A trip to Istanbul

Legend says that the Greek adventurer Byzas, before setting out to found a city on the Black Sea trade route, asked the priestess of Apollo for advice. “Look for the city of the blind” was her mysterious answer. As his ship entered the Bosphorus – the narrow channel between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea – a town appeared on flat land to the East. On the West bank a rocky headland lay empty, with a bay behind it, a perfect shelter from weather or enemies. “They must be blind not to have seen that” someone said, and Byzas remembered the god’s advice, landed in the bay and began to build a city on the hilltop, named Byzantion after himself.

For nearly 1000 years it remained a small but important town, changing owners regularly during the wars of Greece and Rome. In about 300 CE, as the Empire became too big for one man to rule from Rome, it was chosen as capital of the Eastern half and renamed Constantinopolis after the reigning emperor of the East. Although its people spoke Greek, they proudly called themselves Romans. Constantinople was the centre of the Orthodox Christian church and missionaries took this religion to South-East Europe and as far as Russia.

The Eastern emperors gave the city some of its most famous monuments. Theodosius built the first line of great walls to protect it from the land side, and Justinian completed the mighty Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia in Greek) which still stands after 1500 years. Many other fine churches survive, but as mosques. On Tuesday 29th May 1453, after a grim siege, the army of the Turkish sultan Mehmet II “the Conqueror” captured the city, and the new rulers changed its name again. To the Greeks it had been just ‘The city’ and road signs read “Eis tin polin” (into the city) which the Turks pronounced “Istanbul”.

The Sultans of the family of Osman (called “Ottomans” in Europe) ruled in Istanbul until 1922. At its greatest, around 1650, their empire stretched from Hungary to Iraq and from the South of Russia to Algeria, and one after another they and their ministers built monuments to their glory. Their home was the Topkapi Palace, built like Byzas’ fort on the tip of the rocky hill over-looking the sea. Next to it are Justininan’s “Ayasofya”, and the old chariot racing area, the Hippodrome. Beyond it is the mosque of Sultan Ahmet with its six minarets. On the North slope of the ridge, leading down towards the Golden Horn (see map) are the Sultan Beyazit mosque and the enormous covered bazaar area, the “Closed Market”. At the top of the ridge further West, one of the grandest mosques commemorates perhaps the greatest sultan of all, Süleyman. He ruled for 46 years and was called “the Lawgiver” by his own people and “the Magnificent” in Europe. The mosque, designed by the Christian-born architect and minister Sinan Pasha, is truly magnificent both for its architecture and its dramatic position.