The portrait of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, also known as Mehmed the Conqueror, painted by Italian artist Gentile Bellini, is being exhibited at the Victoria.
Mehmed II, byname Fatih Sultan Mehmed (Turkish: Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror), (born March 30, 1432, Adrianople, Thrace, Ottoman Empire died May 3, 1481, Hunkârçayırı, near Maltepe, near Constantinople), Ottoman sultan from 1444 to 1446 and from 1451 to 1481. A great military leader, he captured Constantinople and conquered the territories in Anatolia and the Balkans that constituted the Ottoman Empire’s heartland for the next four centuries. Mehmed was the fourth son of Murad II by Hümâ Hâtûn, an enslaved girl in Murad’s harem. At the age of 12 he was sent, as tradition required, to Manisa (Magnesia) with his two tutors.
Could it really be true that Constantinople, the last bastion of Christianity in the East, fell to the Ottomans because someone forgot to lock the gate?
Mehmed II - Mehmed II - Mehmed’s empire: The capture of Constantinople bestowed on Mehmed incomparable glory and prestige and immense authority in his own country, so that he began to look upon himself as the heir of the Roman Caesars and the champion of Islam in holy war. It is not true that he had preconceived plans for his conquests, but it is certain that he was intent upon resurrecting the Eastern Roman Empire and upon extending it to its widest historic limits. His victory over the Turkmen leader Uzun Ḥasan at the Battle of Bashkent in Erzincan (August 11, 1473) marked in Mehmed’s life a turning