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Constantinople: Cities
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The city of Constantinople, called Kostantaniyye in Arabic and in formal Ottoman usage and Istanbul in the vernacular, was the most cosmopolitan city in the Mediterranean world and the Middle East during the early modern period. Its geographic location—it connected Asia and Europe as well as the Black Sea and the Mediterranean—enhanced its importance during the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. In addition, its natural beauty, monumental architecture (Byzantine and Ottoman), size, and commercial importance surpassed former Ottoman and Islamic capitals like Bursa, Cairo, and Isfahan in the early modern period. European visitors to the Ottoman capital have left numerous accounts and hundreds of sketches of its beautiful panorama, its magnificent Byzantine and Ottoman monuments, and the colorful daily life of its residents, including women, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to Lady Mary Montagu, the wife of the English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1717–1718, Istanbul surpassed European cities like London and Paris in size in the eighteenth century. It was the most exotic and yet familiar city for visiting Europeans who lived among local Greeks, Armenians, and Jews in the European neighborhood of Pera in the eighteenth century.
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Constantinople, situated between East and West, was for many Europeans emblematic of the entire Eastern world. The city has been occupied for over 2,500 years, although the modern city was Roman in origin. Early in the fourth century, the Emperor Constantine named Constantinople the capital of his newly Christian empire. After the fifth-century fall of Rome... Istanbul was subject to repeated invasions and conquests by Persians, Arabs, Bulgars, Russians, and Western European Christians in the Fourth Crusade. In 1453, the city was taken by Mehmed II and made the new capital of the Ottoman Empire, a position it held until after the First World War.
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Constantinople remained the capital of the Byzantine Empire until 1081, when the city fell to the Seljuk Turks. Much of the city was pilliaged and destroyed as various muslim powers controlled the city for the next 40 years. Finally, on January 10, 1124, King Momchil Trpimirovic liberated the city. It remained in Croatian hands as part of the personal demense of the Croatian King. The city was resettled and grew as Croats emigrated eastward. With the growing Croatian prescense in the city, it was eventually chosen as the ideal location for the capital of new Croatian Empire.
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During the late middle ages Constantinople remained the see of the Ecumenical Patriarch, the chief bishop of the eastern churches. During the Fourth Crusade, initially directed against Saladin in Egypt, crusaders were dispatched to attack Constantinople and claim it for the West. The Latin empire of Constantinople was established there from 1204-1261. Byzantine Christians reconquered the city in 1261. The episode deepened the division between the eastern and western churches. Throughout the early middle ages Constantinople eclipsed Rome as a political center and capital of the empire.
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Far from being in its heyday, Constantinople was severely depopulated for years following the depredations from the bubonic plague and especially from the disaster of the Fourth Crusade inflicted on it by the Christian army two centuries before. Therefore, the city in 1453 was a series of walled villages separated by vast fields encircled in whole by the fourth century Theodosian walls. When the Ottoman troops first broke through the defenses, many of the leading citizens of these little townlets submitted their surrender to Mehmet's generals.[7] These villages, specifically along the land walls, were allowed to keep their citizens and churches and were protected by Mehmet's special contingents of Janissaries. It was these people who formed what the Ottomans called a Millet, or self governing community in the multi-national empire of what would become Ottoman Istanbul.
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The original Constantinople was surrounded by seven hills, just like Rome. 6 crests lies along the Golden Horn, while the 7th lies alone about a km south. The hills have plat summits, and steep slopes. This, the original part of the city. now corresponds to Stamboul, which is the main focus of tourism, with the many sights from the city's long history.
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