MEHMED II

born March 30, 1432, Adrianople, Thrace, Ottoman Empire died May 3, 1481, Hunkrayiri, near Maltepe, near Constantinople byname Mehmed Fatih (Turkish: Mehmed the Conqueror) 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 comprised the Ottoman Empire's heartland for the next four centuries. Additional reading Franz Babinger, Mehmed der Eroberer und seine Zeit (1953), is the most detailed account of the subject by an authority, reviewed by Halil Inalcik, Mehmed the Conqueror (14321481) and His Time, in Speculum, 35:408427 (1960). See also Cambridge History of Islam, pp. 295308 (1970); and Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople, 1453 (1965). The main sources on the subject are given in H. Inalcik, Mehmed II, in Islam Ansiklopedisi, 7:506535 (in Turkish).