Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror took Constantinople the Great, bringing ships to it by land and by sea; according to Ibn al-Imad's Shadharat al-Dhahab he besieged it for fifty days, entered it on Wednesday 20 Jumada al-Akhira 857 AH and prayed the Friday prayer in Hagia Sophia 1. Al-Sallabi dates his entry into the city to midday on Tuesday 20 Jumada al-Ula 857 AH, 29 May 1453 CE 2. He relates that Mehmed had looked to the city since he became sultan in 855 AH; he built the fortress of Rumeli Hisari at the narrowest point of the Bosphorus and brought the Hungarian engineer Orban to make cannon 3 4. The army reached the outskirts of the city on Thursday 26 Rabi' al-Awwal 857 AH, 6 April 1453 CE, some two hundred and fifty thousand strong 5.
When the ships could not pass the chain that guarded the Golden Horn, more than seventy of them were hauled over planks greased with oil and fat for three miles in a single night 6 7. In the council the vizier Halil Pasha called for withdrawal; Zaganos Pasha opposed him and Shaykh Aq Shams al-Din supported Zaganos 8. In the final assault the defenders' commander Giustiniani was wounded and withdrew, and Emperor Constantine fought on until he was killed 9.
Mehmed turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque and gave the Christians freedom to practise their rites and to choose their religious heads, and they elected Gennadios patriarch 10. Al-Sallabi notes that the city had withstood eleven earlier Muslim attempts 5.
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