Original authentic Islamic coin of Ottoman Empire
Ottoman silver coin measuring 10-11mm. in diameter .92gm. NO HOLE. Original Islamic coin. Not cleaned. Rare and interesting as
pictured. Obverse
Around a star, inside a circle, inscriptions comprising the name of the sultan and the date of striking; presence of a grenetis.
Script:
Arabic
Lettering:
محمد بن مراد هان عز نصره ٨٦٥
Reverse
Around a star, inside a circle, inscriptions with the name of the workshop; presence of a grenetis.
Script:
Arabic
Lettering:
خلد ملكه ضرب أدرنة
Mints
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Adrina, modern-day Edirne, Turkey |
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Amasya, Turkey |
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Ayasoluk, ancient Ephesus, modern-day Selçuk, Turkey |
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Bursa, Bithynia, Turkey |
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Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul, Turkey (476-1923) |
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Novar, modern-day Novo Brdo, Kosovo |
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Siroz, modern-day Serres, Greece |
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Üsküp, modern-day Skopje, North Macedonia |
Comments
Since the reign of Murad I, the Ottoman sultans had made Edirne their capital.
Following the capture of Constantinople in 1453 (857 A.H.) by Mehmet II,
the capital was transferred to this new city, and retained its status
until the fall of the Empire.
The 7th sultan of the Ottoman Empire and 4th son of Murad II, Mehmet II, also known as the Conqueror, reigned twice.
He first acceded to the throne at the age of 12 (in 1444) and remained
on it until his 14th year, when he gave way to his father before
resuming power in 1451 until his death in 1481.
His conquests overcame the remnants of the Byzantine Empire: Constantine
XI, the last Byzantine emperor, probably lost his life during the
capture of Constantinople, the despotate of Morea fell in 1460, followed
by the Empire of Trebizond the following year and finally the
principality of Theodoros in 1475. The Greek territories thus remained
under Muslim rule for the next 354 years.
All these conquests gave the sultan total control over the Black Sea, the slave trade and the Silk Road. Authenticity guaranteed.
You are bidding on the exact
ISLAMIC coin pictured and described above.
| Coin is in good condition and very rare and nice inclusion to the finest collection. |
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Mehmed
II (Ottoman Turkish: محمد ثانى, romanized: Meḥmed-i s̱ānī; Turkish: II.
Mehmed, pronounced [icinˈdʒi ˈmehmet]; 30 March 1432 – 3 May 1481),
commonly known as Mehmed the Conqueror (Ottoman Turkish: ابو الفتح,
romanized: Ebū'l-fetḥ, lit. 'the Father of Conquest'; Turkish: Fâtih
Sultan Mehmed), was twice the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from August
1444 to September 1446 and then later from February 1451 to May 1481.
In
Mehmed II's first reign, he defeated the crusade led by John Hunyadi
after the Hungarian incursions into his country broke the conditions of
the truce per the Treaties of Edirne and Szeged. When Mehmed II ascended
the throne again in 1451, he strengthened the Ottoman Navy and made
preparations to attack Constantinople. At the age of 21, he conquered
Constantinople and brought an end to the Byzantine Empire. After the
conquest, Mehmed claimed the title caesar of Rome (Ottoman Turkish:
قیصر روم, romanized: qayṣar-i Rūm), based on the fact that
Constantinople had been the seat and capital of the surviving Eastern
Roman Empire since its consecration in 330 AD by Emperor Constantine I.
The claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople,
albeit not by most European monarchs. Mehmed II viewed the Ottoman state
as a continuation of the Roman Empire for the remainder of his life,
seeing himself as "continuing" the Empire rather than "replacing" it.
Mehmed
continued his conquests in Anatolia with its reunification and in
Southeast Europe as far west as Bosnia. At home, he made many political
and social reforms. He encouraged the arts and sciences, and by the end
of his reign, his rebuilding program had changed Constantinople into a
thriving imperial capital. He is considered a hero in modern-day Turkey
and parts of the wider Muslim world. Among other things, Istanbul's
Fatih district, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge and Fatih Mosque are named
after him.
Mehmed II was born on 30 March 1432, in Edirne, then the
capital city of the Ottoman state. His father was Sultan Murad II
(1404–1451) and his mother Hüma Hatun, a slave of uncertain origin.
When
Mehmed II was eleven years old he was sent to Amasya with his two lalas
(advisors) to govern and thus gain experience, per the custom of
Ottoman rulers before his time.[8] Sultan Murad II also sent a number of
teachers for him to study under. This Islamic education had a great
impact in molding Mehmed's mindset and reinforcing his Muslim beliefs.
He was influenced in his practice of Islamic epistemology by
practitioners of science, particularly by his mentor, Molla Gürani, and
he followed their approach. The influence of Akshamsaddin in Mehmed's
life became predominant from a young age, especially in the imperative
of fulfilling his Islamic duty to overthrow the Byzantine Empire by
conquering Constantinople.
After Murad II made peace with Hungary on
12 June 1444, he abdicated the throne in favour of his 12-year-old son
Mehmed II in July[10]/August[9] 1444.
During Mehmed II's first reign,
he defeated the crusade led by John Hunyadi after the Hungarian
incursions into his country broke the conditions of the truce per the
Treaties of Edirne and Szeged in September 1444. Cardinal Julian
Cesarini, the representative of the Pope, had convinced the king of
Hungary that breaking the truce with Muslims was not a
betrayal.[citation needed] At this time Mehmed II asked his father Murad
II to reclaim the throne, but Murad II refused. According to the
17th-century chronicles, Mehmed II wrote, "If you are the sultan, come
and lead your armies. If I am the sultan I hereby order you to come and
lead my armies." Then, Murad II led the Ottoman army and won the Battle
of Varna on 10 November 1444. Halil Inalcik states that Mehmed II did
not ask for his father. Instead, it was Çandarlı Halil Pasha's effort to
bring Murad II back to the throne.
In 1446, while Murad II returned
to the throne, Mehmed retained the title of sultan but only acted as a
governor of Manisa. Following the death of Murad II in 1451, Mehmed II
became sultan for the second time. Ibrahim II of Karaman invaded the
disputed area and instigated various revolts against Ottoman rule.
Mehmed II conducted his first campaign against İbrahim of Karaman;
Byzantines threatened to release Ottoman claimant Orhan.
Conquests
Conquest of Constantinople
Main article: Fall of Constantinople
The Ottoman Empire at the beginning of Mehmed II's second reign
Roumeli Hissar Castle, built by Sultan Mehmed II between 1451 and 1452, before the Fall of Constantinople
When
Mehmed II ascended the throne again in 1451, he devoted himself to
strengthening the Ottoman navy and made preparations for an attack on
Constantinople. In the narrow Bosphorus Straits, the fortress
Anadoluhisarı had been built by his great-grandfather Bayezid I on the
Asian side; Mehmed erected an even stronger fortress called Rumelihisarı
on the European side, and thus gained complete control of the strait.
Having completed his fortresses, Mehmed proceeded to levy a toll on
ships passing within reach of their cannon. A Venetian vessel ignoring
signals to stop was sunk with a single shot and all the surviving
sailors beheaded, except for the captain, who was impaled and mounted as
a human scarecrow as a warning to further sailors on the strait.
Abu
Ayyub al-Ansari, the companion and standard bearer of the Islamic
prophet Muhammad, had died during the first Siege of Constantinople
(674–678). As Mehmed II's army approached Constantinople, Mehmed's
sheikh Akshamsaddin discovered the tomb of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari. After
the conquest, Mehmed built Eyüp Sultan Mosque at the site to emphasize
the importance of the conquest to the Islamic world and highlight his
role as ghazi.
In 1453, Mehmed commenced the siege of Constantinople
with an army between 80,000 and 200,000 troops, an artillery train of
over seventy large field pieces, and a navy of 320 vessels, the bulk of
them transports and storeships. The city was surrounded by sea and land;
the fleet at the entrance of the Bosphorus stretched from shore to
shore in the form of a crescent, to intercept or repel any assistance
for Constantinople from the sea. In early April, the Siege of
Constantinople began. At first, the city's walls held off the Turks,
even though Mehmed's army used the new bombard designed by Orban, a
giant cannon similar to the Dardanelles Gun. The harbor of the Golden
Horn was blocked by a boom chain and defended by twenty-eight warships.
On
22 April, Mehmed transported his lighter warships overland, around the
Genoese colony of Galata, and into the Golden Horn's northern shore;
eighty galleys were transported from the Bosphorus after paving a route,
little over one mile, with wood. Thus, the Byzantines stretched their
troops over a longer portion of the walls. About a month later,
Constantinople fell, on 29 May, following a fifty-seven-day siege. After
this conquest, Mehmed moved the Ottoman capital from Adrianople to
Constantinople.
When Sultan Mehmed II stepped into the ruins of the
Boukoleon, known to the Ottomans and Persians as the Palace of the
Caesars, probably built over a thousand years before by Theodosius II,
he uttered the famous lines of Saadi:
Some Muslim scholars claimed
that a hadith in Musnad Ahmad referred specifically to Mehmed's conquest
of Constantinople, seeing it as the fulfillment of a prophecy and a
sign of the approaching apocalypse.
The entry of Sultan Mehmed II into Constantinople, painting by Fausto Zonaro (1854–1929)
After
the conquest of Constantinople, Mehmed claimed the title of caesar of
the Roman Empire (Qayser-i Rûm), based on the assertion that
Constantinople had been the seat and capital of the Roman Empire since
330 AD and whoever possessed the Imperial capital was the ruler of the
empire. The contemporary scholar George of Trebizond supported his
claim.[23][24] The claim was not recognized by the Catholic Church and
most of, if not all, Western Europe, but was recognized by the Eastern
Orthodox Church. Mehmed had installed Gennadius Scholarius, a staunch
antagonist of the West, as the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople
with all the ceremonial elements, ethnarch (or milletbashi) status, and
rights of property that made him the second largest landlord in the
empire after the sultan himself in 1454, and in turn, Gennadius II
recognized Mehmed the Conqueror as the successor to the throne.
Emperor
Constantine XI Palaiologos died without producing an heir, and had
Constantinople not fallen to the Ottomans, he likely would have been
succeeded by the sons of his deceased elder brother. Those children were
taken into the palace service of Mehmed after the fall of
Constantinople. The oldest boy, renamed Has Murad, became a personal
favorite of Mehmed and served as beylerbey of the Balkans. The younger
son, renamed Mesih Pasha, became admiral of the Ottoman fleet and
sanjak-bey of the Gallipoli. He eventually served twice as Grand Vizier
under Mehmed's son, Bayezid II.
After the fall of Constantinople,
Mehmed would also go on to conquer the Despotate of Morea in the
Peloponnese in two campaigns in 1458 and 1460 and the Empire of
Trebizond in northeastern Anatolia in 1461. The last two vestiges of
Byzantine rule were thus absorbed by the Ottoman Empire. The conquest of
Constantinople bestowed immense glory and prestige on the country.
There is some historical evidence that, 10 years after the conquest of
Constantinople, Mehmed II visited the site of Troy and boasted that he
had avenged the Trojans by conquering the Greeks (Byzantines).
Conquest of Serbia (1454–1459)
Mehmed
II's first campaigns after Constantinople were in the direction of
Serbia, which had been an Ottoman vassal state since the Battle of
Kosovo in 1389. The Ottoman ruler had a connection with the Serbian
Despotate – one of Murad II's wives was Mara Branković – and he used
that fact to claim some Serbian islands. That Đurađ Branković had
recently made an alliance with the Hungarians, and had paid the tribute
irregularly, may have been important considerations. When Serbia refused
these demands, the Ottoman army set out from Edirne towards Serbia in
1454. Smederevo was besieged, as was Novo Brdo, the most important
Serbian metal mining and smelting center. Ottomans and Hungarians fought
during the years till 1456.
The Ottoman army advanced as far as
Belgrade, where it attempted but failed to conquer the city from John
Hunyadi at the Siege of Belgrade, on 14 July 1456. A period of relative
peace ensued in the region until the Fall of Belgrade in 1521, during
the reign of Mehmed's great-grandson, known as Sultan Suleiman the
Magnificent. The sultan retreated to Edirne, and Đurađ Branković
regained possession of some parts of Serbia. Before the end of the year,
however, the 79-year-old Branković died. Serbian independence survived
him for only two years, when the Ottoman Empire formally annexed his
lands following dissension among his widow and three remaining sons.
Lazar, the youngest, poisoned his mother and exiled his brothers, but he
died soon afterwards. In the continuing turmoil the oldest brother
Stefan Branković gained the throne but was ousted in March 1459. After
that the Serbian throne was offered to Stephen Tomašević, the future
king of Bosnia, which infuriated Sultan Mehmed. He sent his army, which
captured Smederevo in June 1459, ending the existence of the Serbian
Despotate.
Conquest of the Morea (1458–1460)
15th century portrait of Mehmed II (1432–1481), showing Italian influence
The
Despotate of the Morea bordered the southern Ottoman Balkans. The
Ottomans had already invaded the region under Murad II, destroying the
Byzantine defenses – the Hexamilion wall – at the Isthmus of Corinth in
1446. Before the final siege of Constantinople, Mehmed ordered Ottoman
troops to attack the Morea. The despots, Demetrios Palaiologos and
Thomas Palaiologos, brothers of the last emperor, failed to send any
aid. The chronic instability and the tribute payment to the Turks, after
the peace treaty of 1446 with Mehmed II, resulted in an Albanian-Greek
revolt against them, during which the brothers invited Ottoman troops to
help put down the revolt. At this time, a number of influential Moreote
Greeks and Albanians made private peace with Mehmed. After more years
of incompetent rule by the despots, their failure to pay their annual
tribute to the Sultan, and finally their own revolt against Ottoman
rule, Mehmed entered the Morea in May 1460. The capital Mistra fell
exactly seven years after Constantinople, on 29 May 1460. Demetrios
ended up a prisoner of the Ottomans and his younger brother Thomas fled.
By the end of the summer, the Ottomans had achieved the submission of
virtually all cities possessed by the Greeks.
A few holdouts
remained for a time. The island of Monemvasia refused to surrender, and
it was ruled for a brief time by a Catalan corsair. When the population
drove him out they obtained the consent of Thomas to submit to the
Pope's protection before the end of 1460.[34] The Mani Peninsula, on the
Morea's south end, resisted under a loose coalition of local clans, and
the area then came under the rule of Venice. The last holdout was
Salmeniko, in the Morea's northwest. Graitzas Palaiologos was the
military commander there, stationed at Salmeniko Castle (also known as
Castle Orgia). While the town eventually surrendered, Graitzas and his
garrison and some town residents held out in the castle until July 1461,
when they escaped and reached Venetian territory.
Conquest of Trebizond (1460–1461)
Emperors
of Trebizond formed alliances through royal marriages with various
Muslim rulers. Emperor John IV of Trebizond married his daughter to the
son of his brother-in-law, Uzun Hasan, sultan of the Aq Qoyunlu (also
known as White Sheep Turkomans), in return for his promise to defend
Trebizond. He also secured promises of support from the Turkish beys of
Sinope and Karamania, and from the king and princes of Georgia. The
Ottomans were motivated to capture Trebizond or to get an annual
tribute. In the time of Murad II, they first attempted to take the
capital by sea in 1442, but bad weather made the landings difficult and
the attempt was repulsed. While Mehmed II was away laying siege to
Belgrade in 1456, the Ottoman governor of Amasya attacked Trebizond, and
although he was defeated, he took many prisoners and extracted a heavy
tribute.
After John's death in 1459, his brother David came to
power and intrigued with various European powers for help against the
Ottomans, speaking of wild schemes that included the conquest of
Jerusalem. Mehmed II eventually heard of these intrigues and was further
provoked to action by David's demand that Mehmed remit the tribute
imposed on his brother.
Mehmed the Conqueror's response came in
the summer of 1461. He led a sizable army from Bursa by land and the
Ottoman navy by sea, first to Sinope, joining forces with Ismail's
brother Ahmed (the Red). He captured Sinope and ended the official reign
of the Jandarid dynasty, although he appointed Ahmed as the governor of
Kastamonu and Sinope, only to revoke the appointment the same year.
Various other members of the Jandarid dynasty were offered important
functions throughout the history of the Ottoman Empire. During the march
to Trebizond, Uzun Hasan sent his mother Sara Khatun as an ambassador;
while they were climbing the steep heights of Zigana on foot, she asked
Sultan Mehmed why he was undergoing such hardship for the sake of
Trebizond. Mehmed replied:
Mother, in my hand is the sword of
Islam, without this hardship I should not deserve the name of ghazi,
and today and tomorrow I should have to cover my face in shame before
Allah.
Having isolated Trebizond, Mehmed quickly swept down upon
it before the inhabitants knew he was coming, and he placed it under
siege. The city held out for a month before the emperor David
surrendered on 15 August 1461.
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