History of Constantinople
Constantine, the emperor of Rome from 306 to 337, founded Constantinople as the new capital of the Roman Empire. It was built on the site of the Greek city Byzantium, and it was later renamed Constantinople. It is in a very strategic location and it was developed mainly for defensive reasons. The city was destroyed by riots in 532, and it was rebuilt by Justinian, the ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire, while later became the Byzantium Empire. The newly rebuilt city included an intense palace complex, hundreds of new churches, and a huge amphitheater called the Hippodrome which held chariot races and gladiator fights. Palaces, apartments, and slums were right next to each other all over the city, so it was not divided into different neighborhoods. Justinian made many public work projects to build roads, bridges, walls, public baths, law courts, underground reservoirs, and schools. Constantinople kept the appearance given to it by Justinian for almost a thousand years.
During the Middle Ages, Constantinople was the largest city in Europe; the population was estimated to be hundreds of thousands of people. It was the center of the Byzantine Empire, and until the 12th century it was the greatest center of commerce in Europe. Its strategic location on the shores of the Bosphorus made it a place of exchange between the East and the West. Silk from China, spices from Southeast Asia and India, jewelry and ivory from India, wheat and furs from Russia, and flax and honey from the Balkans were all highly desired in Europe. Constantinople also housed a silk industry with silkworms smuggled from China. In 1204, Constantinople was sacked by armies of the Fourth Crusade- even though it was a Christian city, the leaders of the crusade took the opportunity to destroy their greatest commercial competitor. A Byzantine army recaptured the city in 1261, but it was not a great Mediterranean power anymore.
The Ottoman Empire began with Turks who came from Asia to the northwest corner of the Anatolian Peninsula in the ninth through eleventh centuries. In the late thirteenth century, a group of Turks led by Osman began to build up their power and in the early fourteenth century they began to expand and they founded the Ottoman dynasty, which was Islamic. In the end of the fourteenth century they began to use new military technology such as infantry forces and firearms, and around 1450 they moved to conquer the Byzantine Empire under Mehmet II. On April 6th, 1453, the Ottoman began a siege of Constantinople with their 80,000 troops against only 700 defenders. On May 27th the Ottomans breached the walls of Constantinople and sacked the city. Ottoman rulers claimed the title of Sultan and built up an elite military guard made up of Janissaries- young Christian men recruited for their physical build and appearance and converted to Islam. 1
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