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On 29 May 1453 the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II captured Constantinople, today's Istanbul, after a 53-day siege. Its fall ended the Byzantine Empire, the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which had outlived the western half by nearly a thousand years.

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Mehmed was 21. His army far outnumbered the defenders, and his great cannons, cast by founders such as Saruca and the Hungarian Orban, battered the city's ancient land walls. When a chain across the Golden Horn kept his fleet out of the harbour, he had ships dragged on greased logs over the hill behind Galata and launched inside it on 22 April. The last emperor, Constantine XI, died in the final assault. Mehmed made the city his capital and took the title Kayser-i Rûm, Caesar of the Romans, because the Byzantines had always called themselves Romans; ‘Byzantine’ is a later label. Two smaller Byzantine states held out a little longer, the Morea until 1460 and Trebizond until 1461. Many historians treat 1453 as the end of the Middle Ages.

Türkçe oku
Osmanlı padişahı II. Mehmed, 29 Mayıs 1453'te 53 gün süren kuşatmanın ardından Konstantinopolis'i, yani bugünkü İstanbul'u fethetti. Fetihle birlikte Roma İmparatorluğu'nun doğu yarısı olan Bizans sona erdi; Bizans, batı yarısının yıkılmasından sonra neredeyse bin yıl daha yaşamıştı.

II. Mehmed o sırada 21 yaşındaydı. Ordusu savunuculardan çok kalabalıktı; Saruca ve Macar Urban gibi dökümcülerin yaptığı büyük toplar kentin kara surlarını dövdü. Haliç'in ağzına gerilen zincir Osmanlı donanmasını limandan uzak tutunca, gemiler 22 Nisan'da Galata'nın arkasındaki tepeden yağlanmış kütükler üzerinde kaydırılarak Haliç'e indirildi. Son imparator XI. Konstantinos son saldırıda öldü. II. Mehmed şehri başkent yaptı ve “Roma'nın Kayseri” anlamına gelen Kayser-i Rûm unvanını aldı. Bunun nedeni, Bizanslıların kendilerini her zaman Romalı saymasıydı; “Bizans” adı onlara çok sonra verildi. Daha küçük iki Bizans devleti bir süre daha dayandı: Mora Despotluğu 1460'a, Trabzon İmparatorluğu 1461'e kadar. Pek çok tarihçi 1453'ü Orta Çağ'ın sonu sayar.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Fall of Constantinople
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