Mehmed II - Administrative Actions

Administrative Actions

Mehmed II amalgamated the old Byzantine administration into the Ottoman state. He first introduced the word Politics into Arabic "Siyasah" from a book he published and claimed to be the collection of Politics doctrines of the Byzantine Caesars before him. He gathered Italian artists, humanists and Greek scholars at his court, allowed the Byzantine Church to continue functioning, ordered the patriarch to translate Christian doctrine into Turkish, and called Gentile Bellini from Venice to paint his portrait. Mehmed invited Muslim scientists and artists to his court in Constantinople, started a University, built mosques (for example, the Fatih Mosque), waterways, and Istanbul's Topkapı Palace.

Mehmed II allowed his subjects a considerable degree of religious freedom, provided they were obedient to his rule. After his conquest of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1463 he issued a firman to the Bosnian Franciscans, granting them freedom to move freely within the Empire, offer worship in their churches and monasteries, and to practice their religion free from official and unofficial persecution, insult or disturbance. His standing army was recruited from the Devshirme, a group that took first-born Christian subjects at a young age that were destined for the sultans court. The less able, but physically strong were put into the army or the sultan's personal guard, the Janissaries.

Within Constantinople, Mehmed established a millet or an autonomous religious community, and appointed the former Patriarch as religious governor of the city. His authority extended only to the Orthodox Christians within the city, and this excluded the Genoese and Venetian settlements in the suburbs, and excluded Muslim and Jewish settlers entirely. This method allowed for an indirect rule of the Christian Byzantines and allowed the occupants to feel relatively autonomous even as Mehmed II began the Turkish remodeling of the city, turning it into the Turkish capital, which it remained until the 1920s.

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Famous quotes containing the word actions:

    The course of my long life hath reached at last
    In fragile bark o’er a tempestuous sea
    The common harbor, where must rendered be
    Account for all the actions of the past.
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)