1. NO CLASS AT THE CLASSROOM NEXT WEEK
LECTURE AT THE TOPKAPI PALACE
MEET INSIDE THE PALACE, IN FRONT OF THE IMPERIAL COUNCIL HALL at 12.00
PLEASE BUY YOUR TICKET, BRING 20 YTL AND STUDENT ID FOR MUZE KART

2. Today’s lecture
Ottoman conquest of Constantinople/Fall of the City
Mehmed II and his imperial project

3. Map of Constantinople dating from 1480s

4. Rumeli Hisarı

6. Who can recount the calamity of that time and place
Who can recount the calamity of that time and place? Who can describe the wailing and the cries?
They bound everyone, the male captives with cords and the women with the own veils. The infinite chains of captives who like flocks of sheep poured out of the temple [Aya Sofya] and the temple sanctuary made an extraordinary spectacle. They wept and wailed and there was none to show them mercy.
Doukas, a fifteenth-century Byzantine Historian
The plunder and enslavement of young boys and girls taken from their houses, described by Tursun Bey, a fifteenth century Ottoman Historian

7. Sultan Murad I resting after conquests, Hünernâme, late sixteenth century

8. `After this the sultan entered the City and looked about to see its great size, its situation, its grandeur and beauty, its teeming population, its loveliness, and the costliness of its churches and public buildings… When he saw that a large number had been killed, and the wholesale ruin of the city , he was filled with compassion and repented not a little at the destruction and plundering. Tears fell from his eyes as he groaned deeply and passionately, What a city have we given over to plunder and destruction!`
Kritovolus, the `official` historian of Mehmed II

9. Mehmed II and Humanism
Selections from Mehmed II’s library :
*Ptolemy’s Geography, Avicenna’s Canons, Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles, Homer’s Iliad and other texts in Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic.
*The Florentine humanist Francesco Berlinghieri dedicated his new Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Geography to “Mehmed of the Ottomans, illustrious prince and lord of the throne of God”

10. El Gran Turco, Master of the Vienna Passion, about 1470

11. Medal of Emperor John VIII Palaiologos, Pisanello, 1438-9

12. Storage jar with El Gran Turco, Florentine, 1470-80

13. Medal of Mehmed as a Young Man Inscribed (obverse) Magnus & Admiratus Soldanus (reverse) Macomet Bei (great and admired Sultan Mehmet Bey)

14. Medal 1481 Inscribed (obverse) Sultani Mohammeth Octhomani Uguli Bizantii Inperatoris 1481 (Of Sultan Mehmed, descendant of Osman, Emperor of Byzantimu, 1481) Inscribed (reverse): Mohameth Asie et Gretie Inperatoris Ymago Equestris in Exercitus/opus.constantii (Equestrian image of Mehmed, Emperor of Asia and Greece, on campaign, Work of Costanzo)

15. Medal of Mehmet II, Bertoldo Di Giovanni, 1480s
Inscribed (obverse): Mavmet Asie ac Trapesunzis Magne que Gretie Imperat. (Mehmed, emperor of Asia and Trebizond and Great Greece)
Inscribed (reverse) Gretie/Trapesunty/Asie (Greece, Treibizond, Asia)

16. Mehmed II and Humanism
Selections from Mehmed II’s library :
*Ptolemy’s Geography, Avicenna’s Canons, Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles, Homer’s Iliad and other texts in Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic.
*The Florentine humanist Francesco Berlinghieri dedicated his new Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Geography to “Mehmed of the Ottomans, illustrious prince and lord of the throne of God”

17. Portrait of Mehmed II, Gentile Bellini, 1480

18. Anonymous, Topkapı Palace Library, ca. 1480

19. Portraits of Sultan Mehmed II Left: anonymous, Topkapı Palace Library, ca Right: by Gentile Bellini,1480, London, National Gallery.

20. East is east, west is west
East is east, west is west? Right: Seated Scribe, Gentile Bellini, 1479–81 Left: Seated Artists, Persian, late 16th century

21. Portraits of Sultan Mehmed II Left: anonymous, Topkapı Palace Library, ca Right: by Gentile Bellini,1480, London, National Gallery.