Mehmed II Annexes Serbia

1459

The Ottoman sultan absorbed the rump Serbian despotate after its last prince died. The Balkans above the Danube were now fully Ottoman except for Bosnia, which would fall four years later. Serbian monasteries survived; Serbian aristocracy did not. The empire acquired its cultural obsession with managing Orthodox populations. The Ottoman millet system, organizing non-Muslims by religious community, was perfected during Serbia's absorption and governed Balkan Christians for centuries.