Mehmed II
The conqueror of Constantinople spent his teenage years writing poetry in Persian and arguing with Aristotelian philosophers.
Mehmed II was nineteen when he took the throne for the second time in 1451, having already been sultan once at age twelve before his father Murad II reclaimed power. Most rulers that young focused on staying alive. Mehmed focused on impossible geometry — specifically, how to move seventy ships over land and around the massive chain blocking the Golden Horn. His solution involved building a mile-long greased wooden track over the hills of Galata, then dragging an entire fleet across it in a single night. When Constantinople's defenders woke up, Ottoman warships floated in what had been their impregnable harbor.
But mathematics was just one obsession. Mehmed spoke six languages fluently and collected manuscripts with the fervor of a Renaissance prince. After conquering Constantinople, his first act wasn't celebration — it was ordering the preservation of Byzantine texts. He hired Italian humanists, commissioned translations of classical works, and turned his court into a philosophical salon where Christian scholars debated Islamic theologians. Giovanni Argyropoulos, one of the era's great Greek scholars, found more intellectual freedom under the Muslim sultan than he had under Christian rulers.
The sultan who destroyed the last remnant of Rome also tried to recreate its glory. He commissioned Gentile Bellini to paint his portrait, collected ancient coins with Caesar's image, and claimed the title of Caesar himself. When he walked through the ruins of the Great Palace, he reportedly quoted Persian poetry about the impermanence of earthly kingdoms. His gardeners received strict orders: plant roses in the throne room of the Byzantine emperors.
Mehmed died at forty-nine in 1481, possibly poisoned, while planning the conquest of Rhodes. His funeral procession included Italian architects, Greek philosophers, and Persian poets — the intellectual empire he'd built alongside his territorial one.
Mehmed II personally translated parts of the Iliad into Turkish and wrote his own poetry under the pen name 'Avni,' which means 'helper.'
Why untold: Western histories focus on his military conquests while ignoring his role as a Renaissance patron who preserved more classical texts than most European rulers.
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— Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (Princeton University Press, 1978)
— Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600 (Phoenix Press, 2000)
— Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (Cambridge University Press, 1965)