The Ottomans were further driven by the knowledge that Byzantium was the first Christian nation, psychologically important to the rest of Christendom, and they took a calculated risk that by attacking it-and this marked the first time Muslim armies had moved against the city in generations-they would not stir up all of Europe to come to its defense. Its army and that of the threatening Turks were similarly various: as British writer Crowley, a sometime resident of Istanbul, remarks, the Ottoman Empire’s “crack troops were Slavs, its leading general Greek, its admiral Bulgarian, its sultan probably half Serbian or Macedonian.” Both sides were intent upon destroying each other. A fluent history of the annus horribilis in which impregnable Constantinople finally fell to Islam, a key moment in a 1,500-year-long clash of civilizations.Ĭonstantinople was a multinational, multiethnic city at a great cultural crossroads.
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