Page 4 - ISLAM Rock n Roll

Detail of a portrait of Mehmed ii by a follower of Gentile Bellini (d. 1507), 16th-century, Italy. In 1479 Mehmed made peace with the Venetians and requested them to send an artist to his court to paint his portrait. Bellini, regarded as one of Venice’s leading painters, was sent to Istanbul where he spent some two years. Bellini took some of the Sultan’s portraits back home where they inspired other local artists
Gold coin (obverse on above and reverse below) of Mehmed ii minted in Constantinople in 1478. Referring to Mehmed and his conquests, the coin’s obverse inscription reads, ‘The Striker of precious metal, the Master of Glory and the Victorious on land and sea’.
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emerged victorious. His Ottoman descendants then con- quered both the Eastern Mediterranean region and Arabia.
Through a series of military conquests and marriage alliances with local Byzantine families the Ottomans began to take over Byzantine territories. In 1331 the Ottomans established their rst Anatolian capital at Iznik. Shortly a er in 1335 they established their second Anatolian capital at Bursa. Therea er, they crossed the Bosphorus and esta- blished a capital at Edirne in southeastern Europe. But it would be the capture of the Byzantine capital Constantinople on 29 May 1453 by the seventh Ottoman ruler, Sultan Mehmed ii (d. 1481), known as the Conqueror (Fatih), that would prove a major psychological and moral victory for Ottoman imperial aspirations. Not only were the Ottomans the only Muslim power that had succeeded in conquering the commercially and militarily strategic city, they also claimed to be the inheritors of the Caesars by capturing what had been the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Eastern Church for centuries. Through this victory it would seem as if Osman’s dream was unfolding.
The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople also sent a clear signal about their military prowess, particularly to the two major European powers in the region, the republics of Genoa and Venice. But while Ottoman soldiers plundered the city for three days, Mehmed II’s values and private sentiments about the capture of what he now decided would be his future capital were perhaps conveyed by the Greek chronicler Michael Critobulus (d. ca. 1470), who visited Constantinople shortly a er its fall:
A er this [conquest] the sultan entered the city and looked about to see its great size, its situation, its grandeur and beauty, its teeming population, its loveliness, and the costliness of its churches and public buildings. When he saw what a large number had been killed, and the wreckage of the buildings,
and the wholesale ruin and desolation of the city, he was lled with compassion and repented not a little at the destruction and plundering. Tears fell from his eyes as he groaned deeply and passionately: ‘What a city we have given over to plunder and destruction.’
Mehmed ii’s rebuilding of the city began with the conversion of the Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia into
the city’s main congregational mosque, therea er renamed Ayasofya. Changes under Mehmed ii included the addition of a mihrab (a wall niche indicating the direction of Mecca), wooden minaret and minbar (pulpit). Under later Ottoman rulers, four stone minarets were added and large disks calligraphed in gold paint with Allah, Muhammad, the names of the Rashidun caliphs, and the Prophet’s grandsons Hasan and Husayn. Mehmed’s decision to preserve Hagia Sophia as a mosque, rather than embark on a new con- struction, meant that the architectural splendour of the building would serve as the inspiration for countless Ottoman mosques in the centuries that followed. Next, Mehmed ii began work on his residence, the Topkapı (built 1460–1478), a palace complex, on the the main gate of which was emblazoned: ‘Sultan of the two Continents and Emperor of the two Seas, Shadow of God in this world and the next, Favourite of God on the two Horizons, Monarch of the Terraqueous Orb, Conqueror of the Castle of Constantinople, Son of Sultan Murad Khan, Son of Mehmed Khan’. These titles re ect that Mehmed laid claim to the Holy Roman Empire on the both sides of the Bosphorus and saw himself as God’s intended ruler.
Mehmed’s re-building programme also encompassed reviving the city’s residential and commercial areas, thus ensuring that Istanbul retained a mixed population of Muslims, Jews and Christians, among others. Indeed,
many of the Jews expelled from al-Andalus by the Spanish monarchs settled in the city, while others found a haven elsewhere in the Ottoman lands, especially in the Balkans. As a result of Mehmed’s policies, which continued the Islamic traditions of tolerance, the Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Latin Churches, as well as the various Jewish com- munities, continued to thrive in the city.
Mehmed II was also an avid patron of the arts and his court became a centre for artists and intelligentsia of lands from Italy to Iran, irrespective of their religious persuasion or ethnic background. In 1479, having established diplo- matic relations with the Republic of Venice a er 16 years of
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