Ottoman capture of Constantinople

Assembled from 45 blocks · 2 evidence · 51 related

1. Story
2. Mehmed II takes Constantinople; the last emperor, Constantine XI, dies in the fighting. For historians who date Rome's end by the continuity of the Roman state and its self-description, this is the terminus - 977 years after 476. Even this is not clean: Mehmed adopted the title Kayser-i Rum, Caesar of Rome, and the Ottoman claim to Roman succession was taken seriously by contemporaries.
3. Knowledge
4. Constantinople
5. Roman Law
6. Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire
7. Ottoman capture of Constantinople
8. Connections
9. Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire
10. Constantinople
11. Roman Law
12. Rome
13. Constantinople
14. The Roman Legion
15. Roman Law
16. Justinian I
17. Compilation of the Corpus Iuris Civilis
18. Ottoman capture of Constantinople
19. Antioch on the Orontes
20. Dedication of Constantinople
21. Silkworm cultivation reaches Byzantium
22. Plague reaches the Mediterranean
23. Christianity
24. The 'Edict of Milan' — toleration and restitution in the Roman Empire
25. Dedication of Constantinople
26. Administrative division of the empire on the death of Theodosius I
27. Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire
28. Compilation of the Corpus Iuris Civilis
29. Ottoman capture of Constantinople
30. Hagia Sophia, Constantinople / Istanbul
31. Justinian commissions Hagia Sophia from two geometers
32. Istanbul
33. Rome
34. Latin as an Administrative Language
35. Justinian I
36. Traditional foundation of the Roman Republic
37. The Augustan settlement: Octavian becomes Augustus
38. The Antonine Constitution (Constitutio Antoniniana)
39. Administrative division of the empire on the death of Theodosius I
40. Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire
41. Compilation of the Corpus Iuris Civilis
42. Ottoman capture of Constantinople
43. Evidence
44. Where to end the Roman Empire is an open scholarly question with several defensible answers - 476, 480, 554, 602, 800 and 1453 among them - and the choice reflects the historian's criterion (western imperial office, state continuity, material culture, self-identification) rather than a discoverable fact. A substantial 'continuity' school treats the eastern Roman state as unbroken to 1453.
45. The eastern empire's formal name remained the Roman Empire, its ruler was basileus ton Rhomaion (emperor of the Romans), and its inhabitants called themselves Rhomaioi. 'Byzantine' is a 16th-century scholarly coinage, not a self-description - which undercuts any account that treats the Roman Empire as having ended while that state was still running.