ABSTRACT
In 1453, while western Europe finally brought to an end the long series of confrontations and skirmishes which had characterized the Hundred Years’ War, the Eastern Roman Empire faced its last and most formidable foe in the Ottomans, whose conquest of Constantinople meant an end to the city which had resonated for a thousand years as the capital of eastern Christendom. Within the Christian world the fall of Constantinople served henceforth as the icon of the destruction of the civilized east by the barbarian Turk, a threat which dated from the eleventh century and formed part of the history and lore of the Crusades. For the Muslim world the fall of Constantinople remained equally iconographic – the triumph of Muslim armies who had attempted the conquest of the city on numerous occasions since the seventh century.
