called him Al-Fatih, the Conqueror, but he was also known as the prince of the Renaissance as his rule gave birth to the golden age of the Ottoman Empire. This biography of Sultan Mehmed II will immerse the reader into the legendary life of one of the most influential and brilliant leaders of all time.
In 1479, the Venetian painter Gentile Bellini arrived at the Ottoman court in Istanbul, where he produced his celebrated portrait of Sultan Mehmed II. An important moment of cultural diplomacy, this was the first of many intriguing episodes in the picture's history. Elizabeth Rodini traces Gentile's portrait from Mehmed's court to the Venetian lagoon, from the railway stations of war-torn Europe to the walls of London's National Gallery, exploring its life as a painting and its afterlife as a famous, often puzzling image. Rediscovered by the archaeologist Austen Henry Layard at the height of Orientalist outlooks in Britain, the picture was also the subject of a lawsuit over what defines a â€...
One of the most important figures in Ottoman history, Mehmed was the architect of victories that inspired fear throughout Europe and contributed to an image of the Turk prevalent in Western art and literature for many years. From the Western viewpoint, Mehmed was seen as the man who gave the death blow to Byzantium, destroying the last vestige of the Eastern Roman Empire. Not surprisingly, the Turks regard him as the greatest of all sultans, a figure unparalleled in the history of the world for military prowess, statecraft and patronage of the arts and sciences.
Sultan Mehmet II, the Grand Turk, known to his countrymen as Fatih, 'the Conqueror', and to much of Europe as 'the present Terror of the World', was once the most feared and powerful ruler in the world. The seventh of his line to rule the Ottoman Turks, Mehmet was barely 21 when he conquered Byzantine Constantinople, which became Istanbul and the capital of his mighty empire. Mehmet reigned for 30 years, during which time his armies extended the borders of his empire halfway across Asia Minor and as far into Europe as Hungary and Italy. Three popes called for crusades against him as Christian Europe came face to face with a new Muslim empire.Mehmet himself was an enigmatic figure. Revered by...
An extraordinary biography of the famous sultan for those who wish to know him not only with his military skills but also with his administrative abilities.
Kavalali Mehmed Ali Pasha (c. 1770–1849), often dubbed "the founder of modern Egypt", was one of the most important figures in the history of the Ottoman Empire. Born in what is now Greece, and seemingly headed for an everyday existence as a tobacco trader, he joined the Ottoman army at the age of thirty, and went on to become both the leader of Egypt for nearly fifty years and the founder of a dynasty that ruled for a century after his death. In this insightful and well-constructed biography, Khaled Fahmy assesses the renowned ruler’s life, and his significant contribution to Egyptian, Ottoman, and Islamic history. Examining the unprecedented economic, military, and social policies that he introduced in Egypt, as well as Mehmed Ali’s intricate relationship with his family, Fahmy provides a fresh assessment of this towering nineteenth-century personality.