Empire Istanbul
Jai Weil
In the language of other peoples, Constantinople was referred to just as reverently. The medieval Vikings, who had contacts with the empire through their expansion in eastern Europe (Varangians), used the Old Norse name Miklagarðr (from mikill 'big' and garðr 'city'), and later Miklagard and Miklagarth.[19] In Arabic, the city was sometimes called Rūmiyyat al-Kubra (Great City of the Romans) and in Persian as Takht-e Rum (Throne of the Romans).
Constantinople was built over six years, and consecrated on 11 May 330.[6][36] Constantine divided the expanded city, like Rome, into 14 regions, and ornamented it with public works worthy of an imperial metropolis.[37] Yet, at first, Constantine's new Rome did not have all the dignities of old Rome. It possessed a proconsul, rather than an urban prefect. It had no praetors, tribunes, or quaestors. Although it did have senators, they held the title clarus, not clarissimus, like those of Rome. It also lacked the panoply of other administrative offices regulating the food supply, police, statues, temples, sewers, aqueducts, or other public works. The new programme of building was carried out in great haste: columns, marbles, doors, and tiles were taken wholesale from the temples of the empire and moved to the new city. In similar fashion, many of the greatest works of Greek and Roman art were soon to be seen in its squares and streets. The emperor stimulated private building by promising householders gifts of land from the imperial estates in Asiana and Pontica and on 18 May 332 he announced that, as in Rome, free distributions of food would be made to the citizens. At the time, the amount is said to have been 80,000 rations a day, doled out from 117 distribution points around the city.[38]
In the late 11th century catastrophe struck with the unexpected and calamitous defeat of the imperial armies at the Battle of Manzikert in Armenia in 1071. The Emperor Romanus Diogenes was captured. The peace terms demanded by Alp Arslan, sultan of the Seljuk Turks, were not excessive, and Romanus accepted them. On his release, however, Romanus found that enemies had placed their own candidate on the throne in his absence; he surrendered to them and suffered death by torture, and the new ruler, Michael VII Ducas, refused to honour the treaty. In response, the Turks began to move into Anatolia in 1073. The collapse of the old defensive system meant that they met no opposition, and the empire's resources were distracted and squandered in a series of civil wars. Thousands of Turkoman tribesmen crossed the unguarded frontier and moved into Anatolia. By 1080, a huge area had been lost to the Empire, and the Turks were within striking distance of Constantinople.
The Byzantine nobility scattered, many going to Nicaea, where Theodore Lascaris set up an imperial court, or to Epirus, where Theodore Angelus did the same; others fled to Trebizond, where one of the Comneni had already with Georgian support established an independent seat of empire.[78] Nicaea and Epirus both vied for the imperial title, and tried to recover Constantinople. In 1261, Constantinople was captured from its last Latin ruler, Baldwin II, by the forces of the Nicaean emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos under the command of Caesar Alexios Strategopoulos.
The Christian Orthodox city of Constantinople was now under Ottoman control. As tradition followed for the region, Ottoman soldiers had three days to pillage the city. When Mehmed II on the second day entered Constantinople through the Gate of Charisius (today known as Edirnekapı or Adrianople Gate), it is said that first thing he did was ride his horse to Hagia Sophia, which was not in good shape even though it was avoided in the pillage by strict orders. Displeased by the pillaging, Mehmed II ordered it to end, for it will be the capital of his empire. He then ordered that an imam meet him in Hagia Sophia in order to chant the adhan thus transforming the Orthodox cathedral into a Muslim mosque,[91][92] solidifying Islamic rule in Constantinople.[93]
Mehmed's main concern with Constantinople had to do with consolidating control over the city and rebuilding its defenses. After 45,000 captives were marched from the city, building projects were commenced immediately after the conquest, which included the repair of the walls, construction of the citadel, and building a new palace.[94] Mehmed issued orders across his empire that Muslims, Christians, and Jews should resettle the city, with Christians and Jews required to pay jizya and Muslims pay Zakat; he demanded that five thousand households needed to be transferred to Constantinople by September.[94] From all over the Islamic empire, prisoners of war and deported people were sent to the city: these people were called "Sürgün" in Turkish (Greek: σουργούνιδες).[95] Two centuries later, Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi gave a list of groups introduced into the city with their respective origins. Even today, many quarters of Istanbul, such as Aksaray, Çarşamba, bear the names of the places of origin of their inhabitants.[95] However, many people escaped again from the city, and there were several outbreaks of plague, so that in 1459 Mehmed allowed the deported Greeks to come back to the city.[95]
Constantinople was the largest and richest urban center in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea during the late Eastern Roman Empire, mostly as a result of its strategic position commanding the trade routes between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. It would remain the capital of the eastern, Greek-speaking empire for over a thousand years and in some ways is the nexus of Byzantine art production. At its peak, roughly corresponding to the Middle Ages, it was one of the richest and largest cities in Europe. It exerted a powerful cultural pull and dominated much of the economic life in the Mediterranean. Visitors and merchants were especially struck by the beautiful monasteries and churches of the city, in particular the Hagia Sophia, or the Church of Holy Wisdom. According to Russian 14th-century traveler Stephen of Novgorod: "As for Hagia Sophia, the human mind can neither tell it nor make description of it."
Throughout the fifth century, the Western Roman Empire lost most of its power through a decline in political, economic, and social situations, the last western emperor being deposed by Germanic mercenaries in AD 476; the eastern half, however, was flourishing. According to historians this flourishing Eastern Roman Empire was then classified as the Byzantine Empire to distinguish it from the Roman Empire.[27] This empire was distinctly Greek in culture, and became the centre of Greek Orthodox Christianity after an earlier split with Rome, and was adorned with many magnificent churches, including Hagia Sophia, once the world's largest cathedral. The seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople, spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, remains.
The city, known alternatively in Ottoman Turkish as Ḳosṭanṭīnīye (قسطنطينيه after the Arabic form al-Qusṭanṭīniyyah القسطنطينية) or Istanbul, while its Christian minorities continued to call it Constantinople, as did people writing in French, English, and other European languages, was the capital of the Ottoman Empire from its conquest in 1453 until the empire's collapse in 1922.
Finally, Constantinople was under Ottoman rule. Mehmed entered Constantinople through what is now known as the Topkapi Gate. He immediately rode his horse to the Hagia Sophia which he ordered to be sacked. He ordered that an imam meet him there in order to chant the Muslim Creed: "I testify that there is no God but Allah. I testify that Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah."[38] He turned the Orthodox cathedral into an Islamic mosque, solidifying Turkish rule in Constantinople.Mehmed ordered the city to be plundered for three days.[39]Following the sack, Mehmed's main concern with Constantinople had to do with rebuilding the city's defenses and re-population. Building projects were commenced immediately after the conquest, which included the repair of the walls, construction of the citadel, and building a new palace.[33] Mehmed issued orders across his empire that Muslims, Christians, and Jews should resettle the city; he demanded that five thousand households needed to be deported to Constantinople by September.[40]
As the years passed the population increased, from about 80,000 at the death of Mehmet, to 300,000 by the 18th century, and 400,000 in 1800. The capital of an empire that stretched across Europe, Asia, and Africa, it also became an important diplomatic centre, with several foreign embassies. It was only after 1922, following the war between Greece and Turkey that things began to change.[citation needed]
On a larger scale, Minawi wants to show how ethnicity and race start to matter in a new way during the last 20 years of the Ottoman empire, a time when ethno-racial categories were operating in the rest of the imperial world, including in British, French and Italian empires.
Drawing on archival records, newspaper articles, travelogues, personal letters, diaries, photos, and interviews, Minawi shows how the loyalties of these imperialists were questioned and their ethnic identification weaponized. As the once diverse empire comes to an end, they are forced to give up their home in the imperial capital. An alternative history of the last four decades of the Ottoman Empire, Losing Istanbul frames global pivotal events through the experiences of Arab-Ottoman imperial loyalists who called Istanbul home, on the eve of a vanishing imperial world order.
This, combined with a series of weak rulers, meant the empire lost more and more land, and gradually Greece, Bulgaria, the Balkans and Egypt won their independence. Istanbul nonetheless retained a kind of faded glory, with some of the magnificent 19th-century buildings, such as the Dolmabahçe Palace and the Yildiz Palace, still popular today.
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