Ránki György (szerk.): Hungarian history, world history - Indiana University studies on Hungary 1. (Budapest, 1984)
Peter F. Sugar: Comments on the Papers Dealing with the Ottoman Period in Hungarian History
Turkic conquerors anywhere in the world, can the similarity of the patterns answer the question Professor Sinor raised and did not answer: how many Hungarian conquests of present-day Hungary were there? One can also look several centuries into the future and ask another question. Leaders set their mark on their followers. If the leadership of the early Hungarians was Turkic, did a strong enough Turkish ethos develop among their followers to explain the curious and unparalleled respect with which Hungarians and Turks treated each other, and speak about each other to the present day? Obviously, an unsubstantiated theory cannot answer questions. All I am trying to show is that even such a theory is capable of producing enough interesting conjectures to make it worth anybody's while to look at this early period of Hungarian history. Chronologically, Professor Held's topic, the battle of Beograd/Nándorfehérvár in 1456, comes next. At the time of the battle, all of Europe considered it crucial. Ever since then, bells of Catholic churches ring every day at noon to commemorate the Hungarian victory. The mission in California to which the swallows return every year to mark the beginning of spring, San Juan Capistrano, is named after the man Professor Held's paper concentrated on. Even America got a famous landmark as a result of this event. Europe's reaction to this battle is a good example of the kind of mass psychosis that has conditioned our thinking to the present day. Only three years earlier, in 1456, Sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople. Objectively speaking, that event was of no real significance. The city had been surrounded by the Ottomans for years, had lost its economic and even military significance, and its population had drastically declined. It was inevitable that sooner or later it would fall into Ottoman hands. When it did, this fact hardly altered power relations in Europe. Yet, it was the fall of this1 Second Rome that finally made Europe conscious of the Second Muslim Empire's growing might, and of the danger that it was to Christianity. The fall of the city was as important psychologically as it was unimportant militarily. This explains why the victory of the Hungarian forces in 1456 was considered an event of worldwide 4* 43