Mehmed II, byname Mehmed Fatih (Turkish: Mehmed the Conqueror), (born March 30, 1432, Adrianople, Thrace, Ottoman Empire—died May 3, 1481, Hunkârçayırı, near Maltepe, near Constantinople), Ottoman sultan from 1444 to 1446 and from 1451 to 1481. A great military leader, he captured Constantinople and conquered the territories in Anatolia and the Balkans that comprised the Ottoman Empire’s heartland for the next four centuries.