The island of Lemnos had been added to the domain of the Gattilusi of Lesbos after the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453.

The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in 1456 had attacked and captured the Gattilusi domains in Thrace (Ainos and the islands of Samothrace and Imbros).

During the subsequent negotiations with the lord of Lesbos, Domenico Gattilusio, the Greek populace of Lemnos had risen up against Domenico's younger brother Niccolò Gattilusio, and submitted themselves to the Sultan, who had appointed a certain Hamza Bey as governor under the Bey of Gallipoli, Isma'il.

The island had been captured in 1457 by a Papal fleet.

Pope Callixtus III had hoped to establish a new military order on the island, which controls the exit of the Dardanelles, but nothing had come of it as Isma'il Bey soon recovered Lemnos for the Sultan.

Following the fall of the Despotate of the Morea in 1460, Sultan Mehmed II had given the proceeds from Lemnos to the last Despot, Demetrios Palaiologos.

During the First Ottoman–Venetian War, Lemnos and other former Gattilusi possessions had been seized in 1467 by the Venetians, but are returned to the Ottomans in 1479 under the Treaty of Constantinople.