Mehmet II wanted to become the legitimate Byzantine Emperor, in addition to being its Turkish conqueror. Now they pulled out a long-ago event forgotten by the Greeks: remember that one renegade son of an Emperor had converted to Islam and married a Turkish girl? The family of Osman was descended from that very same 12th century couple! (True? Who knows.) Further, Orhan had married a Byzantine Princess Theodora in 1346. Mehmet was not descended from her, but they didn’t count inheritance that way; he felt his great-great-grandfather should be counted among the heirs of the Emperor, by right of marriage. Were the people convinced? Probably not, but for those who needed a fig leaf to hang on acceptance of the occupation, perhaps it helped.
Mehmet had the money and manpower to rebuild the city in a serious way. There was, of course, a great risk that the kings of Europe would mount another Crusade and use the same wall breach that he had made. I wonder if he had the giant bombard melted down to prevent its later use against him, too. An awful lot of defensive wall cannons could be made from the metal, and nobody was sentimental about the gun. Orban, the master metalworker, had been killed by one of his other guns exploding during the siege.
As the walls and gates rose, Mehmet sought to repopulate the city. So much emptiness could not be defended, governed, or taxed. He ordered a levy of Muslims, Christians and Jews to be shipped in from around his Empire: bring in 5000 new families by September! He sought to keep Greeks from fleeing with every promise at his disposal. He set up a Grand Rabbi and an Armenian Patriarch to show his good intentions, in addition to the Greek Patriarch whose churches he had preserved. Of course, he also turned the city into his pious Muslim capital with mosques, madrassas, and shrines.
In 1459, while the repopulation and rebuilding was still in progress, he built an Imperial Palace. They first called it the New Palace, or Yeni Sarai, while Mehmet temporarily lived in what is now the university. It’s possible that the Italian word “seraglio,” which means a secluded harem, was based on the Persian-Turkish word “Sarai,” but nobody is sure. Later, the New Palace’s main gate was called Topkapı, which means Ball Door, that is, Cannonball Gate. The palace, which was the main residence of Ottoman Sultans until about 1665, became known by the same name, though it was formally called the Palace of Felicity. It’s now a museum.
The Topkapı Palace was built right in the Old City, on the main street that led to the Hagia Sophia. The old Imperial Palace was a ruin, so they just used the same site, some of the same walls and acropolis, and probably many of the old stones. Mehmet chose that his personal quarters would be on the highest point of the Golden Horn peninsula, with walls and gardens running down to the water. It’s probably the model C. S. Lewis used for the great palace in Tashbaan, Narnia’s southern enemy, so if you know those scenes you can fill in the details. Turkish TV has also produced shows about the Ottoman Sultans where you can see them looking down from their personal balconies on the whole city and the water.
There were inner courtyards with rings of outer ones, though it was not round as Baghdad had been. The shapes were irregular, probably following the topography, but perhaps for another purpose. Mehmet II was the heir of the grandfather who had won a civil war among four brothers; it was important that he design a family residence that could be defended if necessary, and that would provide safe haven and escape at need. Hence there were secret passages and secluded areas with grill-covered windows so that the family could move about unnoticed, if needed. A too-regular design would be too easily mapped. Along the waterfront, on the Golden Horn side, there were summer houses and boat houses. (At need, the royals could slip away by boat as Lewis’s protagonist does.)
The innermost (Fourth) courtyard had a rule of strict silence among servants; the Sultan could enjoy perfect silence in the middle of the big city. Equally inaccessible was the harem, which this time did mean a place for multiple wives (as it did not originally mean at the Alhambra). If you were outside the Palace and managed to get through the Topkapı Gate, you would be in outer courtyard, where there was an old Byzantine church and some other official buildings, like the Mint. The next gate you’d have to pass through looks a lot like the iconic gate of Disneyland, and then you would be in in the Second Courtyard, where the Janissaries lived. This area was large, with a number of official buildings, and a golden throne for the Sultan. Peacocks wandered the Second Courtyard. To enter the Third Courtyard, where the Grand Vizier’s official meetings were held, you had to pass through the Gate of Felicity. The main throne room was also in this zone, as were the harem and the apartments of the Sultan’s mother. There doesn’t seem to be a special gate to get to the final inner zone; it must have been set apart just by passageways, doors, walls, and gardens. And this is where the secret passages would have been.
The oldest building in the innermost Fourth Courtyard is a square watch tower, built with very thick walls and only small, high windows. Mehmet II apparently installed his chief physician (probably a Jew) there, with a royal pharmacy. His son’s chief tutor also lived in this super-secure house. The innermost courtyard is still large enough for a number of terraces and smaller buildings, used as summer or prayer retreats by the later Sultans who built them. Here his heirs lived and studied; there is even a special room (built later) for circumcising the boys. Of course, there is also a mosque.
The Palace was probably finished in the late 1460s but it continued to be added to by later Sultans. The city’s rebuilding was considered (by historians) as “complete” after a census in 1478 showed its population was back up to about 80,000. By 1500, it was again the region’s largest city. It’s unlikely that its population from that point had any familial, historical connection to the pre-conquest population. The new citizens were Muslim, Christian, and Jews, but they were descended from the prisoners of war shipped in for resettlement.
Meanwhile, Mehmet was not sitting still. Conquest fueled his income and secured his borders. Rebuilding his new city led to conquering more and more of the old Empire it had ruled. What was still unconquered in Serbia was under Ottoman control before the Palace had been designed. Remaining Greek and Thracian ports were next, and then other parts of the Black Sea coast. The last of the “Empire of Trebizond,” one of the Greek Byzantine governments-in-exile from the Fourth Crusade, fell in 1461.