You Must Remember This By Clifford D. May

There’s an anniversary this week we might do well to recall. On May 29, 1453 – just 555 short years ago -- troops led by Mehmed II broke through the walls of the ancient Christian capital of Constantinople.

Mehmed the Conqueror – as he would be known from that day forward -- rode triumphantly into the city on a white horse. Soon, churches would be converted into mosques. Constantinople would become Istanbul.

“For the West this was a dark moment,” writes historian Efraim Karsh in his masterful book, Islamic Imperialism. “For Islam it was a cause for celebration. For nearly a millennium Constantinople had been the foremost barrier – physically and ideologically – to Islam’s sustained drive for world conquest and the object of desire of numerous Muslim rulers.”

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