THE conquest of Constantinople engendered Mehmed II's lifelong ambition to revive the ruinous city's ancient status as the prosperous capital of a world empire. This essay interprets the sultan's negotiation of the western and eastern cultural horizons of his rapidly expanding domains through visual cosmopolitanism, a process of "creative translation" and fusion that contributed to the construction of a multifaceted imperial identity. Mehmed II engaged with diverse artistic traditions in refashioning his public persona and self-image upon the reconstructed stage of his new capital, which continued to be called Kostantiniyye (Costantinopolis), alongside its popular name, Istanbul (from the Greek eis tin polin, meaning "to the city,,).l Strategically situated at the juncture of two continents (Asia, Europe) and two seas (Black Sea, Mediterranean), this was the center for an emerging empire that combined Perso-Islamic, Turco-Mongol, and Roman Byzantine traditions of universal sovereignty.
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The artistic patronage of Mehmed II (r. 1444-46, 1451-81) was shaped not only by his personal tastes but also by the Rum? (Eastern Roman) geopolitical and cultural identity he was forging for his empire, a polity mediating between multiple worlds at the crossroads of Europe and Asia.,,2 By systematically promoting kuls (converted Christian-born slave to the highest posts of his increasingly centralized state, the sultan created a polyglot ruling elite no longer dominated by the Muslim-born <;andarh family of grand viziers. His viziers and grand viziers were predominantly kuls not entirely "foreign" to his non-Muslim subjects and European visitors to his court: the aristocratic ByzantinoSerbian Mahmud Pa§a Angelovic;:, whose Christian brother was a courtier of the Serbian Despot; the Greek Rum Mehmed Pa§a, who married a Turkic princess from the Anatolian Seljuk dynasty terminated by Mehmed II; and two descendants of the Byzantine Palaiologan dynasty, Has Murad Pa§a and his brother Mesih Pa§a. The sultan's governors included such renegades as the Italo-Greek lskender Bey: born from a Levantine Genoese father and a Greek mother from Trebizond,'he was married to the daughter of a Genoese merchant from Pera (the Genoese colony of Constantinople), where his brother continued to live as a Christian merchant dressed "all'[taliana." Mehmed II's intimates included sons of defeated rulers, among whom his Italian courtier Angiolello (attached to the imperial court between 1474 and 1481) counts the princes of Trebizond, the Morea, Bosnia, and Wallachia.
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