Den Kontext mal in einer aktuellen Sicht aus Goffman: The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe. 2004 (Siehe Literaturtipps im Osm. Reich Subforum)
S. 51 ff.:
"Creating an imperial center: the winning of Constantinople
The new sultan, however, had no shortage of problems in 1451. A pretender to the throne – Orhan – lived ensconced and menacing in the “Turkish” quarter of Constantinople. Even worse, Çandarlı Halil, the high Ottoman official whom Mehmed held responsible for recalling his father in 1444 and staging the janissary revolt that had deposed him in 1446, five years later remained in power as grand vizier, as representative of powerful frontier lords and the religious elite (ulema), and as the principal advocate for peace with the Byzantines and other European powers. For Mehmed, it seems, Halil was also a reminder of his shameful deposition and the almost universal perception that he would be an ineffective and unthreatening ruler. The opportunity simultaneously to remove the danger of Orhan, to show himself an effective and devout commander, and to bring down a powerful and intimidating Ottoman statesman (as well as the pseudo-aristocracy that he represented) decided Mehmed finally to realize for Islam the conquest of Constantinople.
The story of Byzantium’s fall has been told many times,25 for it, more than any other event in Ottoman history, was also a major episode in European history. Indeed, it is even considered by many a pivotal event, as the moment when the medieval European world ended and the modern one began. There is a certain irony in this assessment. First, the city had been taken and pillaged before, by the Fourth Crusaders in 1204, when the blind Venetian doge Dandolo led a zealous and brutal army against it. It was then and not in 1453 that most of the artwork and wealth of Constantinople vanished – into Venetian and other palaces and public buildings – and that most cultural artifacts were destroyed; it was in 1204 and not in 1453 that the Great Library was destroyed. Second, little of the fabulous wealth for which Byzantium was known remained in 1453. Not only had the city already been ransacked two and a half centuries earlier, but also the Byzantines had never regained a hinterland that could have financed a significant renaissance. Latin and Turkic lords held most Byzantine lands, and those that remained were swallowed up by the Ottomans during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The fact that there were only some 8,500 men to defend the city against an Ottoman army of some 50,000 reveals not only the self-sacrificing futility of the effort, but also how inconsequential the Byzantine entity had become. In other words, Constantinople was significant to Christendom mainly as an emblematic bulwark against Islam and various hordes – whether Mongol or Turkic. The immediate consequences of its fall were symbolic. Its practical significance lay in the future rather than in the present, for control of the city was eventually to bring the Ottoman dynasty enormous wealth, prestige, and power.
Although Mehmed II certainly was aware of the symbolic centrality of the city for Europe, his motivation for its conquest was as much domestic as international. Factionalism divided his administration. On one hand, a “peace party,” represented by Çandarlı Halil and other ulema officials and inherited by Mehmed from his father, advised caution and consolidation; on the other, a “war party” led by the sultan’s warriortutor Zaganos [soll aus altem ehrwürdigen griechischen Geschlecht kommen], advocated conflict. Mehmed’s intimacy with his tutor as well as his bitterness against the man who had engineered his ousting in 1446 must have influenced his decision to act aggressively. Nevertheless, the attack upon the grand but weakened city also made political and ideological sense, especially for a sultan who was almost universally perceived as indecisive and ineffective.
The young sultan’s principal threat came not from the Byzantines themselves, but from potential allies, and especially the Genoese and Venetians whose powerful navies could relieve the siege by sea. So, his first move was to build a castle just across the Bosphorus Straits from Anadoluhisar, which his great-grandfather Bayezid had constructed half a century before. Within a year after his succession, Rumelihisar had been completed, and cannons placed in the two fortresses effectively sealed the sea passage from the Black Sea. This maneuver diminished the likelihood of reinforcements; moreover, the declared neutrality of the Genoese colony in Galata, the capacity to shift a fleet over land and launch it into the Golden Horn, the casting and deployment of massive cannon against the city’s land walls, the doggedness especially of the janissary corps, and a dispirited sense of inescapability among the defenders – heightened perhaps by the preference of a large segment of the city’s Greek population for Ottoman over Latin government – secured Constantinople for the Ottomans in May 1453 after a 54-day siege. With news arriving that same month that Venetian and Hungarian troops were on their way, the defenders probably never learned how nearly the Ottomans, fearing an attack from their rear, came to raising the siege just before the final assault.
As the city had been taken by assault, Mehmed was legally obliged to let his troops seize Constantinople’s goods and enslave its inhabitants, and a good deal of plundering occurred. Nevertheless, perhaps because the population of the city was already destitute and many of its districts virtually abandoned, the scale of destruction paled in comparison to the sack of 1204. Furthermore, Mehmed II intended to turn this city into his capital and did not want to inherit an empty husk. Consequently, he limited the plundering to one day, protected several important structures from it (including the great church Hagia Sofia, which he consecrated as a mosque), and immediately proclaimed the city his new capital. With the capture of Constantinople the Ottoman Empire gained a hub.
Ideologically, the monarchy now considered itself a great conquering Islamic dynasty that by reducing Byzantium inherited also the legacy of Rome. Militarily, the city’s formidable defenses at the center of an enormous territory granted the state a sense of security and a launching point for further conquests. Economically, the new capital’s control of extensive hinterlands in the Balkans and western Anatolia, as well as seaborne access to the goods of the known world, would turn it into a principal financial and commercial gathering place and bring great wealth to its inhabitants and the imperial treasury. Socially, the city’s depopulated state in 1453 provided an opportunity for the Ottomans to re-form it in their image, and, at first by force and then by preference, Armenian, Greek, Jewish, foreign, and MuslimTurkish settlers soon had constructed a polylingual, polyethnic, and polyreligious metropolis that existed and thrived in striking contrast to non-Ottoman cities in the Mediterranean and European worlds."
25 For Ottoman policies toward the city immediately after the conquest, see Halil ˙Inalcık, “The policy of Mehmed II toward the Greek population of Istanbul and the Byzantine buildings of the city,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23(1970): 213–49.
Ich könnte auch noch was aus S. Yerasimos: Konstantinopel. Istanbuls historisches Erbe. 2000 auf deutsch scannen, um die Umstände kurz vor und nach der Eroberung zu beleuchten, falls Interesse. Übrigens steht darin, dass nach 1350 keine Ikonen mehr in Konstantinopel hergestellt wurden. Interessant...
Und natürlich ist es grausam an vorderster Linie zu kämpfen. Ob nun das Schwert in den Bauch gestoßen wird, oder der Kopf abgehackt wird, ist eh egal. Und dann glauben im Blutrausch leider oft auch Frauen und Kinder dran, alles schon dagewesen. Jedenfalls waren die Osmanen insgesamt (!) nicht besonders grausamer, als andere Zeitgenossen in anderen Teilen der Welt, das wollte ich nur sagen. (Beispiele von besonders "grausamen" Gouverneuren, Sultanen, etc. gibt es natürlich, aber die gab es auch bei christl. Reichen).
@Themi: Ne, lass mal diesen Thread zum Eroberung von Konstantinopel-Thread ausbauen. Vielleicht ist ja im Subforum Osm. Reich noch einer? Wenn nicht, kannste hier ja den Titel ändern. THX! :winke: