The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople

Date

29 May 1453 CE

Category

Military & conflict

Region

Byzantium / Ottoman Empire (Constantinople)

Era

Post-Classical / Medieval

Significance

On 29 May 1453, after a siege of some seven weeks begun on 6 April, the army of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II captured Constantinople, extinguishing the Byzantine Empire that had endured for over a thousand years as the eastern continuation of Rome.

Mehmed surrounded the city by land and sea and battered its famous Theodosian walls with massive bombards, including enormous cannon cast for the campaign, while the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, died fighting in the final assault with only a few thousand defenders. The fall of the great Christian capital sent a profound shock through Europe and is often taken as a symbolic end of the Middle Ages. Mehmed, henceforth called the Conqueror, made the city his new capital, converted the cathedral of Hagia Sophia into a mosque, and laid the foundations of an imperial Istanbul that would dominate the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans for centuries. The conquest gave the Ottomans control of the strategic crossroads between Europe and Asia, disrupted established overland trade routes, drove Greek scholars and manuscripts westward in a stimulus to the Renaissance, and spurred Iberian rulers to seek new sea routes to Asia, helping open the age of European overseas exploration.

Empires active in 29 May 1453 CE

• Malacca Sultanate
  1400 CE – 1511 CE
• Aztec Empire
  1428 CE – 1521 CE
• Inca Empire
  1438 CE – 1533 CE
• Ming Dynasty
  1368 CE – 1644 CE
• Kanem-Bornu Empire
  700 CE – 1900 CE
• Ottoman Empire
  1299 CE – 1922 CE

Related military & conflict events

• Sack of Angkor and Abandonment of the Khmer Capital
  1431 CE
• Joan of Arc and the lifting of the siege of Orleans
  1429 CE
• Timur's invasion and sack of Delhi
  1398 CE
• Mongol sack of Baghdad ends the Abbasid Caliphate
  10 February 1258 CE
• Second Battle of Bach Dang: Dai Viet destroys the Yuan-Mongol fleet
  9 April 1288
• Mongol Invasions Topple the Pagan Empire of Burma
  1277-1287 CE (Pagan collapse, 1287)

Further reading

1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West

If you read one book

1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West

Roger Crowley

Thrilling account of the 1453 siege.

Get it on Amazon →

Also worth reading

• The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire — John FreelyAmazon →
• The Fall of Constantinople 1453 — Steven RuncimanAmazon →

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