Constantinople in a vice: Some notes on Anadolu Hisar (1395/1396) and Rumeli Hisar (1452)

Abstract

A presentation, based on Byzantine and Oriental (Ottoman) sources, of the process towards the gradual closing up of the Ottomans on the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, within the period late-fourteenth—mid-fifteenth century, by means of construction of two impressive fortifications. These were Anadolu Hisar (‘Eastern Fortress’), erected in 1395/1396 by sultan Bayazid I the ‘Thunderbolt’, and Rumeli Hisar (‘Western Fortress’), erected in 1452 by the eventual conquerer of Constantinople, sultan Mehmed II ‘Fatih’. The massive Rumeli Hisar (this is in fact its modern appellation) was called by its Ottoman constructors ‘Yeni Hisar’ (i.e. ‘New Fortress’; thus the Byzantine appellation of ‘Neōastron’), while the Conquerer himself had called it ‘Boğaz-kesen’, that is, ‘cutter of the canal’ (i.e. the Bosphorus), or ‘cutter of the head/throat’, thus metaphorically imparting the desperate position of the besieged Constan-tinopolitans.