Istanbul and the Late Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Elite: The Significance of Place

Abstract

Istanbul achieved its eminence well before the Ottoman conquest as Constantinople, the second capital of the Roman Empire and after the fall of Rome its foremost city. It was the goal of the early Islamic jihad, the kızıl elma of generations of warriors over centuries of time. It resisted capture for nearly a thousand years, even though when it finally fell to the armies of Mehmed the Conqueror, the owl was sounding in the castle of Afrasiyab, as the Conqueror himself quoted. Its conquest has been called by Michael Angold "arguably the single most important event in Ottoman history."1 Not only did it link the conquests in Rumeli and Anatolia, it definitively altered the nature of the sultanate from the leader of a band of frontier warriors to the emperor of a new Rome. ; İstanbul 29 Mayıs Üniversitesi Senatosunun 22.06.2020 tarihli ve 2020/14-5 sayılı Açık Bilim Politikası gereğince erişime açılmıştır.