Today in history, on May 29, 1453, the sword of Islam conquered Constantinople. Of all Islam’s conquests of Christian territory, this was by far the most symbolically significant. For not only was Constantinople a living and direct extension of the old 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, beginning with the First Arab Siege of Constantinople (674-678). Indeed, as Byzantine historian John Julius Norwich puts it, “Had the Saracens captured Constantinople in the seventh century rather...
