A Turkish Islamic Legacy

In a narration Prophet Muhammad ﷺ predicted "Verily you shall conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful leader will her leader be, and what a wonderful army will that army be!" This unbelievable prediction was made at the time when Prophet ﷺ and his companions did not control any more territory than a small town called Yathrib (Madinah). Despite several armies from the time of early Islamic Conquests attempted to capture the historical city, it was not until after 800 years, in 1453 CE when 22 year old Ottoman Turk Sultan Mehmed Fatih II successfully conquered the city and brought this prophecy to light! At that time there existed a learned Islamic scholar, physician and Sufi Saint named Shamsaddin Muhammad famously called Akshamsaddin (Ak in Turkish means “white” his white face, hair & beard). Due his expertise in medical sciences, Akshamsaddin treated Suleyman Pasha, a chief judge of Sultan Murad II, father of Mehmed II and later also healed the daughter of Sultan Mehmed II. He is also credited with discovery of Prophet's companion Ayyub Al Ansari grave from the 1st Siege of Constantinople. In his famous work called “Maddatul-Hayaat” (Material of Life) he claimed that diseases, like plants and animals, have “invisible seeds" i.e. pointing to microbes or viruses, two centuries before their discovery under microscope by Dutch scientist Leeuwenhoek: “Major diseases have seeds and roots according to their varieties, like grass seed and grass-root. Indeed, some of the hereditary diseases that pass from father and mother, such as epilepsy, podagra and leprosy, sometimes reappear seven years after the disease is seen. The seeds of the diseases that are caused by food and drink come out and grow quickly,” An echo of an existing invisible microbe theory of Ibn Sina, a 10 century CE infectious disease expert & Islamic scholar.