As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate disclosure.

Home / People / Mehmed II

Historical person

Mehmed II

1432–1481

Mehmed II became Ottoman sultan twice and conquered Constantinople in 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire. He rebuilt the city as an imperial capital, expanded Ottoman rule through the Balkans and Anatolia and developed a centralised court and legal order.

His campaigns also brought severe destruction, enslavement and forced movement of populations. Mehmed died in 1481 while preparing another expedition, leaving a powerful but contested empire. Mehmed II was born in Edirne and died in Gebze.

In Roger Crowley’s Constantinople, in the spring of 1453 Sultan Mehmed II brought the resources of the expanding Ottoman state against Constantinople, the diminished but still formidable capital of the Byzantine Empire. Constantine XI Palaiologos organised a defence built around the Theodosian walls, a small Byzantine force and foreign volunteers led by the Genoese commander Giovanni Giustiniani. In G. A. Henty’s A Knight of the White Cross, Historical figures including Mehmed II connect the fictional action directly to the documented events. Mehmed II is treated fictionally in Peter Darman’s Count of Thrace, Peter Darman’s Kingmaker, Christopher Nicole’s Ottoman, Jason Goodwin’s The Bellini Card, and Christian Cameron’s Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Six.

Periods

Periods linked to Mehmed II

Byzantine Empire476–1453 CE Fall of Constantinople1453 CE

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Mehmed II (6 series)

Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade in Order

by Christian Cameron 7 books 4.5(3,123)

The second Tom Swan serial sends the merchant, scholar and intelligence agent towards Hungary as Mehmed II prepares to attack Belgrade. The fortress controls a principal route into central Europe, but the states that depend on its survival remain divided by dynastic interests, trade and distrust. Across seven…

All books in this series

Tom Swan and the Last Spartans in Order

by Christian Cameron 4 books 4.5(1,853)

The third Tom Swan adventure returns to the networks of collectors, bankers, soldiers and spies that connect Renaissance Italy with England and the Ottoman world. After Belgrade, Swan’s knowledge of classical antiquity is inseparable from the reputation he has acquired as an agent capable of surviving difficult missions.…

All books in this series

Alpine Warrior in Order

by Peter Darman 9 books 4.5(9,135)

The Alpine Warrior series follows Leon Muller, a young Bernese exile who becomes a Swiss mercenary in the middle of the fifteenth century. His career begins amid the Old Zürich War before carrying him into the wars of northern Italy, the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the…

All books in this series

House of Niccolo in Order

by Dorothy Dunnett 8 books 4.6(4,501)

The House of Niccolò follows Claes, later Nicholas de Fleury, from an underestimated Bruges apprentice into an international merchant, banker and political operator. Set across fifteenth-century Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa and the Black Sea, the series connects commerce, dynastic rivalry, war, family secrets and the ancestry of characters…

All books in this series

Tom Swan and the Head of St George in Order

by Christian Cameron 6 books 4.3(3,007)

The first Tom Swan serial begins in the closing years of the Hundred Years’ War and follows a young English merchant-scholar into Renaissance Italy and the eastern Mediterranean. Swan seeks manuscripts, relics and classical objects but repeatedly becomes useful to cardinals, merchants and rulers who need an adaptable…

All books in this series

Yashim the Ottoman Detective in Order

by Jason Goodwin 5 books 3.8(16,235)

The Yashim the Ottoman Detective series follows a eunuch intelligence agent through Istanbul between 1836 and 1842, during the final years of Mahmud II and the accession of Abdülmecid I. Yashim’s unusual legal and social position allows him to move through the imperial palace, harems, embassies, markets and…

All books in this series

Standalone books

Standalone books featuring Mehmed II (3 books)

Non Fiction

Non Fiction featuring Mehmed II (2 books)

Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.