Ottoman Holy War & Conquest: The Battle for Contantinople, 1453

    "Constantinople is a city larger than its renown proclaims.  May Allah in his grace and generosity design to make it the capital of Islam."

                            - Hasan Ali Al-Harawi, twelfth-century Arab writer^[1]

 

          For the Ottoman Turks of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Constantinople stood out as a psychological problem, taunting their ambitions and cramping their dreams of conquest. For Western Christendom, it was the bulwark against Islam, keeping them secure from further encroachment. In the millennium since the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and established the eponymously named city, various armies laid siege on Constantinople no less than twenty-four times. However, the capital of Byzantium fell only once before falling to the Ottomans - to Christian knights during the Fourth Crusade.

 

          Byzantium was the final heir to the Roman Empire and the first Christian nation. Its capital in Constantinople was conceived as a replica of heaven since its founding. Triumphs were seen as the work of God and failures were seen as the culmination of collective Christian sin and therefore, God's punishment.

          Islam's obsession with the holy city did not begin with the formation of the Ottoman Empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; it began shortly after Muhammad's death in 632 when Islam burst forth from the Arabian Peninsula. In 37 years, Islam conquered modern-day Syria, Iraq, Persia, Egypt, Jerusalem, Herat, Kabul, and Bokhara. In North Africa, they continued to press westward towards the Atlantic. The war with Byzantium continued unabated and they scored their first naval victory over the Christian Empire at the "Battle of the Masts" in 655. With the formation of the Damascus-based Umayyad Dynasty in 661, the Empire turned toward larger objectives.

 

           In 669, Caliph Mu'awiyya led Islam in the first war for Constantinople. While they were able to hold a point south of the city for several years, the conquest ultimately failed and in 679, Mu'awiyya accepted a 30-year truce - a major setback for the Muslim cause.^[2] The Umayyad Caliphate led an even greater attack against the city in 717 but again they were repelled. In a pattern that marked Constantinople's past and hope for the future, the city was able to survive through "a mixture of technological innovation, skillful diplomacy, individual brilliance, massive fortifications - and sheer luck."^[3] Since the first Arab attempt to capture the city, Muslim forces aimed to make Constantinople their capital.

 

          The second failure to take Constantinople had far-reaching consequences. Islam was the one true, final, and universal religion. All of mankind would ultimately adopt it and in the meantime, they must be made to recognize Islam's supremacy. The world consisted of two groups - the 'house of Islam' (Dar al-Islam), and the 'house of war' (Dar al-Harb). The latter were the infidels (kufr) against whom waging holy war (jihad) was a collective duty. Prior to 717, Islam had been advancing in giant steps. Bernard Lewis explains: "There was no reason to doubt the rapid completion of the processes of conquest and conversion by which infidels became the subjects, and subjects became converts. The change began with the failure of the last great Arab assault on Constantinople, in the grand style, in 718."^[4]

 

          In time, the Arabs came to realize that they would not be able to crush the city and enter the heart of Christian Europe; it would have to be postponed until an eschatological time.^[5] Nevertheless, the dream remained, not only because it was perceived as the key to conquering Christianity, but because many Muslim martyrs perished at its walls, including the Prophet's standard-bearer Ayyub in 669. These deaths transformed Constantinople into a holy place for Islam. The scars from the failures of the siege left a series of traditions and legends handed down throughout the centuries. They were included among the hadith - the body of sayings attributed to Muhammad. One such saying prophesized the cycle of defeat, death, and final victory of Islam over the city: "In the Jihad against Constantinople, one third of Muslims will allow themselves to be defeated, which Allah cannot forgive; one third will be killed in battle, making them wondrous martyrs; and one third will be victorious."^[6] As Lewis explained: "All of this enormously increased the religious significance of the eventual fall of the city, in 1453, to a Turkish sultan bearing the name of the Prophet of Islam."^[7]

 

          The purpose of this work is to explore the war led by Mehmed II (Mehmed the Conqueror) for Constantinople in 1453. In so doing, it will seek to answer the questions: To what degree was ghazi tradition and holy war behind the decision to attack, and to what degree were those tactics employed? Was the war fought merely to expand the empire or did Islam compel the Ottomans to take the city? In order to proceed, one must begin with an examination of ghazi tradition in the early formation of the Ottoman Empire.