Posted on 05/29/2019 7:11:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Of all of Islam’s conquests of Christian territory, the most symbolically significant occurred today, on May 20, 1453, when Constantinople fell. For not only was “New Rome” a living and direct extension of the ancient Roman Empire and current capital of the Christian Roman Empire (or Byzantium), but its cyclopean walls had prevented Islam from entering Europe through its eastern doorway for the previous seven centuries.
On becoming Ottoman sultan, Mehmet, or Muhammad II (b. 1432, r. 1451-1481) -- “the mortal enemy of the Christians,” to quote a contemporary prelate -- made ready for war. Throughout the spring of 1453 the city watched helplessly as his forces made their way to and surrounded Constantinople by land and sea. One contemporary remarked that Muhammad’s “army seemed as numberless as grains of sand, spread... across the land from shore to shore.” In the end, some one hundred thousand fighters came.
Muhammad commenced bombardment on April 6. Although he tried to go over, through, and under the walls, he made little headway. Some six weeks after he had started pummeling Constantinople, he was no nearer his goal.
So he assembled and exhorted his men for one last-ditch effort: “As it happens in all battles, some of you will die, as it is decreed by fate for each man,” he began. “Recall the promises of our Prophet concerning fallen warriors in the Koran: the man who dies in combat shall be transported bodily to Paradise and shall dine with Mohammed in the presence of women, handsome boys, and virgins.”
Even so, Sultan Muhammad knew that rewards in the now were always preferable to promises in the hereafter.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Good read. Thanks for posting.
side story The Vikings came thru russia via rivers and one morning they were surrounding the harbor of Istanbul. The sultan came out and gave them gold to go away. Has anyone heard or read about this.
Appropriate title. *slam is not a religion. It’s a violent political movement whose goal is the establishment of a religion.
RE: The Vikings came thru russia via rivers and one morning they were surrounding the harbor of Istanbul. The sultan came out and gave them gold to go away. Has anyone heard or read about this.
If these Viking warriors were so fearsome that even the Sultan who conquered Constantinople would not want to confront them, the most interesting question for me is this -— HOW WERE THESE WARRIORS CHRISTIANIZED?
The Muslims were late comers. In 1204, the Christian armies of the 4th Crusade sacked Constantinople.
Because they quickly discovered that trading was profitable than raiding and becoming Christian made them more desirable trading partners to other Christians.
Never heard that one, but centuries before the Ottomans conquered it, the vikings who were the leaders of the Kievan Rus did sail down through Russia to Constantinople to sack it but they couldn’t overcome the walls. The story goes that after they left, the patriarch of the city sent missionaries to follow them home and convert them to Christianity, so that Constantinople wouldn’t have to worry about them coming back every year.
It wasn’t the Sultan. It happened when Constantinople was still Christian and under the Byzantine Emperors. Eventually a bunch of them became the Imperial Varangian Guard...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard
When the cross is raised once more over Constantinople, it will be good news.
It’s the Caliphate they seek to re-establish. They want to establish it globally and by any means necessary.
thanx
Watching the Vikings a dramatized series They have been to Paris and North Africa waiting for them to head to NA
I believe that only a couple of thousand Byzantines (Romans) were defending the city at the end and that an unsecured door led to the downfall. Although it was truly only a matter of time at that point. The last emperor, Constantine XI Palaeologus, went down fighting.
Make the -Hagia Sophia - a Christian Church Again !!!
I NEED me one of those!
As a freshman in college I boasted and made a bet with my suitemates that I could bring up the Fall of Constantinople as a historic issue/cause in every course in the social sciences.
Some times I had to work to come up with a weird connection in courses like English literature, but as a matter of fact the fall of Constantinople affected so much of European life that it was a seminal occurrence in Western civilization.
IMHO, the search for new trade routes to the East which eventually led to the discovery and opening up of the Americas was not a fortunate accident of history but the result of the fall of Constantinople.
When I brought it up in a class that facially had no connection it always generated a suppressed laugh by those who knew what I was doing while completely bewildering the professor.
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