The Conquest of Constantinople by the Muslims

The Conquest of Constantinople by the Muslims

Bismillahirahmanirraheem,

All praise is for Allah and may peace & blessings be upon the prophet, his family and noble companions, Amin.

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said, “Verily you shall conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful leader will her leader be, and what a wonderful army will that army be!” Narrated by Imam Ahmad.

The Muslims who were reportedly 10 in number at the time were in amazement at this prophecy as at the time this seemed a goal far out of reach! Constantinople was the capital of Byzantium and a formidable city of the enemy, many had tried to seize it before and failed at its formidable defence including the companion of the Prophet Muhammad SAW named Ayyub (RA) who hosted the prophet SAW as his guest in the lifetime of the prophet SAW.

Anas bin Malik RA said:

"Constantinople will be conquered with the coming of the Hour."

Jami` at-Tirmidhi 2239 - Sahih

Abu Huraira RA reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) as saying:

“The Last Hour would not come until the Romans would land at al-A'maq or in Dabiq. An army consisting of the best (soldiers) of the people of the earth at that time will come from Medina (to counteract them). When they will arrange themselves in ranks, the Romans would say: Do not stand between us and those (Muslims) who took prisoners from amongst us. Let us fight with them; and the Muslims would say: Nay, by Allah, we would never get aside from you and from our brethren that you may fight them. They will then fight and a third (part) of the army would run away, whom Allah will never forgive. A third (part of the army) which would be constituted of excellent martyrs in Allah's eye (sight), would be killed and the third who would never be put to trial would win and they would be conquerors of Constantinople. And as they would be busy in distributing the spoils of war (amongst themselves) after hanging their swords by the olive trees, the Satan would cry: The Dajjal has taken your place among your family. They would then come out, but it would be of no avail. And when they would come to Syria, he would come out while they would be still preparing themselves for battle drawing up the ranks. Certainly, the time of prayer shall come and then Jesus (peace be upon him) son of Mary would descend and would lead them. When the enemy of Allah would see him, it would (disappear) just as the salt dissolves itself in water and if he (Jesus) were not to confront them at all, even then it would dissolve completely, but Allah would kill them by his hand and he would show them their blood on his lance (the lance of Jesus Christ).”

Sahih Muslim 2897.

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Apostle (may peace he upon him) saying:

“You have heard about a city, one side of which is on land and the other is in the sea (Constantinople). They said: Allah's Messenger, yes. Thereupon he said: The Last Hour would not come unless seventy thousand persons from Bani lshaq would attack it. When they would land there, they will neither fight with weapons nor would shower arrows but would only say: "There is no god but Allah and Allah is the Greatest," and one side of it would fall. Thaur (one of the narrators) said: I think that he said: The part by the side of the ocean. Then they would say for the second time: "There is no god but Allah and Allah is the Greatest" and the second side would also fall, and they would say: "There is no god but Allah and Allah is the Greatest," and the gates would be opened for them and they would enter therein and, they would be collecting spoils of war and distributing them amongst themselves when a noise would be heard saying: Verily, Dajjal has come. And thus they would leave everything there and go back.”

Sahih Muslim 2920 a

The Prophet PBUH is also reported to have said, with various weak narrations, that “The great Malhamah, the conquest of Constantinople, and the coming of the Dajjal occur in (the span of) seven (or several) months.”

In 857 (Hijri) The Turkish Sultan Muhammad Al Fatih of the Osmanlı state and his army of Muslims compiled from all around the Muslim world, also assisted by his janisarries laid siege to the city by transporting ships over land by night to break into the enemy territory aided by their state of the art canon and the struggle of many of muslim martyrs and ghazis to finally capture the city! MashaAllah!

They established Islam as the dominant religion of the city and converted the iconic Aya Sofia church into a Masjid as a statement of the Muslims conquest and the cities religious identities transition from Christianity to Islam.

Hundreds of masjid, madrassas and other medical institutions have been built for the sake of Allah in the city. The Qur’an has been recited there for centuries as well as the Ezan called. It was made the capital of operations for the empire for state affairs of all the Muslim domains including the affairs of Makkah and Medina later after Sultan Selim took over. Historians from both the east and the west by consensus accept that the city was conquered by Muslims.

Allahuekber!

Having said all of this we have narrations of Prophet Muhammad SAW that give more details about the prophesied conquest; with regards to time, co-inciding events, the manner of the conquest and origin and home residence of its conquerors, and interestingly, they do not match the details of the conquest of Sultan Muhammad Al Fatih. The Hadith say it will be a peaceful conquest at the end of times by people of Medina of the people of Bani İshaq.

The conquest of the Osmanlı state also did not precede the arrival of Dajjal and Eesa AS ad stated in hadith, therefore it was not at the precise point of the end times prophesied, nor were they of the people of Medina the Hadith refer to, nor did they conquer it peacefully as the Hadith predict but by military conquest.

So how do we reconcile between the Hadith and events and what is the Truth?

It is unknown if the Osmanlis are the ones the prophet SAW mentioned in his prophecy due to specified events that were mentioned in Hadith that didn’t co-incide with events, therefore, most scholars tend to take the view that the Hadith about a peaceful conquest by people of medina refer to a 2nd conquest without negating the 1st being a Muslim conquest either due to the first resulting in Islam and Muslims taking over the city as the dominant people and religion and this is the safest position as to not wrongly make blanket takfir or slander everyone to do with the Osmanlis or deny Hadith. Even though the rulers and other statesmen may have made errors that should be warned against like the construction of tombs, fratricide & certain types of istighatha (calling on prophets and saints who have left the worldly life for help) that appeared among other innovations and bad decisions, nevertheless the state was accepted as khalifa by the majority of the Muslim world and they generally did rule by the sharia and were guardians and custodians of the Muslim world, this state included Muslim soldiers, scholars, mothers, grandmothers, doctors, architects, engineers etc. and many good Muslims died for this cause and we should not degrade their noble sacrifice and belittle the martyrdom of innocent Muslims due to the mistakes of a few & Allah will judge each person individually and he certainly knows the truth about all things.