Mehmed II (redirected from Ottoman sultan Muhammad II)

Mehmed II

 byname Mehmed the Conqueror

(born March 30, 1432, Adrianople, Thrace, Ottoman Empire—died May 3, 1481, near Constantinople) Ottoman sultan (1444–46, 1451–81). His father, Murad II, abdicated in his favour when Mehmed was 12 but reclaimed the throne two years later in the aftermath of a Christian Crusade. Mehmed regained the throne when his father died (1451) and began to plan the conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul), the feat for which he is most renowned. In 1453 he captured the city and undertook returning it to its previous level of grandeur. In the next 25 years he conquered large sections of the Balkans. Under his reign, criminal and civil laws were codified in one body of law; he collected a library of Greek and Latin works and had eight colleges built.

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Mehmed II 

known as Fatih (“the conqueror”). Born Mar. 30, 1432, in Edirne (Adrianople); died Apr. 3 (or May 3), 1481, in Hunkârçiri. Turkish sultan (reigned 1444; 1451–81).

Mehmed II conducted a policy of conquest and personally headed the campaigns of the Turkish Army. In 1453 he conquered Constantinople and made it the capital of the Ottoman Empire, thereby putting an end to Byzantium. Mehmed’s reign also saw the annexation of Serbia (1459), the conquest of Morea (1460), the Trabzon (Trebizond) Empire (1461), Bosnia (1463), and the island of Euboea (1471), the completion of the conquest of Albania (1479), and the subjugation of the Crimean Khanate (1475). The first law code of the Ottoman Empire was compiled under Mehmed II.