The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire Read Free Page B

two, who eventually succeeded his father as Vlad III, came to be known as Tepeş, or the Impaler, the historical prototype of Dracula; his younger brother was Radu cel Frumos, or the Handsome. Both of them remained hostages until after the death of their father, after which they were set up in turn as Ottoman puppets in Wallachia.
    The Albanian ruler John Castrioti was also forced to become an Ottoman vassal, and in 1423 he sent his son as a hostage to Edirne, where he nominally converted to Islam, taking the name Iskender. He became one of Murat’s favourites, accompanying him on campaigns in both Europe and Asia as a high-ranking Ottoman commander. Later, after he had returned to his native land, he came to be known as Skanderbeg, becoming Albania’s greatest national hero in its struggle against Ottoman domination.
    Murat then set out to regain Thessalonica, which his uncle Süleyman had ceded in 1403 to the Byzantines, who two decades later gave the city over to the Venetians since they were unable to defend it themselves. When Murat besieged Thessalonica the Venetians made an alliance with the Aydınıd emir Cüneyd, supporting him in his effort to regain the territory his beylik had lost to the Ottomans. Murat sent his commander Hamza against Cüneyd, who in April 1425 was defeated and killed, bringing the Aydınıd beylik to an end. Hamza went on to invade the Menteşe beylik , and that same year it too was conquered and terminated. During the next five years Murat further enlarged his territory in Anatolia, taking the Canik region along the Black Sea coast and annexing the Germiyan beylik , as well as putting down a number of rebellious Türkmen tribes.
    Murat then turned his attention back to Thessalonica, leading his forces in a final attack that brought about the city’s surrender on 29 March 1430, after which 7,000 of its inhabitants were carried off into slavery. The fall of Thessalonica led John VIII to seek help from the West, and he proposed to Pope Martin V that a council be called to reconcile the Greek and Latin Churches, which had been estranged for four centuries. This gave rise to the Council of Ferrara-Florence, in which the Byzantine delegation was headed by John VIII and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Joseph II. The union of the Churches was finally agreed upon on 5 July 1439, uniting the Greek and Latin Churches under the aegis of the Pope, Eugenius IV, who then called for a crusade to save Constantinople from the Turks. But the union was very unpopular among the people and clergy of Constantinople, and so the Byzantine Empire was deeply divided as it faced a showdown with its mortal enemy.
    Between campaigns Murat usually returned to his capital at Edirne, though he also spent time in the old capital of Bursa, where in the years 1424-6 he erected an imperial mosque complex called the Muradiye. A decade later he built a mosque of the same name in his new capital as well as a palace called Edirne Sarayı, where he housed his harem. The palace comprised a number of pavilions on an island in the Tunca, one of two rivers that nearly encircle the city.
    According to Islamic law, the sultan was allowed four wives in his harem, although he could have as many concubines as he pleased. Murat’s first son, Ahmet, was born to one of his concubines in 1420, the year before Murat became sultan. His second son, Alaeddin Ali, was born in 1430 to Murat’s favourite wife, Hadice Hatun (Lady), a Türkmen princess. His third son, the future Mehmet II, was born in Edirne Sarayı on 30 March 1432 to a concubine named Hüma Hatun.
    Nothing is known of Hüma Hatun’s origins, other than the testimony of contemporary sources that she was a slave girl, which means that she would not have been Turkish, for by law Muslims could not be enslaved. The only mention of her is in the fragmentary remains of the deed of a vakιf , or pious foundation, where she is identified simply as Hatun bint Abdullah, ‘the Lady, daughter