Mehmed II takes Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire; the city becomes the Ottoman capital, and the sultan takes up the caliph's mantle over a Sunni empire that will hold the holy cities and the Balkans for four centuries.
Tagged: Muslim Sunni Islam
The Event
- Date
- 1453 (exact)
- Era
- Later Empires; Standard periodization of Islamic history
- Location
- Constantinople; today Istanbul, Türkiye
- Traditions
- Islam
- Streams
- Sunni Islam
- Key figures
- Mehmed II
Primary Sources
- Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror
Secondary Sources
- Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Faber, 1991)
- Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates (Routledge, 3rd ed. 2016)
Provenance: HIST-0242; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-27.
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