Suleiman's Age: The Ottoman Apogee and Its Institutions

Mehmed II began the final siege of Constantinople on 6 April 1453 with an army of 60,000 to 80,000 men against roughly 7,000-8,000 Byzantine and allied defenders, deploying massive siege artillery designed by the Hungarian engineer Urban and hauling part of his fleet overland to bypass the chain across the Golden Horn. The city fell on 29 May 1453; Emperor Constantine XI died fighting, and Mehmed personally entered the city and ordered the Hagia Sophia converted into a mosque, earning the epithet "Fatih" ("the Conqueror"). He repopulated Constantinople with Muslims, Christians, and Jews, granted non-Muslim communities protected legal status through the "millet" system, and promulgated a "Kanunname" that formally institutionalized dynastic fratricide as a mechanism for preventing succession wars.