Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes

Author:Bettany Hughes [Hughes, Bettany]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2017-01-25T23:00:00+00:00

Patriarch Gennadios II takes a warrant and imperial decree of religious freedom from Sultan Mehmed II. Painting of the mosaic at the Patriarchate Church of Ayias Yedryias.

Today, to find St Mary of the Mongols one has to tackle the labyrinth of streets above the old Greek district. The church might seem closed, but an Armenian Christian in the tenement block next door is on hand at his high window to offer the key to those who want to look inside. In the far right-hand corner of the cool, quiet interior there is a passage – an escape route – that the resident Orthodox priest will still animatedly tell you leads all the way to Haghia Sophia. The firman of Mehmed the Conqueror (or at least a copy), guaranteeing the survival of St Mary of the Mongols, is triumphantly displayed in the gloaming. This is the only Byzantine church in the city to cross the Byzantine–Ottoman divide.

The Emperor of the Roman domain was now a Muslim. The fact that both Roman and Byzantine Emperors had to control the city at their Empire’s heart in order to rule had given the populace here real leverage. Despite the stubborn republican tendencies of Constantinople – the chronicler Niketas Choniates wrote of this ‘populace of the market-place’ that ‘Their indifference to the rulers is preserved in them as if it were inborn …’6 – Mehmed, it seemed, had other plans. Istanbul, The City, was to be the centre of a new and glorious Islamic Empire, a reflection perhaps of Augustus’ great vision and a homage to the dynamism of those Ottoman Turks who had travelled from the steppes and the Muslims who had first ridden out of the Middle East. Standing in the smouldering ruins, on an ancient acropolis that had already seen 8,000 years of evidenced history, the sharp smell of carbon and death in the air, ordering the construction of a new palace on the old Forum Theodosios, itself originally Constantine’s Forum Tauri, Mehmed was clear: in conquered Constantinople there was much work to do both without and within.

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