Under the Ottoman rule, the Orthodox Church acquired the status of an autonomous millet, specifically the Rum Millet. The Ecumenical Patriarch became the ruler (millet başı) of all the Orthodox Christian subjects of the empire, including non-Greeks. Upon conquering Constantinople, Mehmed II assumed the legal function of the Byzantine emperors and appointed Patriarch Gennadius II. The sultans enhanced the temporal powers of the Greek orthodox hierarchy that came to be politically beholden solely to the Ottoman sultan and, along with other Ottoman Greek nobles, came to run the Balkan Orthodox domains of the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the entire Orthodox communion of the Balkans and the Near East became isolated from the rest of Christendom. For the next four hundred years, it would be confined within the Islamic world, with which it had little in common religiously or culturally.