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Few events have shaped the course of Islamic civilisation as profoundly as the conquest of Makkah in 630 CE and the conquest of Constantinople (later Istanbul) in 1453 CE. Although separated by more than eight centuries and unfolding under vastly different sociopolitical and military circumstances, the two events occupy a unique place in the Muslim historical consciousness. Each represented far more than a military triumph.
Each symbolized the victory of tawhid over systems perceived as having become estranged from divine guidance. Each transformed a city that had long stood as a centre of political, religious, and cultural influence into a new center of Islamic civilization.
Yet while their ultimate civilizational objectives were remarkably similar, the manner in which they were achieved differed considerably. Those differences reveal not a contradiction but the distinction between the timeless normative example established by the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) and the historical realities within which later Muslim rulers governed.
Constantinople occupied a position in world history that was, in several respects, comparable to and equally remarkable as that of Makkah, though in a completely different framework. For more than a millennium it served as the capital of the Byzantine Empire, the political heir of Rome and one of the most powerful empires the world had known. It functioned as a formidable military fortress, a flourishing commercial hub, and the seat of Eastern Christendom. Its imposing walls symbolized imperial permanence, while its magnificent churches, foremost among them Hagia Sophia, embodied Byzantine religious and cultural achievement.
To Muslims, however, Constantinople also represented one of the foremost political cores opposing the unhindered expansion of Islam as a worldview, value system, and civilization, and only secondarily as a dominant sociopolitical reality. Its eventual conquest had been foretold in a well-known Prophetic tradition that praised both its conqueror and the army destined to accomplish the task.
Constantinople thus came to symbolize centuries of organized Christian ideological and military resistance to the spread and consolidation of the Islamic mission. It epitomized the evolving relationship between the two universes initially characterized by curiosity, then by apologetics, theological disputations, and polemics, and ultimately by political and military confrontations of every kind. These developments, in turn, laid some of the earliest foundations of what has, over the centuries, evolved into contemporary global Islamophobia.
What followed surpassed the expectations of both friend and foe. The inhabitants of Makkah, many of whom had persecuted the Prophet, tortured his followers, confiscated their property, forced them into exile, and repeatedly sought their destruction, awaited what had traditionally followed conquest in Arabia: retaliation. Instead, the Prophet assembled the people before him and declared, "Go, for you are free." With only a handful of exceptions involving individuals responsible for particularly grave crimes, a general amnesty was proclaimed.
This extraordinary act transformed the conquest from a military victory into a moral triumph. The Prophet demonstrated that the objective of Islam was not revenge but reconciliation, not humiliation but guidance, and not domination but liberation. He entered Makkah not as a conqueror intoxicated by power but as a servant of Almighty Allah humbled by victory.
His immediate concern was not the punishment of his former enemies, but the purification of the Kaʿbah accompanied, as a long‑term undertaking, by the opening, liberating, and purifying of people's hearts and minds. The idols that surrounded it were removed, thereby restoring the holy sanctuary to the worship of Allah alone. The buildings remained. The city remained. Even the people largely remained. What changed was the spiritual identity and civilizational trajectory of Makkah. Falsehood and barbarism departed, while tawhid and enlightenment returned to their rightful home. In this way, the natural and primordial order of things was reborn in its original harmony.
The fortifications of cities were thus both symbolic and practical. They impeded not only the physical arrival of Muslims but also the arrival of Islam as an idea and a civilizational alternative. They functioned simultaneously as physical and conceptual barriers that had to be overcome.
The formidable strength of the walls of Constantinople, for example, epitomized the tenacity of resistance and the multilayered obstacles standing in the way of the arrival and free presentation of the truth of Islam. Since this resistance had become institutionalized and was woven into the very fabric of the city's political, religious, and social order, the exclusion of Islam as an idea and a way of life likewise became institutionalized and safeguarded at all costs.
Ordinary people were rarely afforded the opportunity to encounter Islam on its own terms. Instead, they were largely kept in the dark about what was actually transpiring at the level where the real civilizational and intellectual contest was taking place. It was precisely these barriers that the Islamic concept of conquest, or fath, strove to remove. Once they had been dismantled, the principal objective had essentially been achieved.
However, because the forces of falsehood, tyranny, and manipulation never cease their efforts, and lest conditions revert to their former state - thereby frustrating the very purpose of the fath - cities and entire regions were subsequently brought under the political authority of Islam. This was not an end in itself but a means of preserving an ethos grounded in justice, security, and freedom, within which the message of Islam could continue to be articulated openly and people could live according to their convictions without coercion or systematic suppression.
Muslim rulers, hence, were conceived not as rulers in the conventional sense but as servants of both heaven and earth. They understood that all sovereignty and ultimate authority belong to Almighty Allah alone and that political power was merely a trust (amanah) to be exercised in His service and for the welfare of His creation. As strange as it may seem, Muslims are entrusted with the care, protection, and welfare of non-Muslims as well.
By the same token, certain historical policies adopted by some Muslim rulers towards non-Muslim communities, which may outwardly appear restrictive or unfavorable when viewed in isolation, should be understood inside their proper historical and civilizational context. In many instances, they were intended to address the accumulated effects of centuries of manipulation, institutionalized prejudice, misinformation, and distortion. They functioned, as it were, like bitter medicine prescribed to cure deep-seated ailments. They operated as provisional necessities, directed towards the formation of a fairer and more enduring order.
Military success, therefore, was never a final objective. It simply removed the obstacles that had prevented the free proclamation of the truth. Once those barriers were lifted, the decision remained entirely with people themselves. They were invited - not compelled - to choose their path with clarity and credence. Hence, while the word "conquest" may be used for convenience, it should always be employed with reservation and accompanied by its richer Qur'anic counterpart, fath, whose semantic and spiritual scopes extend far beyond military victory.
Accordingly, the Prophet Muhammad was not a conqueror in the conventional sense of the word. He was an opener, a liberator, and a remover of impediments. The same applies to later Muslim leaders whose victories are remembered within the Islamic tradition as futuh (openings), including Sultan Mehmed II, known as al-Fatih ("the Opener"). Their enduring legacy is least defined by territorial gain or political supremacy. But, of course, Islamic history is so rich, expansive, and diverse that it inevitably contains numerous exceptions. Yet these remain exceptions and, as such, do not invalidate the underlying rule.
Unlike Makkah, though, Constantinople did not surrender peacefully. It resisted with determination behind some of the strongest fortifications in medieval history. For fifty-three days the city endured a relentless siege before Ottoman forces finally breached its walls on 29 May 1453.
According to the customs of medieval warfare - recognized by both Christian and Muslim powers alike - a city captured after refusing surrender and negotiation of terms could lawfully be subjected to looting and the taking of captives. This is because a city that chose armed resistance until it was taken by force had, in effect, accepted the reciprocal logic of pre-modern warfare. Had the outcome been reversed, it would have sought to kill and defeat the invading army, seize its property, and take its members captive. As the proverb goes: in war you either kill or are killed, and you either capture or are captured.
Consequently, following the final assault, Ottoman soldiers engaged in acts of plunder, and many inhabitants were taken captive. Mehmed II may have disapproved of the scenes that unfolded and may well have been saddened by the effects of the plundering, but he could not prohibit what was considered permissible nor could he deny the soldiers who had risked their lives their due rights. The only course available to him was to mitigate the excesses and to render the aftermath more ethically responsible, which he appears to have done.
Judged by contemporary standards, such practices are rightly viewed with considerable moral concern. Judged in the midst of the legal and military conventions of the fifteenth century, however, they reflected norms that were widely accepted and practiced throughout both Europe and the Islamic world, albeit with different moral and humanistic underpinnings. Still, the essence remained the same.
But to stop the narrative there would be to misunderstand at once Mehmed II's intentions and the subsequent history of the city. It would be unfair as much to the man as to the flow of history and architecture of the future. Almost immediately after securing victory, the Sultan moved decisively to restore order. The period of plunder was curtailed. Many captives were redeemed or released. The city, which had suffered severe demographic decline during the Byzantine Empire's final decades, was systematically repopulated. Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike were encouraged or even required to settle there.
The Orthodox Patriarchate was restored under Ottoman protection, allowing Eastern Christianity to continue functioning as part of the new political system. Rather than allowing Constantinople to decline into ruin and die, Mehmed II transformed it into the flourishing capital of a new civilization. In fact, the city became, practically speaking, the seat of the world, of truth, and of civilization as a whole. Much of its urban fabric and architectural configuration was preserved, following necessary restoration and conservation efforts. It was as though the city had been diagnosed, treated, and readied to absorb a new prospect.
That Mehmed II was, at best, only partially and conditionally satisfied with the "legitimate" post-victory culture of looting, and that he was bent on moderating its overindulgences, is illustrated by an account cited by Franz Babinger in his book "Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time." "Accompanied by a few viziers and courtiers, Mehmed II, from now on known as the Conqueror (Fatih), entered the city that afternoon on horseback. He went first to Hagia Sophia. On entering, his first glance fell on a Turk who, in a destructive frenzy, was hacking away at the marble floor with an ax. The sultan asked him why he was destroying the floor. 'For the faith,' the Turk replied. Enraged at such barbarism, Mehmed II struck at him with his sword and cried, 'Content yourselves with the loot and the prisoners. The buildings belong to me [to the state].' Thereupon the half-dead ruffian was hauled away by the feet and tossed outside."
According to Halil Inalcik in his article "The Policy of Mehmed II Toward the Greek Population of Istanbul and the Byzantine Buildings of the City", the Sultan from the very beginning did not wish his future capital to fall into his hands as a heap of ruins after sack and destruction. While his repeated invitations to Emperor Constantine XI to surrender followed Islamic law, they also reflected his hope of preserving the city from pillage. He tried in vain to persuade the emperor, even writing in one of his correspondences: "Are you willing to abandon the city and depart for wherever you like, together with your nobles and their property, leaving behind the common people unharmed both by us and by you? Or do you wish that through your resistance...the common people should be enslaved by the Turks and scattered over all the world?"
Although the Sultan had granted permission for three days of sack, it is possible that he curtailed the looting as early as the evening of the first day. Both Ottoman and Byzantine sources report that he felt profound sadness as he toured the pillaged and enslaved city. Accounts abound that he enacted sharp punishments against soldiers caught destroying buildings, since the city's land, walls, and structures were designated to the Sultan - that is, to the state. Clearly, torn between the impulses of the heart and the imperatives of the mind, the Sultan sought to maintain a delicate balance.
As one source relates, "In 1454 - only one year after Constantinople came under Muslim control - Isaac Sarfati, a Jew born in Germany of French descent, sent a circular letter to the Jews of the Rhineland, Swabia, Styria, Moravia, and Hungary in which he spoke with enthusiasm of the fortunate conditions of the Jews under the Crescent in contrast to their yoke under the Cross, and encouraged his co-religionaries to leave the 'great torture chamber' and come to Turkey. The years that followed witnessed a massive emigration of Jews to the Turkish paradise, especially from Germany" (Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time).
Mehmed II also appointed a chief rabbi to preside over all the Jewish congregations of the Ottoman Empire. His choice fell upon Moshe Capsali, a man renowned for his piety and learning. The Sultan is even reported to have made him a member of the imperial council (divan), where he was honored with a seat next to the mufti. With the arrival of the Spanish Jews in 1492, the Jewish population of the new Ottoman capital had reached approximately 36,000 by the end of the fifteenth century (Dogan Kuban, Istanbul: An Urban History).
The above figure becomes yet more impressive considering that the population of Constantinople collapsed to the tens of thousands in the late Byzantine period, prior to the arrival of Muslims, with some sources estimating as low as 30,000 and even 25,000 by the 15th century. At the peak of its glory, Constantinople might have had more than half a million inhabitants, making it the largest city in the world at the time. The reasons for such rapid decline included continuous warfare, plague and disease, loss of neighboring territories and resources, economic decline, urban decay, and chronic political instability, all of which contributed to an increasingly uncertain future amid the corresponding rise of Islam and its expanding civilizational presence.
Vast areas of the city fell into ruin as a result. Travelers in the 14th-15th centuries described empty districts, abandoned and collapsed buildings, and growing farmland in the heart of the city walls. Undeniably, the infrastructure built for half a million people became unsustainable for a population reduced to only tens of thousands. In passing, after the death of Sultan Mehmed II in 1481, 28 years after the conquest, the city had already grown to around 100,000 inhabitants, of whom approximately 60-80,000 were newly arrived settlers.
The conversion of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom, in Turkish, Ayasofya) into a mosque symbolized this transformation. Just as the KaĘżbah had been purified from idols after the conquest of Makkah, Hagia Sophia - in its capacity as the imperial cathedral and the seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and thus acting as the pivotal church of Eastern Orthodox Christianity and a symbol of the Empire - became the principal congregational mosque of the Ottoman capital. The city itself, nevertheless, was not destroyed. Its churches were neither systematically demolished nor entirely appropriated for conversion into mosques, and its Christian population was not eliminated. Rather, Constantinople was gradually incorporated into the expanding framework of Islamic civilization, becoming Istanbul, one of history's great centers of learning, architecture, commerce, governance, and culture.
The differences, nonetheless, are equally instructive. The conquest of Makkah remains unique precisely because it surpassed the accepted customs of warfare. The Prophet possessed every opportunity to exact revenge upon those who had wronged him most grievously, yet he chose forgiveness. His conduct cannot be explained simply as political wisdom, although it undoubtedly possessed immense political astuteness. It was first and foremost an expression of revelation, mercy, and Prophetic archetypal integrity. It instituted for Muslims an enduring moral ideal that would forever stand above ordinary calculations of power and victory.
The conduct of Sultan Mehmed II, by contrast, belongs to the sphere of historical statecraft rather than Prophetic normativity. While the Prophet's actions constitute a permanent ethical standard for Muslims, the conduct of later rulers must always be understood amidst the political, military, and legal environments in which they operated. Mehmed II did not claim Prophetic authority, nor did Muslims ever regard his conduct as equal to that of the Messenger of Allah. His greatness lay elsewhere. It lay in his remarkable ability to transform military victory into civilizational renewal and to redirect the immense human and material resources of a conquered city towards the service of a new historical mission.
Definitely, if the conquest of Constantinople is examined only through the lens of the final assault, one overlooks the far more significant chapter that followed. Conquering a city is one achievement; rebuilding it into one of the world's foremost capitals is quite another. Mehmed II immediately understood that the true measure of victory would not be the number of walls breached or captives taken, but the quality of the civilization that would emerge thereafter.
The city he inherited was no longer the magnificent metropolis of earlier centuries; it had become only a shadow of its former self. Rather than exploiting its weakness, Mehmed II resolved to restore its vitality. He initiated one of history's most ambitious urban renewal projects. Mosques, schools, hospitals, markets, public baths, libraries, caravanserais, gardens, bridges, and charitable endowments gradually transformed the once-dying Byzantine capital into the heart of the Ottoman Empire and one of the paramount cities of the early modern world.
The same principle had already manifested itself in Makkah. After the conquest, the Prophet did not rebuild the Ka'bah from its foundations, for the sanctuary itself was not the problem. The problem rested in what surrounded it and in what had been introduced into it. The problem was with and within the people. Once the idols were removed and the people purified and reoriented, the Ka'bah resumed its original Abrahamic function. By the same token, the Prophet did not aim to erase the city or replace its inhabitants; more appropriately, he restored its authentic identity by reconnecting it with the telos for which it had originally been created.
For this reason, the Prophet's first concern upon entering Makkah was neither political administration, nor social reorganization, nor military celebration. It was worship, as the beginning and end of everything Islamic. He purified the Ka'bah and immediately prayed in it because the restoration of tawhid was the raison d'ĂŞtre of the conquest. Everything else stemmed from that foundational act. Analogously, one of Mehmed II's earliest public acts after entering Constantinople was to perform prayer in Hagia Sophia, coupled with its conversion into a mosque.
Although the historical circumstances differed considerably, both actions announced the same civilizational message: the city had entered a new moral and spiritual calling centered upon the liberation of people from the worship of creation towards the worship of Allah alone. Both entries were characterized by immense gracefulness and humility. The Prophet is narrated to have displayed such profound self-effacement while entering Makkah as the victor that his head inclined so deeply in devotion that his beard appeared close to touching the saddle of his camel.
Taken together, the conquests of Makkah and Constantinople illuminate two complementary segments of Islamic history. The first establishes the eternal guiding norms through revelation. The second demonstrates the practical challenges of pursuing civilizational remodeling within the changing vicissitudes of human history. One reveals the perfection of Prophetic mercy; the other illustrates the responsibilities of political leadership. One restores the first sanctuary of monotheism; the other transmutes one of history's greatest imperial capitals into a new midpoint, emerging as an axis - firmly anchored in the spirituality and historicity of Makkah as the primordial point of reference - from which the future of Islamic civilization would unfold.
Have Faith in What Allah Has Planned For You
