Mehmet II actively patronized Greek and Italian learning after conquering Constantinople

Evidence

Even an interest in Western civilization, though very limited, was not entirely lacking. Mehmet the Conqueror had a knowledge of Greek, and a library of Greek books. His entourage included the Italian humanist, Ciriaco Pizzocolli of Ancona, and the Greek humanist, Critoboulos. The latter—who was Mehmet’s biographer— mentions his interest in Greek antiquities and remains, and, when describing Mehmet’s wonderment at the Parthenon, even confers upon him the title of “Philhellene.” After the capture of Constantinople, Mehmet had to keep his promise to his victorious troops to give them free rein for three days in the conquered city, but both Greek and Western writers attest that on the fourth day he took measures to safeguard manuscripts, buildings and relics. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 635

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the Crusades-vs-Islam binary in the reader’s Said-adjacent knowledge production cluster — a counterexample to civilized-Western-destroyer-barbarian-Ottoman tropes; connects to dress/class signaling work on how legitimacy was claimed.
• QUESTION: How did this Ottoman philhellenism get forgotten in Western historiography of the ‘barbarian Turk’? Worth chasing the historiographic erasure mechanism.