1453 The Fall of Constantinople

1453 The Fall of Constantinople

Hadith of the Prophet :"Lataftahanna al-Qustantiniyya wa lani`ma al-amiru amiruha wa lani`ma al-jayshu dhalika al-jaysh./Verily you shall conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful leader will her leader be, and what a wonderful army will that army be!"




The Fall of Constantinople was the conquest of that Greek city by the Ottoman Empire Mehmed II, on Tuesday, May 29, 1453. This marked the final destruction of the Eastern Roman Empire, and the death of Constantine XI, the last Roman Emperor.



Mehmed II planned to attack the Theodosian Walls, the intricate series of walls and ditches protecting Constantinople from an attack from the west, the only part of the city not surrounded by water. His army encamped outside the city on Easter Monday, April 2, 1453. For weeks Mehmed's massive cannon fired on the walls, but it was unable to sufficiently penetrate them, and due to its extremely slow rate of reloading the Byzantines were able to repair most of the damage after each shot. Meanwhile, Mehmed's fleet could not enter the Golden Horn due to the large chain the Byzantines had laid across the entrance. To circumvent this he built a road of greased logs across Galata on the north side of the Golden Horn, and rolled his ships across. This succeeded in stopping the flow of supplies from Genoan ships and demoralizing the Byzantine defenders, but did not help in breaching the land walls.


The Turks then sought to break through the walls by constructing underground tunnels in an effort to mine them. However, the Byzantines employed an engineer named Grant (who was said to be German but was probably Scottish), who had countermines dug, allowing Byzantine troops to enter the mines and kill the Turkish workers. Other Turkish tunnels were flooded with water. Eventually, the Byzantines captured and tortured an important Turkish engineer, who revealed the location of all the Turkish mines, which were then destroyed.


Mehmed offered to raise the siege for an astronomical tribute that he knew the city would be unable to pay. When this was declined, Mehmed planned to overpower the walls by sheer force, knowing that the Byzantine defenders would be worn out before he ran out of troops.


On the night of May 22 there was a lunar eclipse, which must have seemed a bad omen to the defenders of the city. On the morning of May 29 the attack began. The first wave of attackers, the bashi-bazouks, were poorly trained and equipped. The second assault, consisting largely of Anatolians focused on a section of the Blachernae walls in the northwest part of the city, which had been partially damaged by the cannon. This section of the walls had been built much more recently, in the eleventh century, and was much weaker; the crusaders in 1204 had broken through the walls there. The Ottoman attackers also managed to break through, but were just as quickly pushed back out by the Byzantine defenders. The Byzantines also managed to hold off a third attack by the Sultan's elite Janissaries (ironically, most of the Janissaries had been Christian children who were captured by the Ottomans at an early age and trained as warriors), but the Genoan general in charge of the defense, Giovanni Giustiniani, was wounded in the attack, and the Greeks began to panic. Some historians suggest that, the Kerkoporta gate in the Blachernae section had been left unlocked, and the Ottomans soon discovered this mistake (there was no question of bribery or deceit by the Ottomans; the gate had simply been overlooked, probably because rubble from a cannon attack had obscured or blocked the door). The Ottomans rushed in. Constantine XI himself led the last defense of the city, dying in the ensuing battle in the streets.




A song was arranged for mixed choir by Manolis Kalomiris, composed it for his last opera "Constantine Paleologos", to the libretto of Nikos Kazantzakis.

They took the City, they took it, took SalonicaThey took St. Sofia, too, the great monasteryWhich has three-hundred semandra and sixty Two bells...For each bell a priest, for each priest a deacon.Near the time the Sacred Vessels come out,and the king of all...A dove came down from heavens: Stop theCherubic, and lower the Sacred Vessels,Priests, take the Sacramental and you candles blow out...For it is the will of God the City should fall to the Turks...Our Lady was disturbed and the icons tearful.Hush, Our Lady and you, icons weep not,With the passing of years and in time she 'll be yours again.