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EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 23

There are cities that create civilizations which add identity and spirit to its residents. There are cities that dignify the empires.

Kategori	: ISTANBUL 2010 EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE
Yorum Sayısı	: 0
Okunma	: 1705
Tarih	: 16.04.2010

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There are cities that create civilizations which add identity and spirit to its residents. There are cities that dignify the empires.

Istanbul is such a city that throughout history many kings and emperors wanted to crown themselves with the conquest of this unique city.

Finally this dream was realized by the Ottoman Empire that closed an era and opened another one with this victory. The conquest of Istanbul by Muslim Turks was perhaps a lasting dream come true. Istanbul which had been a capital of three empires also served as an opening door to the world in its last centuries.

To understand and to explain Istanbul requires understanding and explaining Muslim Turks who created a civilization blended with an accumulation of thousands year old culture by adding its own. For 550 years, Istanbul did not lose even a part of its attraction, which is still increasing each passing day.

Intensity of the violence experienced today once again indicates our sigh for tolerance and the will of living all together in peace and fraternity. Istanbul which had been invaded throughout its history and even tried to be totally destroyed, became a paradise on earth which no one dare to look hostilely after but only watched with admiration after 1453.

Let’ first go back to the dream city Istanbul's history and see what it had experienced.

According to Prof. Semavi Eyice first settlements in Istanbul started in the shores of Golden Horn and in the lower valleys of Alibey and Kağıthane rivers in 3000 B.C. Later on environs of Golden Horn and the Bosporus attracted the attention of communities living in other regions.

Pioneers from the city of Megara on the Greek mainland, where in 680 BC Dorian incursions had been causing havoc, and other settlers from Miletus on the Anatolian coast of the southern Aegean, established the city of Chalcedon, what is today Kadıköy on Istanbul's eastern shore.

The settlement was first named Halkedon meaning "land of copper," but after the Byzantines established themselves on the other side and called it Chalcedon, meaning "land of the blind", and this ironic name is mentioned in the founding myth of Istanbul.

In 660 B.C another branch of the Megara’s who left their city, began to look for a new homeland under the leadership of Byzas commanders founded a town where Sarayburnu is located today.

According to the customs of the age, before any such undertaking an oracle had to be consulted. The oracle in the Apollo temple in the famous town of Delphi advised Byzas to settle opposite the "land of the blind". The migrants searched for such a land for a long time. When they came to the headland of present-day Istanbul, they were delighted with the fertile lands and the advantages offered by the natural harbor, the Golden Horn. They also noticed the people living across the stretch of water. The migrants decided that those people must have been blind if they could not appreciate the opportunities of this ideal place and settled on the opposite shore, and they were convinced that they had found the land the oracle had described. Later the Town was called Byzantium,

It is accepted that local people have mingled with Magara’s as Thracian tribes had settled there before. Byzantium which was invaded several times was finally seized by the Bithynians in 269 B.C. With the fear of Macedonian threat, Byzantines has requested help from the Roman Empire in 202 B.C. From this period forward the city was influenced by the Roman Empire and in 145 B.C it entered under the sovereignty of the Romans.

In 73 AD Byzantium became part of the Roman province of Bithynia-Pontus. The Emperor Vespasian contributed to the city's development. In 193, after Byzantium took sides with the Parthians, the Roman emperor Septimus Sevenrus besieged the city, looted it, and pulled down the walls. Subsequently he had the walls rebuilt and constructed new buildings and streets. He began construction of the Hippodrome.

In 269 the city was attacked by the Goths, who to mark their victory erected a column close to the sea. In 313 the Nicomedians took the city, but did not hold it for long before Emperor Constantine recaptured it. In 324 Byzantium was chosen as the administrative center of Eastern Rome and with this new world order, city’s important role in world culture and politics was also determined.

Constantine I the Great invited high-born Romans to settle in Byzantium, to increase the Roman population. At the same time he launched a building program to befit the city for its new role as eastern capital. The harbors and water supply channels were improved, and construction commenced of a new water distribution system within the city. A new wall was built to improve the city's defenses.

The Hippodrome begun by Septimus Sevenıs was completed. This great building, 117 m wide and 480 m long, could seat 100,000 people. Down the centre was the spina around which the chariots raced. As well as chariot racing, the Hippodrome was used for wild animal fights, athletic competitions, festivals, celebrations and entertainments. It was mainly here that the ordinary people got the chance to see and be with the emperor.

Haghia Sophia, the largest and most magnificent of the eastern churches, was first built in 360 by Constantine I. Although the patriarch of Constantinople was the nominal head of the Orthodox Church, all authority lay with the emperor.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, Eastern Roman Empire became Byzantine Empire and Istanbul the capital of this new empire. The 6th century was a new beginning both for Byzantine Empire as well as Istanbul.

The plague of 543 killed almost half of the city’s population, disaster followed disaster. Fortunately, the infrastructure built by Emperor Justinian I. had made the city fairly resilient against catastrophes and wars.

The late 7th and 8th centuries became years of siege. In the 7th century, Istanbul was attacked by both Persian and Avars. Later, in the 8th century, Hungarian and Muslim Arabs besieged the city. Russian and Hungarian forces, in the 9th century, also tried to conquer this desirable metropolis.

1204 the city was conquered by the Crusaders and was looted mercilessly. The largest city of the Middle Ages, with a population of nearly 40.000 - 50.000, was laid impoverished and in ruins.

The wealthy and royal and many of the populace fled to Iznik. The Eastern Catholic Empire only managed to be sovereign in Istanbul and its environs. Iznik, Trabzon and Epiros in Greece formed a Byzance alliance and surrounded the Eastern Catholic Empire.

In 1254 Istanbul became even more impoverished, so much so that the Emperor Baudoin II had to resort to using the wooden sections of the palace as fuel to provide heat. Finally, the Palailogos noble family regained Istanbul, thus was the ending of the Eastern Catholic period in 1261.

The Arab traveler Ebulfida, who visited the city at the beginning of the 14th century, stated that he saw ploughed fields, gardens and a number of ruined houses within the city.

In 1403 Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, who had paid a brief visit to Istanbul on his journey to Samarkand as an envoy to Timur, also stated that he saw fields, gardens and small groups of houses in the middle of the city. He added that the area around the Golden Horn was lively but that most of the large buildings in the city were in a state of ruin.

The Ottomans first laid siege to Istanbul in 1391. The siege dragged on for years, and in 1396 Bayezid I constructed a fortress on the Asian shore of the Bosporus to prevent aid getting through to the besieged city from the Black Sea.

Sixty years later Mehmed II besieged Istanbul again. He built a second fortress, Rumeli Hisarı, on the other side of the Bosporus facing that built by his grandfather Bayezid I, so exerting an even tighter stranglehold on the city. The fortress, which was completed in the brief time of four months, had an irregular plan following the contours of the hilly site.

Mehmed II had artisans brought from Europe to cast great cannon powerful enough to demolish the Byzantine walls. When everything was ready at the beginning of March 1453, the Ottoman armies gathered outside the city walls. The siege had begun.

On 4 April Turkish cannon began to bombard the walls along the Marmara Sea. The Golden Horn was, as the Byzantines thought, impenetrable thanks to the great chain stretched across the mouth of the waterway to prevent vessels entering.

They had not reckoned with Mehmed II's decision to drag fifty of his galleys on wooden runners over the hilly ridge of land between Dolmabahçe on the Bosphorus and Kasımpaşa on the Golden Horn.

In the attack launched on the morning of 29 May the land walls were breached at Topkapı. The same day Mehmed II entered the city on horseback and performed his prayers in the church of Haghia Sophia. In accordance with Ottoman tradition the city's cathedral was converted into a mosque. The church of the Holy Apostles and numerous others remained as churches for the time being. Thereafter Mehmed II was known as Fatih, or the Conqueror.

When Fatih Sultan Mehmet conquered Istanbul in 1453, he put an end to an empire of 1500 years old. As last emperor Constantine XI as sole successor of Augustus, the Byzantines had always regarded as the Romans. Even the name of city built is 324 was “New Rome”.

Territories of the Byzantine Empire were left within the city walls however at that time the Ottoman went as far as Danube in the Balkans and Taurus Mountains in Anatolia.

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