Constantinople

Constantinople (see other names) became the capital of the Roman Empire during the reign of Constantine the Great in 330. Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, Constantinople remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire; 330–1204 and 1261–1453), the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453–1922). Following the Turkish War of Independence, the Turkish capital then moved to Ankara. Officially renamed Istanbul in 1930, the city is today the largest city in Europe, straddling the Bosporus strait and lying in both Europe and Asia, and the financial centre of Turkey.

In 324, after the Western and Eastern Roman Empires were reunited, the ancient city of Byzantium was selected to serve as the new capital of the Roman Empire, and the city was renamed Nova Roma, or 'New Rome', by Emperor Constantine the Great. On 11 May 330, it was renamed Constantinople and dedicated to Constantine. Constantinople is generally considered to be the center and the "cradle of Orthodox Christian civilization". From the mid-5th century to the early 13th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe. The city became famous for its architectural masterpieces, such as Hagia Sophia, the cathedral of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which served as the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate; the sacred Imperial Palace, where the emperors lived; the Hippodrome; the Golden Gate of the Land Walls; and opulent aristocratic palaces. The University of Constantinople was founded in the 5th century and contained artistic and literary treasures before it was sacked in 1204 and 1453, including its vast Imperial Library which contained the remnants of the Library of Alexandria and had 100,000 volumes. The city was the home of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and guardian of Christendom's holiest relics such as the Crown of thorns and the True Cross.

Constantinople was famous for its massive and complex fortifications, which ranked among the most sophisticated defensive architecture of antiquity. The Theodosian Walls consisted of a double wall lying about 2 km to the west of the first wall and a moat with palisades in front. Constantinople's location between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara reduced the land area that needed defensive walls. The city was built intentionally to rival Rome, and it was claimed that several elevations within its walls matched Rome's 'seven hills'. The impenetrable defenses enclosed magnificent palaces, domes, and towers, the result of prosperity Constantinople achieved as the gateway between two continents (Europe and Asia) and two seas (the Mediterranean and the Black Sea). Although besieged on numerous occasions by various armies, the defenses of Constantinople proved impenetrable for nearly nine hundred years.

In 1204, however, the armies of the Fourth Crusade took and devastated the city, and for several decades, its inhabitants resided under Latin occupation in a dwindling and depopulated city. In 1261 the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos liberated the city, and after the restoration under the Palaiologos dynasty, it enjoyed a partial recovery. With the advent of the Ottoman Empire in 1299, the Byzantine Empire began to lose territories, and the city began to lose population. By the early 15th century, the Byzantine Empire was reduced to just Constantinople and its environs, along with Morea in Greece, making it an enclave inside the Ottoman Empire. The city was finally besieged and conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453, remaining under its control until the early 20th century, after which it was renamed Istanbul under the Empire's successor state, Turkey.

Before Constantinople
According to Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, the first known name of a settlement on the site of Constantinople was Lygos, a settlement likely of Thracian origin founded between the 13th and 11th centuries BC. The site, according to the founding myth of the city, was abandoned by the time Greek settlers from the city-state of Megara founded Byzantium (Βυζάντιον, Byzántion) in around 657 BC, across from the town of Chalcedon on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.

The origins of the name of Byzantion, more commonly known by the later Latin Byzantium, are not entirely clear, though some suggest it is of Thracian origin. The founding myth of the city has it told that the settlement was named after the leader of the Megarian colonists, Byzas. The later Byzantines of Constantinople themselves would maintain that the city was named in honor of two men, Byzas and Antes, though this was more likely just a play on the word Byzantion.

The city was briefly renamed Augusta Antonina in the early 3rd century AD by the Emperor Septimius Severus (193–211), who razed the city to the ground in 196 for supporting a rival contender in the civil war and had it rebuilt in honor of his son Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (who succeeded him as Emperor), popularly known as Caracalla. The name appears to have been quickly forgotten and abandoned, and the city reverted to Byzantium/Byzantion after either the assassination of Caracalla in 217 or, at the latest, the fall of the Severan dynasty in 235.

Names of Constantinople


Byzantium took on the name of Constantinople (Greek: Κωνσταντινούπολις, romanized: Kōnstantinoupolis; "city of Constantine") after its refoundation under Roman emperor Constantine I, who transferred the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium in 330 and designated his new capital officially as Nova Roma (Νέα Ῥώμη) 'New Rome'. During this time, the city was also called 'Second Rome', 'Eastern Rome', and Roma Constantinopolitana (Latin for 'Constantinopolitan Rome'). As the city became the sole remaining capital of the Roman Empire after the fall of the West, and its wealth, population, and influence grew, the city also came to have a multitude of nicknames.

As the largest and wealthiest city in Europe during the 4th–13th centuries and a center of culture and education of the Mediterranean basin, Constantinople came to be known by prestigious titles such as Basileuousa (Queen of Cities) and Megalopolis (the Great City) and was, in colloquial speech, commonly referred to as just Polis (ἡ Πόλις) 'the City' by Constantinopolitans and provincial Byzantines alike.

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. 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).

In East and South Slavic languages, including in Kievan Rus', Constantinople has been referred to as Tsargrad (Царьград) or Carigrad, 'City of the Caesar (Emperor)', from the Slavonic words tsar ('Caesar' or 'King') and grad ('city'). This was presumably a calque on a Greek phrase such as Βασιλέως Πόλις (Vasileos Polis), 'the city of the emperor [king]'.

In Persian the city was also called Asitane (the Threshold of the State), and in Armenian, it was called Gosdantnubolis (City of Constantine).

Modern names of the city


The modern Turkish name for the city, İstanbul, derives from the Greek phrase eis tin Polin (εἰς τὴν πόλιν), meaning '(in)to the city'. This name was used in colloquial speech in Turkish alongside Kostantiniyye, the more formal adaptation of the original Constantinople, during the period of Ottoman rule, while western languages mostly continued to refer to the city as Constantinople until the early 20th century. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet was changed from Arabic script to Latin script. After that, as part of the Turkification movement, Turkey started to urge other countries to use Turkish names for Turkish cities, instead of other transliterations to Latin script that had been used in Ottoman times and the city came to be known as Istanbul and its variations in most world languages.

The name Constantinople is still used by members of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the title of one of their most important leaders, the Orthodox patriarch based in the city, referred to as "His Most Divine All-Holiness the Archbishop of Constantinople New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch". In Greece today, the city is still called Konstantinoúpoli(s) (Κωνσταντινούπολις/Κωνσταντινούπολη) or simply just "the City" (Η Πόλη).

Foundation of Byzantium
Constantinople was founded by the Roman emperor Constantine I (272–337) in 324 on the site of an already-existing city, Byzantium, which was settled in the early days of Greek colonial expansion, in around 657 BC, by colonists of the city-state of Megara. This is the first major settlement that would develop on the site of later Constantinople, but the first known settlements was that of Lygos, referred to in Pliny's Natural Histories. Apart from this, little is known about this initial settlement. The site, according to the founding myth of the city, was abandoned by the time Greek settlers from the city-state of Megara founded Byzantium (Βυζάντιον) in around 657 BC, across from the town of Chalcedon on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.

Hesychius of Miletus wrote that some "claim that people from Megara, who derived their descent from Nisos, sailed to this place under their leader Byzas, and invent the fable that his name was attached to the city". Some versions of the founding myth say Byzas was the son of a local nymph, while others say he was conceived by one of Zeus' daughters and Poseidon. Hesychius also gives alternate versions of the city's founding legend, which he attributed to old poets and writers: It is said that the first Argives, after having received this prophecy from Pythia, Blessed are those who will inhabit that holy city, a narrow strip of the Thracian shore at the mouth of the Pontos, where two pups drink of the gray sea, where fish and stag graze on the same pasture, set up their dwellings at the place where the rivers Kydaros and Barbyses have their estuaries, one flowing from the north, the other from the west, and merging with the sea at the altar of the nymph called Semestre"

The city maintained independence as a city-state until it was annexed by Darius I in 512 BC into the Persian Empire, who saw the site as the optimal location to construct a pontoon bridge crossing into Europe as Byzantium was situated at the narrowest point in the Bosphorus strait. Persian rule lasted until 478 BC when as part of the Greek counterattack to the Second Persian invasion of Greece, a Greek army led by the Spartan general Pausanias captured the city which remained an independent, yet subordinate, city under the Athenians, and later to the Spartans after 411 BC. A farsighted treaty with the emergent power of Rome in c. 150 BC which stipulated tribute in exchange for independent status allowed it to enter Roman rule unscathed. This treaty would pay dividends retrospectively as Byzantium would maintain this independent status, and prosper under peace and stability in the Pax Romana, for nearly three centuries until the late 2nd century AD.

Byzantium was never a major influential city-state like that of Athens, Corinth or Sparta, but the city enjoyed relative peace and steady growth as a prosperous trading city lent by its remarkable position. The site lay astride the land route from Europe to Asia and the seaway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and had in the Golden Horn an excellent and spacious harbor. Already then, in Greek and early Roman times, Byzantium was famous for the strategic geographic position that made it difficult to besiege and capture, and its position at the crossroads of the Asiatic-European trade route over land and as the gateway between the Mediterranean and Black Seas made it too valuable a settlement to abandon, as Emperor Septimius Severus later realized when he razed the city to the ground for supporting Pescennius Niger's claimancy. It was a move greatly criticized by the contemporary consul and historian Cassius Dio who said that Severus had destroyed "a strong Roman outpost and a base of operations against the barbarians from Pontus and Asia". He would later rebuild Byzantium towards the end of his reign, in which it would be briefly renamed Augusta Antonina, fortifying it with a new city wall in his name, the Severan Wall.

324–337: The refoundation as Constantinople




Constantine had altogether more colourful plans. Having restored the unity of the Empire, and, being in the course of major governmental reforms as well as of sponsoring the consolidation of the Christian church, he was well aware that Rome was an unsatisfactory capital. Rome was too far from the frontiers, and hence from the armies and the imperial courts, and it offered an undesirable playground for disaffected politicians. Yet it had been the capital of the state for over a thousand years, and it might have seemed unthinkable to suggest that the capital be moved to a different location. Nevertheless, Constantine identified the site of Byzantium as the right place: a place where an emperor could sit, readily defended, with easy access to the Danube or the Euphrates frontiers, his court supplied from the rich gardens and sophisticated workshops of Roman Asia, his treasuries filled by the wealthiest provinces of the Empire.

Constantinople was built over six years, and consecrated on 11 May 330. Constantine divided the expanded city, like Rome, into 14 regions, and ornamented it with public works worthy of an imperial metropolis. 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.

Constantine laid out a new square at the centre of old Byzantium, naming it the Augustaeum. The new senate-house (or Curia) was housed in a basilica on the east side. On the south side of the great square was erected the Great Palace of the Emperor with its imposing entrance, the Chalke, and its ceremonial suite known as the Palace of Daphne. Nearby was the vast Hippodrome for chariot-races, seating over 80,000 spectators, and the famed Baths of Zeuxippus. At the western entrance to the Augustaeum was the Milion, a vaulted monument from which distances were measured across the Eastern Roman Empire.

From the Augustaeum led a great street, the Mese, lined with colonnades. As it descended the First Hill of the city and climbed the Second Hill, it passed on the left the Praetorium or law-court. Then it passed through the oval Forum of Constantine where there was a second Senate-house and a high column with a statue of Constantine himself in the guise of Helios, crowned with a halo of seven rays and looking toward the rising sun. From there, the Mese passed on and through the Forum Tauri and then the Forum Bovis, and finally up the Seventh Hill (or Xerolophus) and through to the Golden Gate in the Constantinian Wall. After the construction of the Theodosian Walls in the early 5th century, it was extended to the new Golden Gate, reaching a total length of seven Roman miles. After the construction of the Theodosian Walls, Constantinople consisted of an area approximately the size of Old Rome within the Aurelian walls, or some 1,400 ha.

337–529: Constantinople during the Barbarian Invasions and the fall of the West


The importance of Constantinople increased, but it was gradual. From the death of Constantine in 337 to the accession of Theodosius I, emperors had been resident only in the years 337–338, 347–351, 358–361, 368–369. Its status as a capital was recognized by the appointment of the first known Urban Prefect of the City Honoratus, who held office from 11 December 359 until 361. The urban prefects had concurrent jurisdiction over three provinces each in the adjacent dioceses of Thrace (in which the city was located), Pontus and Asia comparable to the 100-mile extraordinary jurisdiction of the prefect of Rome. The emperor Valens, who hated the city and spent only one year there, nevertheless built the Palace of Hebdomon on the shore of the Propontis near the Golden Gate, probably for use when reviewing troops. All the emperors up to Zeno and Basiliscus were crowned and acclaimed at the Hebdomon. Theodosius I founded the Church of John the Baptist to house the skull of the saint (today preserved at the Topkapı Palace), put up a memorial pillar to himself in the Forum of Taurus, and turned the ruined temple of Aphrodite into a coach house for the Praetorian Prefect; Arcadius built a new forum named after himself on the Mese, near the walls of Constantine.

After the shock of the Battle of Adrianople in 378, in which the emperor Valens with the flower of the Roman armies was destroyed by the Visigoths within a few days' march, the city looked to its defences, and in 413–414 Theodosius II built the 18-metre (60-foot)-tall triple-wall fortifications, which were not to be breached until the coming of gunpowder. Theodosius also founded a University near the Forum of Taurus, on 27 February 425.

Uldin, a prince of the Huns, appeared on the Danube about this time and advanced into Thrace, but he was deserted by many of his followers, who joined with the Romans in driving their king back north of the river. Subsequent to this, new walls were built to defend the city and the fleet on the Danube improved.

After the barbarians overran the Western Roman Empire, Constantinople became the indisputable capital city of the Roman Empire. Emperors were no longer peripatetic between various court capitals and palaces. They remained in their palace in the Great City and sent generals to command their armies. The wealth of the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia flowed into Constantinople.

527–565: Constantinople in the Age of Justinian
The emperor Justinian I (527–565) was known for his successes in war, for his legal reforms and for his public works. It was from Constantinople that his expedition for the reconquest of the former Diocese of Africa set sail on or about 21 June 533. Before their departure, the ship of the commander Belisarius was anchored in front of the Imperial palace, and the Patriarch offered prayers for the success of the enterprise. After the victory, in 534, the Temple treasure of Jerusalem, looted by the Romans in AD 70 and taken to Carthage by the Vandals after their sack of Rome in 455, was brought to Constantinople and deposited for a time, perhaps in the Church of St Polyeuctus, before being returned to Jerusalem in either the Church of the Resurrection or the New Church.

Chariot-racing had been important in Rome for centuries. In Constantinople, the hippodrome became over time increasingly a place of political significance. It was where (as a shadow of the popular elections of old Rome) the people by acclamation showed their approval of a new emperor, and also where they openly criticized the government, or clamoured for the removal of unpopular ministers. It played a crucial role during the riots and in times of political unrest. The Hippodrome provided a space for a crowd to be responded to positively or where the acclamations of a crowd were subverted, resorting to the riots that would ensue in coming years. In the time of Justinian, public order in Constantinople became a critical political issue.

Throughout the late Roman and early Byzantine periods, Christianity was resolving fundamental questions of identity, and the dispute between the orthodox and the monophysites became the cause of serious disorder, expressed through allegiance to the chariot-racing parties of the Blues and the Greens. The partisans of the Blues and the Greens were said to affect untrimmed facial hair, head hair shaved at the front and grown long at the back, and wide-sleeved tunics tight at the wrist; and to form gangs to engage in night-time muggings and street violence. At last these disorders took the form of a major rebellion of 532, known as the "Nika" riots (from the battle-cry of "Conquer!" of those involved). The Nika Riots began in the Hippodrome and finished there with the onslaught of over 30,000 people according to Procopius, those in the blue and green factions, innocent and guilty. This came full circle on the relationship within the Hippodrome between the power and the people during the time of Justinian.

Fires started by the Nika rioters consumed the Theodosian basilica of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), the city's cathedral, which lay to the north of the Augustaeum and had itself replaced the Constantinian basilica founded by Constantius II to replace the first Byzantine cathedral, Hagia Irene (Holy Peace). Justinian commissioned Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus to replace it with a new and incomparable Hagia Sophia. This was the great cathedral of the city, whose dome was said to be held aloft by God alone, and which was directly connected to the palace so that the imperial family could attend services without passing through the streets. "The architectural form of the building was meant to reflect Justinian programmatic harmony: the circular dome (a symbol of secular authority in classical Roman architecture) would be harmoniously combined with the rectangular form (typical for Christian and pre-Christian temples)." The dedication took place on 26 December 537 in the presence of the emperor, who was later reported to have exclaimed, "O Solomon, I have outdone thee!" Hagia Sophia was served by 600 people including 80 priests, and cost 20,000 pounds of gold to build.

Justinian also had Anthemius and Isidore demolish and replace the original Church of the Holy Apostles and Hagia Irene built by Constantine with new churches under the same dedication. The Justinianic Church of the Holy Apostles was designed in the form of an equal-armed cross with five domes, and ornamented with beautiful mosaics. This church was to remain the burial place of the emperors from Constantine himself until the 11th century. When the city fell to the Turks in 1453, the church was demolished to make room for the tomb of Mehmet II the Conqueror. Justinian was also concerned with other aspects of the city's built environment, legislating against the abuse of laws prohibiting building within 100 ft of the sea front, in order to protect the view.

During Justinian I's reign, the city's population reached about 500,000 people. However, the social fabric of Constantinople was also damaged by the onset of the Plague of Justinian between 541 and 542 AD. It killed perhaps 40% of the city's inhabitants.



Survival, 565–717: Constantinople during the Byzantine Dark Ages
In the early 7th century, the Avars and later the Bulgars overwhelmed much of the Balkans, threatening Constantinople with attack from the west. Simultaneously, the Persian Sassanids overwhelmed the Prefecture of the East and penetrated deep into Anatolia. Heraclius, son of the exarch of Africa, set sail for the city and assumed the throne. He found the military situation so dire that he is said to have contemplated withdrawing the imperial capital to Carthage, but relented after the people of Constantinople begged him to stay. The citizens lost their right to free grain in 618 when Heraclius realized that the city could no longer be supplied from Egypt as a result of the Persian wars: the population fell substantially as a result.

While the city withstood a siege by the Sassanids and Avars in 626, Heraclius campaigned deep into Persian territory and briefly restored the status quo in 628, when the Persians surrendered all their conquests. However, further sieges followed the Arab conquests, first from 674 to 678 and then in 717 to 718. The Theodosian Walls kept the city impenetrable from the land, while a newly discovered incendiary substance known as Greek fire allowed the Byzantine navy to destroy the Arab fleets and keep the city supplied. In the second siege, the second ruler of Bulgaria, Khan Tervel, rendered decisive help. He was called Saviour of Europe.

717–1025: Constantinople during the Macedonian Renaissance
In the 730s Leo III carried out extensive repairs of the Theodosian walls, which had been damaged by frequent and violent attacks; this work was financed by a special tax on all the subjects of the Empire.

Theodora, widow of the Emperor Theophilus (died 842), acted as regent during the minority of her son Michael III, who was said to have been introduced to dissolute habits by her brother Bardas. When Michael assumed power in 856, he became known for excessive drunkenness, appeared in the hippodrome as a charioteer and burlesqued the religious processions of the clergy. He removed Theodora from the Great Palace to the Carian Palace and later to the monastery of Gastria, but, after the death of Bardas, she was released to live in the palace of St Mamas; she also had a rural residence at the Anthemian Palace, where Michael was assassinated in 867.

In 860, an attack was made on the city by a new principality set up a few years earlier at Kiev by Askold and Dir, two Varangian chiefs: Two hundred small vessels passed through the Bosporus and plundered the monasteries and other properties on the suburban Princes' Islands. Oryphas, the admiral of the Byzantine fleet, alerted the emperor Michael, who promptly put the invaders to flight; but the suddenness and savagery of the onslaught made a deep impression on the citizens.

In 980, the emperor Basil II received an unusual gift from Prince Vladimir of Kiev: 6,000 Varangian warriors, which Basil formed into a new bodyguard known as the Varangian Guard. They were known for their ferocity, honour, and loyalty. It is said that, in 1038, they were dispersed in winter quarters in the Thracesian Theme when one of their number attempted to violate a countrywoman, but in the struggle she seized his sword and killed him; instead of taking revenge, however, his comrades applauded her conduct, compensated her with all his possessions, and exposed his body without burial as if he had committed suicide. However, following the death of an Emperor, they became known also for plunder in the Imperial palaces. Later in the 11th century the Varangian Guard became dominated by Anglo-Saxons who preferred this way of life to subjugation by the new Norman kings of England.



The Book of the Eparch, which dates to the 10th century, gives a detailed picture of the city's commercial life and its organization at that time. The corporations in which the tradesmen of Constantinople were organised were supervised by the Eparch, who regulated such matters as production, prices, import, and export. Each guild had its own monopoly, and tradesmen might not belong to more than one. It is an impressive testament to the strength of tradition how little these arrangements had changed since the office, then known by the Latin version of its title, had been set up in 330 to mirror the urban prefecture of Rome.

In the 9th and 10th centuries, Constantinople had a population of between 500,000 and 800,000.

Iconoclast controversy in Constantinople
In the 8th and 9th centuries, the iconoclast movement caused serious political unrest throughout the Empire. The emperor Leo III issued a decree in 726 against images, and ordered the destruction of a statue of Christ over one of the doors of the Chalke, an act that was fiercely resisted by the citizens. Constantine V convoked a church council in 754, which condemned the worship of images, after which many treasures were broken, burned, or painted over with depictions of trees, birds or animals: One source refers to the church of the Holy Virgin at Blachernae as having been transformed into a "fruit store and aviary". Following the death of her husband Leo IV in 780, the empress Irene restored the veneration of images through the agency of the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.

The iconoclast controversy returned in the early 9th century, only to be resolved once more in 843 during the regency of Empress Theodora, who restored the icons. These controversies contributed to the deterioration of relations between the Western and the Eastern Churches.

1025–1081: Constantinople after Basil II


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.

1081–1185: Constantinople under the Komneni
Under the Komnenian dynasty (1081–1185), Byzantium staged a remarkable recovery. In 1090–91, the nomadic Pechenegs reached the walls of Constantinople, where Emperor Alexius I with the aid of the Kipchaks annihilated their army. In response to a call for aid from Alexius, the First Crusade assembled at Constantinople in 1096, but declining to put itself under Byzantine command set out for Jerusalem on its own account. John II built the monastery of the Pantocrator (Almighty) with a hospital for the poor of 50 beds.

With the restoration of firm central government, the empire became fabulously wealthy. The population was rising (estimates for Constantinople in the 12th century vary from some 100,000 to 500,000), and towns and cities across the realm flourished. Meanwhile, the volume of money in circulation dramatically increased. This was reflected in Constantinople by the construction of the Blachernae palace, the creation of brilliant new works of art, and general prosperity at this time: an increase in trade, made possible by the growth of the Italian city-states, may have helped the growth of the economy. It is certain that the Venetians and others were active traders in Constantinople, making a living out of shipping goods between the Crusader Kingdoms of Outremer and the West, while also trading extensively with Byzantium and Egypt. The Venetians had factories on the north side of the Golden Horn, and large numbers of westerners were present in the city throughout the 12th century. Toward the end of Manuel I Komnenos's reign, the number of foreigners in the city reached about 60,000–80,000 people out of a total population of about 400,000 people. In 1171, Constantinople also contained a small community of 2,500 Jews. In 1182, most Latin (Western European) inhabitants of Constantinople were massacred.

In artistic terms, the 12th century was a very productive period. There was a revival in the mosaic art, for example: Mosaics became more realistic and vivid, with an increased emphasis on depicting three-dimensional forms. There was an increased demand for art, with more people having access to the necessary wealth to commission and pay for such work.

1185–1261: Constantinople during the Imperial Exile


On 25 July 1197, Constantinople was struck by a severe fire which burned the Latin Quarter and the area around the Gate of the Droungarios (Odun Kapısı) on the Golden Horn. Nevertheless, the destruction wrought by the 1197 fire paled in comparison with that brought by the Crusaders. In the course of a plot between Philip of Swabia, Boniface of Montferrat and the Doge of Venice, the Fourth Crusade was, despite papal excommunication, diverted in 1203 against Constantinople, ostensibly promoting the claims of Alexios IV Angelos brother-in-law of Philip, son of the deposed emperor Isaac II Angelos. The reigning emperor Alexios III Angelos had made no preparation. The Crusaders occupied Galata, broke the defensive chain protecting the Golden Horn, and entered the harbour, where on 27 July they breached the sea walls: Alexios III fled. But the new Alexios IV Angelos found the Treasury inadequate, and was unable to make good the rewards he had promised to his western allies. Tension between the citizens and the Latin soldiers increased. In January 1204, the protovestiarius Alexios Murzuphlos provoked a riot, it is presumed, to intimidate Alexios IV, but whose only result was the destruction of the great statue of Athena Promachos, the work of Phidias, which stood in the principal forum facing west.

In February 1204, the people rose again: Alexios IV was imprisoned and executed, and Murzuphlos took the purple as Alexios V Doukas. He made some attempt to repair the walls and organise the citizenry, but there had been no opportunity to bring in troops from the provinces and the guards were demoralised by the revolution. An attack by the Crusaders on 6 April failed, but a second from the Golden Horn on 12 April succeeded, and the invaders poured in. Alexios V fled. The Senate met in Hagia Sophia and offered the crown to Theodore Lascaris, who had married into the Angelos dynasty, but it was too late. He came out with the Patriarch to the Golden Milestone before the Great Palace and addressed the Varangian Guard. Then the two of them slipped away with many of the nobility and embarked for Asia. By the next day the Doge and the leading Franks were installed in the Great Palace, and the city was given over to pillage for three days.

Sir Steven Runciman, historian of the Crusades, wrote that the sack of Constantinople is "unparalleled in history".

"For nine centuries, [...] the great city had been the capital of Christian civilization. It was filled with works of art that had survived from ancient Greece and with the masterpieces of its own exquisite craftsmen. The Venetians [...] seized treasures and carried them off to adorn [...] their town. But the Frenchmen and Flemings were filled with a lust for destruction. They rushed in a howling mob down the streets and through the houses, snatching up everything that glittered and destroying whatever they could not carry, pausing only to murder or to rape, or to break open the wine-cellars [...] . Neither monasteries nor churches nor libraries were spared. In Hagia Sophia itself, drunken soldiers could be seen tearing down the silken hangings and pulling the great silver iconostasis to pieces, while sacred books and icons were trampled under foot. While they drank merrily from the altar-vessels a prostitute set herself on the Patriarch's throne and began to sing a ribald French song. Nuns were ravished in their convents. Palaces and hovels alike were entered and wrecked. Wounded women and children lay dying in the streets. For three days the ghastly scenes [...] continued, till the huge and beautiful city was a shambles. [...] When [...] order was restored, [...] citizens were tortured to make them reveal the goods that they had contrived to hide."

For the next half-century, Constantinople was the seat of the Latin Empire. Under the rulers of the Latin Empire, the city declined, both in population and the condition of its buildings. Alice-Mary Talbot cites an estimated population for Constantinople of 400,000 inhabitants; after the destruction wrought by the Crusaders on the city, about one third were homeless, and numerous courtiers, nobility, and higher clergy, followed various leading personages into exile. "As a result Constantinople became seriously depopulated," Talbot concludes.

The Latins took over at least 20 churches and 13 monasteries, most prominently the Hagia Sophia, which became the cathedral of the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. It is to these that E.H. Swift attributed the construction of a series of flying buttresses to shore up the walls of the church, which had been weakened over the centuries by earthquake tremors. However, this act of maintenance is an exception: for the most part, the Latin occupiers were too few to maintain all of the buildings, either secular and sacred, and many became targets for vandalism or dismantling. Bronze and lead were removed from the roofs of abandoned buildings and melted down and sold to provide money to the chronically under-funded Empire for defense and to support the court; Deno John Geanokoplos writes that "it may well be that a division is suggested here: Latin laymen stripped secular buildings, ecclesiastics, the churches." Buildings were not the only targets of officials looking to raise funds for the impoverished Latin Empire: the monumental sculptures which adorned the Hippodrome and fora of the city were pulled down and melted for coinage. "Among the masterpieces destroyed, writes Talbot, "were a Herakles attributed to the fourth-century B.C. sculptor Lysippos, and monumental figures of Hera, Paris, and Helen."

The Nicaean emperor John III Vatatzes reportedly saved several churches from being dismantled for their valuable building materials; by sending money to the Latins "to buy them off" (exonesamenos), he prevented the destruction of several churches. According to Talbot, these included the churches of Blachernae, Rouphinianai, and St. Michael at Anaplous. He also granted funds for the restoration of the Church of the Holy Apostles, which had been seriously damaged in an earthquake.

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. 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.

1261–1453: Palaiologan Era and the Fall of Constantinople
Although Constantinople was retaken by Michael VIII Palaiologos, the Empire had lost many of its key economic resources, and struggled to survive. The palace of Blachernae in the north-west of the city became the main Imperial residence, with the old Great Palace on the shores of the Bosporus going into decline. When Michael VIII captured the city, its population was 35,000 people, but, by the end of his reign, he had succeeded in increasing the population to about 70,000 people. The Emperor achieved this by summoning former residents who had fled the city when the crusaders captured it, and by relocating Greeks from the recently reconquered Peloponnese to the capital. Military defeats, civil wars, earthquakes and natural disasters were joined by the Black Death, which in 1347 spread to Constantinople, exacerbated the people's sense that they were doomed by God.

Castilian traveler and writer Ruy González de Clavijo, who saw Constantinople in 1403, wrote that the area within the city walls included small neighborhoods separated by orchards and fields. The ruins of palaces and churches could be seen everywhere. The aqueducts and the most densely inhabited neighborhoods were along the coast of the Marmara Sea and Golden Horn. Only the coastal areas, in particular the commercial areas facing the Golden Horn, had a dense population. Although the Genoese colony in Galata was small, it was overcrowded and had magnificent mansions.

By May 1453, the city no longer possessed the treasure troves of Aladdin that the Ottoman troops longingly imagined as they stared up at the walls. Gennadios Scholarios, Patriarch of Constantinople from 1454 to 1464, was saying that the capital of the Empire, that was once the "city of wisdom", became "the city of ruins".

When the Ottoman Turks captured the city (1453) it contained approximately 50,000 people. Tedaldi of Florence estimated the population at 30,000 to 36,000, while in Chronica Vicentina, the Italian Andrei di Arnaldo estimated it at 50,000. The plague epidemic of 1435 must have caused the population to drop.

The population decline also had a huge impact upon the Constantinople's defense capabilities. At the  end  of  March 1453, emperor Constantine XI ordered  a  census  of  districts to  record how  many  able-bodied  men  were in the city  and whatever  weapons  each possessed  for  defense. George Sphrantzes, the faithful chancellor of the last emperor, recorded that "in  spite  of  the  great size  of  our  city,  our  defenders amounted  to  4,773  Greeks,  as well  as  just  200  foreigners". In addition  there  were  volunteers from outside,  the "Genoese,  Venetians  and those  who  came  secretly  from Galata  to  help  the  defense", who  numbered "hardly  as many  as  three  thousand", amounting  to  something under  8,000  men  in  total  to defend  a  perimeter  wall  of twelve  miles.

Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Empire on 29 May 1453. Mehmed II intended to complete his father's mission and conquer Constantinople for the Ottomans. In 1452 he reached peace treaties with Hungary and Venice. He also began the construction of the Boğazkesen (later called the Rumelihisarı), a fortress at the narrowest point of the Bosphorus Strait, in order to restrict passage between the Black and Mediterranean seas. Mehmed then tasked the Hungarian gunsmith Urban with both arming Rumelihisarı and building cannon powerful enough to bring down the walls of Constantinople. By March 1453 Urban's cannon had been transported from the Ottoman capital of Edirne to the outskirts of Constantinople. In April, having quickly seized Byzantine coastal settlements along the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara, Ottoman troops in Rumelia and Anatolia assembled outside the Byzantine capital. Their fleet moved from Gallipoli to nearby Diplokionion, and the sultan himself set out to meet his army. The Ottomans were commanded by 21-year-old Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. The conquest of Constantinople followed a seven-week siege which had begun on 6 April 1453. The Empire fell on 29 May 1453.

The number of people captured by the Ottomans after the fall of the city was around 33,000. The small number of people left in the city indicates that there could not have been many residents there. The primary concern of Mehmed II in the early years of his reign was the construction and settlement of the city. However, since an insufficient number of Muslims accepted his invitation, the settlement of 30 abandoned neighborhoods with the inhabitants of formerly conquered areas became necessary.

1453–1930: Ottoman and Republican Kostantiniyye


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, solidifying Islamic rule in Constantinople.

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. 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. From all over the Islamic empire, prisoners of war and deported people were sent to the city: these people were called "Sürgün" in Turkish. 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. 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.

Culture
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."

It was especially important for preserving in its libraries manuscripts of Greek and Latin authors throughout a period when instability and disorder caused their mass-destruction in western Europe and north Africa: On the city's fall, thousands of these were brought by refugees to Italy, and played a key part in stimulating the Renaissance, and the transition to the modern world. The cumulative influence of the city on the west, over the many centuries of its existence, is incalculable. In terms of technology, art and culture, as well as sheer size, Constantinople was without parallel anywhere in Europe for a thousand years. Many languages were spoken in Constantinople. A 16th century Chinese geographical treatise specifically recorded that there were translators living in the city, indicating it was multilingual, multicultural, and cosmopolitan.

Women in literature
Constantinople was home to the first known Western Armenian journal published and edited by a woman (Elpis Kesaratsian). Entering circulation in 1862, Kit'arr or Guitar stayed in print for only seven months. Female writers who openly expressed their desires were viewed as immodest, but this changed slowly as journals began to publish more "women's sections". In the 1880s, Matteos Mamurian invited Srpouhi Dussap to submit essays for Arevelian Mamal. According to Zaruhi Galemkearian's autobiography, she was told to write about women's place in the family and home after she published two volumes of poetry in the 1890s. By 1900, several Armenian journals had started to include works by female contributors including the Constantinople-based Tsaghik.

Markets
Even before Constantinople was founded, the markets of Byzantion were mentioned first by Xenophon and then by Theopompus who wrote that Byzantians "spent their time at the market and the harbour". In Justinian's age the Mese street running across the city from east to west was a daily market. Procopius claimed "more than 500 prostitutes" did business along the market street. Ibn Batutta who traveled to the city in 1325 wrote of the bazaars "Astanbul" in which the "majority of the artisans and salespeople in them are women".

Architecture and Coinage
The Byzantine Empire used Roman and Greek architectural models and styles to create its own unique type of architecture. The influence of Byzantine architecture and art can be seen in the copies taken from it throughout Europe. Particular examples include St Mark's Basilica in Venice, the basilicas of Ravenna, and many churches throughout the Slavic East. Also, alone in Europe until the 13th-century Italian florin, the Empire continued to produce sound gold coinage, the solidus of Diocletian becoming the bezant prized throughout the Middle Ages. Its city walls were much imitated (for example, see Caernarfon Castle) and its urban infrastructure was moreover a marvel throughout the Middle Ages, keeping alive the art, skill and technical expertise of the Roman Empire. In the Ottoman period Islamic architecture and symbolism were used. Great bathhouses were built in Byzantine centers such as Constantinople and Antioch.

Religion
Constantine's foundation gave prestige to the Bishop of Constantinople, who eventually came to be known as the Ecumenical Patriarch, and made it a prime center of Christianity alongside Rome. This contributed to cultural and theological differences between Eastern and Western Christianity eventually leading to the Great Schism that divided Western Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy from 1054 onwards. Constantinople is also of great religious importance to Islam, as the conquest of Constantinople is one of the signs of the End time in Islam.

Education
There were many institutions in ancient Constantinople such as the Imperial University of Constantinople, sometimes known as the University of the Palace Hall of Magnaura (Πανδιδακτήριον τῆς Μαγναύρας), an Eastern Roman educational institution that could trace its corporate origins to 425 AD, when the emperor Theodosius II founded the Pandidacterium. <!-- CONTENT THAT COULD BE USED BUT WOULD BE SUBJECT TO COPYRIGHT

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Byzantine education is an enticingly subject for exploration, and one that shifts in hue away one era to the next. Of course, present were stable axes traversing its entire, extensive history. Education itself was one such axis away reference throughout an Byzantine centuries. It held its links with its — mainly Hellenistic — past and expanded on yours, castings at a relatively earliest stage a homo Byzantinus who remained true both to his classics teaching and his Christian beliefs.1 To Byzantine Empire almost imposed requirement schooling to its subjects, while education was always open to these the desired items and had the wherewithal to pay with it.2 And while one assert was well aware that its functionaries had need are under least a grasp school-training, education for itself been never a prerequisite for holding an imperial post. On the other hand, wenn it was present, education was a highly-regarded element in anyone’s make-up, but was especially admired in mountings of high office.

Much has is writing concerning the attitude of of Christians of the fourth century towards an intellegent patrimony of the Greco-Roman world. Christianity, a religion founded on the revealed God, could never entertain the idea that folks should be educated inbound order to embrace the faith. On the other hand, it was completed at at early stage that the user with the intellectual legacy of the ancient world be only benefit Christianity. Indeed, this dialogue played ampere major rolling in the formative intellectual debates and concerns of this period.3

One of the great sponsors von education in the early Ancient term is the emperor Julian (361-363). The young emperor propounded the view that Greco-Roman civilization judge his historical legitimacy in theological terms; education and religion were inextricably related, while the ultimate guaranty of education was divine providence itself. In all persuasion Julian exhibited an edict in 362 over which Christian teachers were ban from practice theirs profession, as it was assumed which person did not respect the worked they were using as textbooks. Aforementioned law practical to holders of municipal chairs but none to the vast majority of teachers, who taught privately and were paid at them students.4 Items was Ground who Great (ca. 329-379) who in the exit ensured that developments pursued a get hasty pace. In her Address to teen on how they might profit from Greek english he commended the study of the classical in Christians, with the proviso that pupils should draft from the pagan your any was consistent includes the ethics of the new religion. Him lock friend Gregory of Nazianzos (329/330-390), patriarch are Constantinople and one of the most fascinating and intellectually restless men of his age, was more forceful inbound his reviews of Julian, pointer out that the piece to heather Antiquity were a legacy that benefited not must the pagans though also this Christians. This view of Gregory’s has to prove the many enduring in the centenaries to kommend, and paved the way to the compromise between Christians and the old literary and intellectual codes, both in and religions and and secular spheres.

Education in Byzance was an matter of individual choice and there was never suchlike a thing as legal school attendance. Any child whose parent were freiborn country was permissible till attend schools. Giving that the schools were always home run, folks kept into possess sufficient financial means to pay in to child’s formation, the tuition fees frequently exist referring go when misthos or siteresion. There is uncertainty as to the level of these fees; us are indirectly given to understand that your endured relatively high, although this would dependent in the educational and reputation of an teacher. In a number of cases teachers are known to have demanded payment away fees owed from the folk of schoolchildren. On occasions, indeed, she had to resort to the legislative courts in orders to receive their dues. In to tenth century we know concerning an existents in Constantinople of one office of the prokathemenos tone paideuterion, whose task was to supervise this our. Disputes arising between teachers able be resolved with the intervention of the eparch, the patriarch or even the emperor himself. The imperial treasury occasionally provides assistance to certain instructors, but this assistance was rarely sufficient or paid on a regular basis. Aforementioned same policy was implemented by the patriarchate of Constantinople: again, the fiscal support was afar from regular. A number of kloster also offered elementary schooling to young boarders who were usually destined to become monks alternatively members of the clerical; this practice, however, was not widely popular.

It must be highlighted so one cannot talk of a purple Byzantine instruction.5 The Byzantine state neither knew an education of its own, nor imposed latest guidelines on the education it offered. Rather, Byzantium’s Hellenistic press Roman past had bequeathed one educating system whose structure remained unchanged by the final years of the Empire: a primary school, where the child was learned basic literacy, and adenine secondary school, where of blank of the curriculum were basis exclusively on secular humanities.6 During the middle and late Byzantine period, computers was the secondary school that unternommen the brunt of children’s education, given that higher training institutions were must obtainable in large urban during that Empire’s early years, although with the ninth century onwards they dependant to initiatives taken by emperors—and more rarely by senior officials—which were typical short-lived.

The Complex school was a one-man affair, the increase (so to speak) von a given tutor, who and determined an image projected by his small educational unit onto you social surroundings. Although there is no shortage of exceptions, a perusal of the sources -correspondence, in the main- confirms that the winner (or otherwise) of a given secondary depended exclusively on the character of its student. It was his presence and teaching that attracted parents and college.7

Children went to school included Constantinople whenever parents were sufficiently well off to afford such schooling. The primary level of education was generally known in propaideia, beginning around the age of sixes to eight, and lasted three to quadruplet years. The ‘primary’ schoolteacher was acknowledged as this grammatistes, paidodidaskalos, paidotribes oder paidagogos. Little is noted about the positions in which these schools were resided; while of grammatistai were membersation concerning the clergy, it has quite likely that lessons were widely conducted in churches or farms of monasteries. Reading, writing and arithmetic were who staple subjects of primary education. The pupils began by learning the unique letters, later syllables, monosyllabic words, combinations of english and consonants in alphabetical and reverse order, entire words plus, gradually, total lyrics. College used a stylus to want their exercises either on ostraca instead on wooden tablets, known as schedaria. The most types of tablet were coated in wax. Best pills could single be coated with a thin layer of mud or sand; the teacher would scratch out his exercises with his snapping. One key textbook was the Psalter, although misc articles were and used. Given that books where very expensive, pupils practised on reading the text out acoustic and then repeating it plus learning information by heart. For arithmetic the schoolchildren counter with theirs fingers instead used stones to make elementary calculations; person see used an abacus, i.e. a committee with holes in it corresponding to numbers. Given that by the end of Byzantium it remained usually practice to how which Greek numbering netz, the grammatistes would get the children to indicate numerical to him by pointing to the appropriate hole on the abacus.

The grammatikos, also termed maistor, had responsible for the secondary level of educating, the famous enkyklios paideia, startup at around the age of twelve to fourteen and lasting, usually, for among least four years. The secondary schools were overall housed in buildings in the centre by Constantinople. To pupils would spend the fully day at school and there were many boarding institutions for those its families did nay live locally. Attend in class was obligatory; the so-called Anonymous Teacher, who had established such a middle are Constants around the mid-tenth century, records how he once received a visit from the angry father who should been his son inches the market with friends bargaining required songbirds (!) when he was supposed to be at school.8 Judging from aforementioned recipient of Anonymous’ letters, this past teacher have excellent connections to the palace, to high-ranking officials, as well as to the spirituality; indeed, the patriarchate used to sponsor his teach from time to time.9

Peer lesson is one alluring methodological feature of the educative plant, which is referred into in the Unidentified Teacher’s correspondence. To, a group of students were assigned teaching duties, presumably because the school could nope otherwise be effizienz run. Comparative research starting the contents of of Anonymous’ letters show that in addition for undertaking teaching tasks, welche presumably consisted in tutoring the school’s younger students, the ekkritoi tes scholes or the epistatountes also had adenine sound in the agency decision-making process.10 This important testimony is backed upward over Life A of Pope of Antos, which recommends either to an hierarchy away teacher and to students voting with regard to one advance of teachers within get hierarchy.11 E the worth noting, however, that the sources make no please of a comparable system of internal school organization during the later periods of Byzantine story.

At the secondary level of education, the curriculum included the trivium of grammar, rhetoric the philosophy, and an quadrivium of arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. The core texts of the trivium,12 apart from Home (principally the Iliad, from the Odyssey allocation only secondary importance), included what is famous as the nine Gothic tragedies, three via apiece tragedien (The Persians, Prometheus Bound, and Seven against Thebes by Aeschylus, Ajax, Electric, and Oedpus the Royal by Sophocles, Hecuba, Orestes, and Phoenician Women by Euripides), three comedies due Aristophanes (Wealth, Fog, Frogs), crossing with Hesiod, Pindar, and Theocritus, Platonic dialogues, Lucian, the Cyropaedia combined with extracts from other work by Xenophon, words of Demosthenes and Isocrates, Philostratus, Psalms of David, poems in Gregory of Nazianzos, and other material. And Techne grammatike away Dionysios Thrax remained the primary compendium available and teaching of grammar throughout the Byzantine date. The Canons of Theodos of Alexian both the grammar of Georg Choiroboskos were also favourite.13 From the out of one tenth century onwards, a new education technique was developed, common as the schedographia (from schedos, explanation ‘draft’, ‘sketch’), by means von which the faculty taught of pupil highlight and grammar rules through a combination of play and riddles. The popularity of schedographia want reach near-extreme proportions among the brain community of the era, the the schede examinations, taking place in early summer, assumed an official character almost immediately.14

Rhetoric be viewed as the most important component of and secondary stage of educational in Byzantium. The grammatikos’ key teaching tool were exercises, known as progymnasmata, which aimed at get the student toward compose short letters up a variety of topic: mythical stories, popular sayings, memorials available historical or mythological characters, or comparisons between persons and current von opposing character (again usually drawn from mythology). Among the most popular forms of progymnasmata was the ethopoiia, i.e. the simulated from a particular character, and the ekphrasis, or description of a work of kind, building etc. The key textbook for the subject was that to Hermogenes of Tarsus (On Staseis real On Ideas), although various Byzantine writers built commentaries on own works. Aphthonios’ Progymnasmata15 because well as Joseph Rhakendytes’ Encyclopedia, providing, among another, a partial synopsis of rhetoric, were also exceptionally popular. Mathematics was taught either the an individual subject or in combination with astronomy. The favourite textbook throughout the Byzantine period be writers by Nikomachus of Gerasa (first–second age AD), but a series of mathematical epigrams by Metrodorus (sixth century) were also widely exploited. Geometry more similar what does widely advanced by Byzantine scholars. Euclid was the basis, although abundant commentaries that had been appended to you works since Antiquity were also used. The boundary between astronomy and star were not always clear, but one Byzantines were intensely inquisitive in the subject proper down to to fall of Constantinople. Ptolemy’s Mathematical Composing was another copy frequently referred to, together with Aratos’ Phainomena and a small groups of works by Autolykus, Electric and Theodosius. A great number of vital theorically work related to the quadrivium was composer, including the Tetrabiblos from Richard Pachymeres (c. 1242-1310), who paraphrased Diophantus.16

We have no idea whether trainers taught the entire core curriculum, specifically the quadrivium. The sources are of little help in get respect, while surviving accounts are inconsistent; the correspondence of the Anonymous Teacher your eigenartig in referring to Choiroboskos indirectly and verb really little about the school curriculum, while detailing disagreements and rivalry is Constantinopolitan my in the most caustic of terms, and painting a drama picture of yours financial situation.17 The eleventh-century accounts are no different; are knowing almost nothing about the teaching in which John Mauropous (ca. 1000–1075/81) studied; the same is truthful of Michael Psellos (1018 – share 1081 ?), whose enkomion to to mother plain lists the different periods in his school career.18 However, some other matters, create as the epitaph written with Nicholas Mesarites (ca. 1163/64-post 1214) in memory of his brother John, and the same author’s description of the Holy Apostles’ secondary, offer several interesting about concerning students’ life in twelfth century.19 Finally, this well-known autobiography by Gregory of Cyprus (1241-1290), the pupil patriarch, provides an intensely private approach at the schools about the thirteenth century and the material that they learn, originally in Nicaea and later in Constantinople after its recapture for Michael VIII Palaiologos (1261). Gregory was a human of wide-ranging your who him taught press authored works by and about his selects profession; he other contributed to the educational process in the late Byzantine period through the collection and copying of manuscripts, at least some of which were used for teaching purposes.20

Schedographia apart, the school curriculum was not subject to next shift. One primary characteristic of the teachers, notably inside date Byzantium, was the number of works they manufactured relating to their our (manuals, editions either commentaries on standard texts etc.). Perhaps the best example on this development is the case von Maximos Planudes, a scholar with multiple or wide-ranging interests, between which science and geography had pride is post, along with a deep trouble for the fate of list. Apart from make and prolifically creation volumes, Planudes was also an expert int cover them.21

‘Higher education’ did exist for Byzantium, although it has few similarities through that structure of present-day universities. It should be pointed out that in Antiquity or Byzantium there were no institutions of higher academics in this specific present-day use of an term. The Empire saw since Roman hours to of education of that who would staff the state machine, through a number of largely ‘public’ officials who provided knowledge and enjoyed special licenses, such as fax exempted, puristic for reasons of public total.22 This was achieved through the familiar diffusion the education, guaranteed by the undisturbed operation, at least until the sixth or even the seventh century, of the famous schools of Late Antiquity. The schools in asked focused to specialty divider is study: Platonic and majority Neoplatonic philosophy for of school of Athens, rhetoric for that of Antioch, broader classical and philosophical studies for the schools of Alexandria or Aphrodisias. Philosophy was also the focus of the middle of Apameia, time Caesarea turns towards Christian and Jewish literature and thought, equipped with a outstanding your for well as with famous scriptoria.23 Finally, Berytus cultivated legal studies, from early on and at a very high gauge. Show those schools remained private, favorite of schools of an first two levels, although at times they elicited funds either from the state or from his host cities.24

We now have some knowledge about the internal organisation furthermore work of many a these institutions about the most prominent single of Athens plus Alexandria, on which there has constantly sufficiency information.25 I remark some see: prospective students at the school of Antioch, which been dominate for Libanios after AD 354, submitted an application assisted by the letter(s) of citations required by the great rhetorician.26 As almost around in Byzantium, this became adenine one-man school, but Libanios too employed grammatikoi into undergo an teaching starting classical texts, that he deemed of major importance; some of Libanios’ collaborators use worked inches Antioch or consisted former students of his.27 That operation of that school was assisted by the existence from an association of alumni, whose frequent meetings and shut ask with the orator via personal correspondence promoted the representation of the institution the of Libanios in particular.28 The decree schools of Berytus is included by Justinian (527-565), alongside that of Constantinople, in the constitutio Omnem of the year 533, per which it adopted a rigorous five-year curriculum with distinct topic for each year.29 The legal text was read in Latin, interpreted by and antecessores, moreover called oikoumenikoi didaskaloi, and then translated into Grecian by the students; most of them should difficulties in understanding Latin, real the masters intervened to resolve them.30 It is worth noting that there are surviving explanatory texts by antecessores for well as student notes. Finally, there is evidence of and life of student unions which participated in School matters.31

If all this is witness in the periphery, great care is required whenever it comes to examining aforementioned current of Byzantium, as a state, in the education practices, equipped a view to reinforcing this didactic image of Constantinople. The city have negative history of ‘higher’ educational, and things were likely to remain fluid to a period of time necessary used aforementioned city’s ideological determinants to take shape. Yet an interventions of the state did not always had the same starting point. When Libanius arrives in Continuity, around the 340s, stylish search of work, he finds ‘sophists’ teaching in the market, having obtained office positions remunerated by the state, according to the old practice;32 indeed, as he notes, one of such sophists taught free the special throne in the exedra.33 Libanios’ involvement in the quarrels between an rival sophists will get the eminent logician down judicial adventures and cost i is stay permit in Constantinople, constrain him to flee rather hastily to Nikomedeia.34 Libanius returns again to Constantinople, most probably between 348 and 355, but this second journey only adds to his unpleasant impressions, contrary the honours lavished by its by the emperor Constantius (337-361).35

Constantinople evolving at of intellectual upper of the Domain in the time of Constantius, after 355.36 A key role in such process was played by Themistios, who was admitted to the Senate, following a letter of imperial recommendation in which the rhetorician’s appointment is explained in detail.37 The invitation to Themistios until teach in Constantinople clearly reflects Constantius’ determination to furnish the new capital with the intellectual prestige it hitherto lacked, despite the presence of sophists.38 The spokesman, any would lessons from the city’s koinon theatron, would soon repay his debt on Constantius. In his well-known speech of the annum 357 -on this occasion the the parties since the emperor’s vicennalia in Rome-,39 Themistios says that the new choose assigned to Constantinople is mainly intellectual; the city’s mission was to preserve the classical past by which Greek language and spread items all over the therefore known our. Inbound the same speech Themistius applauds the process of copying texte both context up ampere library, which was under ways in the new major at the time, again with who emperor’s consent.40

It is obvious that the variously significant presence to Themistius in Constantinople and his interact on the new capital’s educational matters and intellectual life, always from within a safe trap of sovereign protection, principally tiled the type for the founding of the Pandidakterion in Constantinople by emperor Theodosius E (408-450). Inaugurated in 425,41 this was beyond doubt an organizational novelty; it is the first time that Byzantium for a state goes into intellectual matters with and aim of instituting adenine new educational policy and a new system in parallel to the existing one-time (purely private studying, education with discreet state support, etc.). It must be stressed that this unprecedented school had the exclusive use for educating officials for who administration of the state.42 It is significant that what Themistius had proposed about promoting the Grecian language in 357, is put into practice by this novel institution, which kept and almost equal numeral of teachers for Greek and Latin.43 It is including worthwhile notice during is point that in the fourth century that Empire experienced a rivalry within Greek and Latin, created exclusively by and switch towards learning Roman on an item off these Greek speakers who were after one career in the state machine.44 Yet, after one death of Theodosius I (395) and the resultant split are the Empire, a new lingual boundary was built the became assoziiertes with the corresponding choices of the various social classes. Thus, the original tendency towards having ampere single state with two ‘official’ languages in use, Greek and Latin, crashes into decline, judging off the Pandidakterion, and is abandoned over moment, as is broadly accepted by students.45

Computers are almost certain ensure the Pandidakterion worked not continue after the regent of Herakleius (610-641).46 After that, the state will undertake no other action by the block of ‘higher’ education and, apart starting the constitutio Omnem, it want be more than two hundred years from the next state initiation, the establishment of the school of Magnaura (855). The reasons behind this modification in state policy go back to the per of Justinian. It is within is time that the earlier state dogma (once again essentially built according Themistius), whereby Hellenism and Christianity should be treated as two worldviews diametrically opposed yet capable von coexisting,47 gives way to Justinian’s dogma of a single state with ampere single language — strong though the reality was for an emperor like Justinian, a intense girlfriend of Latin — additionally a single religion with no exceptions. Thus in September 529 Justinian issues the well-known edict by which he verbal pagans, dissenters and Jews from teaching; it is then that the closure off the school of Athens takes place, although she had been showing signs of advancing decline, despite the presence of Damaskius, whom owned had teaching philosophy there since the initial sixth century.48 As a consequence, research, a key field of academic in the earlier centuries, retreating; to antecessores of law schools been replaced by scholastikoi, who are closer for rhetoric than to rule theory;49 choose is codified; teachers lose the taxing total they had enjoyed on centuries, and literate production lives almost placed under control.50

It would be a distortion of the reality of those times to claim that, after Justinian’s rigorously enforced institutional decisions on educate, Byzantium severed the umbilical cord that linked it to learning and know-how extra generally. On the other hand, where is nope doubt which out the one-seventh sixth forwards our our almost dries up and it is hard to seek intelligence on higher education or, indeed, on any educate during all. Nevertheless, of educational level of an admittedly limited élite, in the list rather than in the county, remains high, since the formation process is not disrupted, as one concludes from numerous proofs, predominantly in hagiographical texts.51 In any case, this spreaded information at our disposal confirms this no new institutions emerge. Moreover, the major crisis that hit Byzantium for an long time after the year of Herakleius has a indirect impact set academic. One tremendous territorial losses about who time deprive the Imperiality of the higher schools it still had, as as Alexandria, while natural disasters and epidemics come to expedite this litigation: the earthquake of 551 ADVERT damaged the law teach in Berytus,52 a later earthquake razes Aphrodisias to one ground,53 and, finally, the plague epidemic of the year 551 may well be behind the closure concerning the regulation secondary for Constantinople.54

The absence to higher teaching was refilled by the trains of enkyklios paideia, i.e. these run by grammatikoi. This tacit reformation was required through the circumstances: none, an resign of cities, the concomitant restructure of the state, still additionally (slightly later) Iconoclasm, combined is deciding which had be taken earlier but were still enforced, would produced entirely new conditions included a stay which had hitherto operated with different structures. It would be no exaggeration to say this these schools, which almost inevitable confided on one main teacher, essentially “rose” in the educational hierarchy and attempted to compensate for the absence of height education from the country’s intellectual life - or largely successful.55 Thereto has worth noting this the internal structure for an organised school a enkyklios paideia used fairly resemble to that of the old higher students; at least, this the what transpires from the correspondence of and Anonymous Teaches. In justifying the presence of a school of this level in the resources at the time, Lemerle speaks of a recliner sociale urbaine which usages education for social advancements and entrance into the higher echelons of the city’s society.56 This felicitous scoring shall corroborated by the presence of more teaching of a probably similar structure in one capital around the same time.57 The the another hand, it must be noted such shortly after the terminate of Iconoclast (843), the Empire had before brought the agency of a higher ‘state’ establishment in the vordruck away to school of Magnaura, base by caesar Bardas.58 Could itp subsist again the same couche sociale which, liberated starting this long years of dogmatics uncertainty under Iconoclasm, require its first measures direction forge its own élite with the graduates of this new establishment? This is more rather likely, especially if Magnaura’s foundation by adenine high-ranking official of that Empire is seen in conjunction with the date of Leo and Accountant as head of the language; the latter’s iconoclastic past neither diminished his widespread acceptance nor prevented him from taking the reins of this strong ambitious founding.59 Unsere sources speak away the three teachers that joined Leo (who instructed philosophy) real had specific teaching duties: Theodore, ampere pupil of Leo, taught geometry; astronomy was assigned to Theodegios and grammar to the well-known Kometas. The copy note is the generous funding of Magnaura held been secured with Bardas oneself.60

After Leo’s death (post 869) any traces of Magnaura are lost also there is cannot evidence to showing that the train continued to bedienen for any length of time.61 Belongings seem to change again in the instant half from the tense century, around the time that the school of the Anonymously Teacher was operating in Instanbul. According to Theophanes Continuatus, the emperors Constantine XVII Porphyrogennetos (945-959) decided to reorganise the system of ‘higher’ education by appointing four outstanding english: the protospatharios Constantine to teach philosophy, the metropolitan Alexander of Nicaea with rhetoric, one patriarchy Nikephoros for geometry plus the asekretis Gregory for astronomy. With here action, the chronicle firmly points out, the emperor, those subvented both lecturers additionally college, as Bardas had done with Magnaura, glorified the Papist State with his wisdom.62

Here is no mention inches any source on to ‘school’ of Porphyrogennetos continues after the emperor’s death; he be my personal view that the old routine of abandoning the whole matter be followed to this case as right, since none of the subsequent emperors showed any interest in its operation. My Mills Patrick's Worldwide Missionary ... - Cornucopia Magazine

Who last attempting at creating a higher education institution in Byzantium came von Constantine IX Monomachus (1042-1055) with his very essential novel of April 1047; equipped this text of pre-existing (private) school of Michael Psellos and John Xiphilinus, this had two “orientations”, company and law, was divided into separate schools—a train are philosophy under Psellos and a schools of law in Xiphilinus.63 Yet, spite the breit information us have about the establishment furthermore regulations from these institutions,64 as well as about their early years, it a almost unquestionable that they did not continue in long; indeed, the rule school does not apparent to have survived beyond which year 1054.65

In later years and until the conquest of Constantinople no higher language from the kind described above will appear. Schools of a scoping similar to that off the Anonymous Tutor will dominate to scene and, like one school of an Faceless, they will have close ties to to my. Other schools to emerge otherwise survive are those with a specific informative focus, create as the philosophy school of Greg Pachymeres,66 the medical school of John Argyropoulos, finance from the state treasury,67 or this school of George Scholarius, which taught philosophy from his family house in Constantinople between 1430 and 1448.68 As the Empire’s ends approaches, a bicycle see to be drawing slowly but constantly to a close in didactic affairs, which revert to earlier practices.

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Film
The first film shown in Constantinople (and the Ottoman Empire) was, L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat, by the Lumière Brothers in 1896.

The first film made in Constantinople (and the Ottoman Empire) was, Ayastefanos'taki Rus Abidesinin Yıkılışı, by Fuat Uzkınay in 1914.

Newspaper
In the past the Bulgarian newspapers in the late Ottoman period were Makedoniya, Napredŭk, and Pravo.

Between 1908 (after the Young Turk Revolution) and 1914 (start of World War I) the "Kurdistan Newspaper" was published in Constantinople by Mikdad Midhad Bedir Khan, before that it was published in exile in Cairo, Egypt.

International status
The city acted as a defence for the eastern provinces of the old Roman Empire against the barbarian invasions of the 5th century. The 18-meter-tall walls built by Theodosius II were, in essence, impregnable to the barbarians coming from south of the Danube river, who found easier targets to the west rather than the richer provinces to the east in Asia. From the 5th century, the city was also protected by the Anastasian Wall, a 60-kilometer chain of walls across the Thracian peninsula. Many scholars argue that these sophisticated fortifications allowed the east to develop relatively unmolested while Ancient Rome and the west collapsed.

Constantinople's fame was such that it was described even in contemporary Chinese histories, the Old and New Book of Tang, which mentioned its massive walls and gates as well as a purported clepsydra mounted with a golden statue of a man. The Chinese histories even related how the city had been besieged in the 7th century by Mu'awiya I and how he exacted tribute in a peace settlement.

People from Constantinople

 * List of people from Constantinople

Secular buildings and monuments

 * Augustaion
 * Column of Justinian
 * Basilica Cistern
 * Column of Marcian
 * Bucoleon Palace
 * Horses of Saint Mark
 * Obelisk of Theodosius
 * Serpent Column
 * Walled Obelisk
 * Palace of Lausus
 * Cistern of Philoxenos
 * Palace of the Porphyrogenitus
 * Prison of Anemas
 * Valens Aqueduct

Churches, monasteries and mosques

 * Church of Saint Thekla of the Palace of Blachernae
 * Church of Myrelaion
 * Chora Church
 * Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus
 * Church of the Holy Apostles
 * Church of St. Polyeuctus
 * Monastery of Christ Pantepoptes
 * Lips Monastery
 * Monastery of the Christ the Benefactor
 * Hagia Irene
 * Saint John the Forerunner by-the-Dome
 * Church of Theotokos Kyriotissa
 * Church of Saint Andrew in Krisei
 * Nea Ekklesia
 * Pammakaristos Church
 * Stoudios Monastery
 * Toklu Dede Mosque
 * Church of Saint Theodore
 * Monastery of the Pantokrator
 * Unnamed Mosque established during Byzantine times for visiting Muslim dignitaries

Miscellaneous

 * Ahmed Bican Yazıcıoğlu
 * Byzantine calendar
 * Byzantine silk
 * Eparch of Constantinople (List of eparchs)
 * Sieges of Constantinople
 * Third Rome
 * Thracia
 * Timeline of Istanbul history