Need help with history of Istanbul?

Question

Need help with history of Istanbul, also known as Constantinople. I need brief dates and cause and effect history of the city's rises, falls, and transitions of Empires below.

Western Roman Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.

Answer 1

Constantinople (a city of various names in various languages: see etymology) was the capital of the Roman Empire (330–395), the Byzantine/East Roman Empire (395–1204 and 1261–1453), the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453–1922).

Contents [hide]

1 History

1.1 Byzantium

1.2 Constantine I (306–337)

1.3 Divided empire, 395–527

1.4 Justinian, 527–565

1.5 Survival, 565–717

1.6 Recovery, 717–1025

1.7 The Iconoclast controversy, 730–787, 814–842

1.8 Prelude to the Comnenian period, 1025–1081

1.9 The Comneni, 1081–1185

1.10 The Angelids and the Latin Empire, 1185–1259

1.11 The Palaeologi, 1259–1453

2 Importance

2.1 Culture

2.2 Politics

2.3 Architecture

2.4 Religious

2.5 Popular

3 Notable people

4 Further reading

5 Notes

6 See also

7 External links



[edit] History



The 1453 Siege of Constantinople (painted 1499).

[edit] Byzantium

Main article: Byzantium

Constantinople was founded by the Roman emperor Constantine I on the site of an already existing city, Byzantium, settled in the early days of Greek colonial expansion, probably around 671-662 BC. 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 harbour.

[edit] Constantine I (306–337)



Emperor Constantine I presents a representation of the city of Constantinople as tribute to an enthroned Mary and baby Jesus in this church mosaic. St Sophia, c. 1000).Constantine had altogether more ambitious plans. Having restored the unity of the empire, and being in 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; it offered an undesirable playground for disaffected politicians; and it suffered regularly from flooding and from malaria. Yet it had been the capital of the state for over a thousand years, and it will have seemed unthinkable to suggest that that capital be moved. Nevertheless, he 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.



Coin struck by Constantine I to commemorate the founding of Constantinople.Constantinople was built over six years, and consecrated on 11 May 330. Although the city was essentially Greek-speaking, Latin was the language of government. It became known as Constantinopolis, "Constantine's City".[1]

Constantine divided the expanded city, like Rome, into 14 regions,[2] and ornamented it with public works worthy of an imperial metropolis. Yet initially 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. Similarly, 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 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[3].



Artistic impression of Medieval ConstantinopleConstantine 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 Empire.

From the Augustaeum led a great street, the Mese (Greek: Μέση (Οδός) lit. "Middle Street"), 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 towards the rising sun. From there the Mese passed on and through the Forum of Taurus and then the Forum of Bous, 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 would be extended to the new Golden Gate, reaching a total length of seven Roman miles[4].

[edit] Divided empire, 395–527



Theodosius I was the last Roman emperor who ruled over an undivided empire (detail from the Obelisk at the Hippodrome of ConstantinopleThe first known Prefect of the City of Constantinople was Honoratus, who took office on 11 December 359 and held it until 361. The emperor Valens 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.

Gradually the importance of Constantinople increased. 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 Goths within a few days' march, the city looked to its defences, and Theodosius II built in 413–414 the 18 metre (60 ft) tall triple-wall fortifications which were never 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. Subsequently new walls were built to defend the city, and the fleet on the Danube improved. Money spoke louder, however, and in 424 Theodosius agreed to pay an annual subsidy to the new Hunnish king Rugila. The latter was shortly succeeded by Attila, who negotiated a doubling of the subsidy. In 441 he took the opportunity to attack while the Roman armies were engaged against both the Persian and the Vandals, and after a successful battle in Thrace not far from the city, secured a further trebling of the subsidy. He invaded again in 447; the Roman response was an assassination attempt, which failed. On 25 August 450 Marcian succeeded Theodosius, and determined to take a firm line with the Huns, stopping the subsidy payments; about the same time Attila received a message from Honoria, a sister of the western Emperor Valentinian III, which he was able to take advantage of as a pretext, and departed from Illyricum to move with all his armies against the West[5].

Meanwhile the barbarians overran the Western Empire, its emperors retreated to Ravenna, and it diminished to nothing. Thereafter, Constantinople became in truth the largest city of the Empire and of the world. 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.

[edit] Justinian, 527–565



Map of Constantinople (1422) by Florentine cartographer Cristoforo Buondelmonti [6] is the oldest surviving map of the city, and the only one which antedates the Turkish conquest of the city in 1453The 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 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 70 AD 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.[7]



St Sophia, built by emperor Justinian I in the 6th century AD, still stands today. The minarets are a later, Islamic addition.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

Answer 2

Founded 667 Bc as Byzantium, Constantine made it capital of Eastern Roman Empire in 311 ad, became Ottoman Empire capital upon conquest in 1452 ad.  tNew name, Istanbul, dates from 20th century.

Chosen as a capital because wealthy city (along major trade routes), easily defended, as surrounded on three sides by water, and the straits could easily be blocked by chains.

The flag of Constinople became the flag of Turkey - a bit ironic, as the star on it represents the Virgin Mary.

(the wiki site on this is very good.)