Pod Insights Dan Snow's History Hit The Origins of Istanbul About this episode Today we dig into the history of Istanbul, the city at the crossroads of East and West. Across thousands of years, the city has survived the rise and fall of empires, weathered sieges and Crusades, and remained a centre of world religion, trade and politics.
With us is Jonathan Harris, Professor of the History of Byzantium at Royal Holloway and author of 'Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium'. He tells us all about the key moments that transformed the Eastern Roman capital of Constantinople into the modern-day city of Istanbul.
Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.
If you want to learn more about the Byzantine Empire, you could listen to our episode on its most famous leader, Emperor Heraclius - https://shows.acast.com/dansnowshistoryhit/episodes/emperor-heraclius-rome-vs-persia.
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2:06 Dan Snow? Hi, everybody. Welcome to Dan Snow's History. There is no city on earth with as dramatic and suggestive a geographical setting than Istanbul. Under its various names, Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul, it has sat at the crossroads of this part of the world for thousands of years. It's there right slap bang on the only sea route in and out of the Black Sea. So it could not be a better place to tax those merchants, all that trade flowing through this essential artery. But it also sits at the border between Europe and Asia. It controls that narrow sliver of water between them. The huge east-west
2:51 Dan Snow? highway that we've done so many podcasts on, the famous Silk Road, that's carried people and religions and goods and ideas from China to Europe and Europe to China, that passes through Constantinople. North, south, east, west. And that's why history has happened here. This is where Achilles and the bronze-clad Achaeans came to battle against the Trojans. This is where Xerxes crossed the Hellespont into Europe, flogging the water on the way by, just because of its disobedience. It's very near here that the Goths humiliated the Romans, slaughtered an emperor, Adrianople, leading eventually to the downfall of the
3:30 Dan Snow? Western Roman Empire. It was the choke point stopping Islam surging into Central Europe during the medieval period. It's where the British faced off against the Russians in the 19th century. It's where the British and French in the 20th century went to decapitate the Ottoman Empire. It is one of the world's great cities. I'm never happier than when I'm in Istanbul. I sit on roof terraces and I drink beer and I think about conquerors and the tides of history. I get quite carried away. I'm not very good company. This podcast's all about that city. You're going to be hearing about. Crusades and wars and revolutions, the rise and fall of civilizations. And here to take me on that sweeping journey, we've got the fantastic Jonathan Harris, Professor of the History of Byzantium at Royal Holloway. And I want to mention, actually, this is the first of two episodes we're releasing on the history of Istanbul.
4:15 Dan Snow? If you want to hear about one of the most important events in world history, which we shall mention this podcast, if you want to deep dive on it, the fall of Constantinople in 1453, make sure to tune back in for an episode that we have borrowed from the feed of our fantastic sibling podcast, Gone Medieval. It's called The Fall of Constantinople. In the meantime, let's get into it. Enjoy.
4:37 Speaker 03 T minus 10.
4:38 Speaker 04 Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king.
4:42 Speaker 05 No black-white unity till there is first and blank unity. Never to go to war with one another again.
4:49 Speaker 03 And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.
4:56 Dan Snow? Jonathan, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
4:59 Speaker 06 Great pleasure. I'm very glad to be here, Dan.
5:01 Dan Snow? Even as historians, we have to quickly tip our hat to the geographers amongst us. Why does that place matter, even before something called Byzantium is constructed there?
5:10 Speaker 06 Partly where it is and secondly what it is. I mean, where it is, it is literally where Europe ends and Asia begins. So it's on that kind of east-west axis, but on the other hand, it's also on a north-south axis, because with the Black Sea above it and then the route down through the Sea of Mamma and the Dardanelles and the Aegean to the Mediterranean, it's literally at a crossroads, effectively, which is going to mean it's receiving influences, whether commercial or artistic or military or whatever, from all directions. But also what it is, it's a triangle of land, which effectively has one of the finest natural harbors in the world, in the Golden Horn.
5:53 Speaker 06 Probably Sydney and New York maybe are perhaps rather better, but even so, it is a very fine natural harbor.
6:00 Dan Snow? When you describe it like that, sometimes I think, what took it so long to become an important hegemonic sort of settlement? What is the early history of people living in that place?
6:09 Speaker 06 Well, certainly the prehistoric Stone Age, they found evidence of that in the excavations at Istanbul. So I think really human beings have been there really for a very, very long time. But as an actual city, I mean, we have to go back to about 700 BCE, when a group of Greek settlers from the town, city of Megara, which is quite near Athens, travel up there and found a Greek settlement on the site, which is called Byzantium or Byzantium.
6:40 Dan Snow? And is it a very deliberate decision? Do they move there for its strategic and commercial importance?
6:46 Speaker 06 Well, this is where, of course, we encounter really this sort of almost light motif of the history of Byzantium, Constantinople, is that history and myth are kind of inextricably linked. So we certainly know the city was founded, but only from people telling us hundreds of years later. So many hundreds of years after the city was founded, the story circulates that Megara's a bit crowded, so they're going to send people off to found a new city. But before they go, they go to the Delphic Oracle to ask for its advice. And it says, well, you know, found your city opposite the blind. Okay, well, the Delphic Oracle is always a bit opaque, but off they go. They sail up the Dardanelles, across the Sea of Marmo, put in one evening at the city of Halcedon on the Bosphorus.
7:31 Speaker 06 They spend the night there and then next morning they get up, rub their eyes and then realise that the oracle was right. Because looking across the Bosphorus, they can see this fantastic site, completely untaken. And the people of Megara must have been blind to actually go, you know, people of Halcedon must have been blind to go and put their city opposite this marvelous site. Now, who knows whether that has any grain of truth whatsoever in it. But it does ring true in a way, because the city of Halcedon apparently was founded before Constantinople. If you've got a choice of sites, most people will go for it. Byzantium, yeah, concept and therefore.
8:08 Dan Snow? That is inexplicable. Does Byzantium thrive?
8:12 Speaker 06 It does, because it takes advantage of the commercial opportunities for trade of being on that site. Of course, the difficulty as well, of course, is you're also in the path of empires that rise and fall. Come the sixth century, the Persians arrive on the scene and they do actually incorporate Byzantium into their empire. But then they go and then the Athenians come along and the Byzantines sort of cozy up to them. And then the Peloponnesian War, it's quite clear Spartans are going to win, so they quickly change sides and join the Spartans. And then, of course, the Romans come along and so they capitulate to the Romans. So they keep a kind of independence and they're quite rich from trade. So over the years, they sort of manage to weather the storms.
8:58 Dan Snow? But it's interesting, isn't it, that so many of these stories, well, many of the things you've mentioned, the Hellespont Byzantium, it's at the heart of it, geographically if nothing else, and Xerxes crossing Hellespont for his invasion of Greece. I imagine the Byzantines would have been very much involved in that. And then the final, really one of the great decisive final battles, the Peloponnesian War, Battle of Ixopotamis, fought almost within a day's march of Byzantium in the Straits, in the Narrows, the Dardanelles. So whether it's Troy or that battle or Xerxes, history is happening in this place.
9:30 Speaker 06 It's a place where things happen. Yes, you're absolutely right. You're in the path of things. You can't keep out of it altogether, but they do pretty well in just sort of making sure they're on the right side at the right time.
9:42 Dan Snow? The Romans just absorb Byzantium and it becomes, what, another provincial city?
9:47 Speaker 06 Well, it is really. Again, it has its own self-government. It's pretty much left alone. Until, of course, at the end of the second century, picked the wrong side in a Roman civil war, unfortunately. They go against Septimius Severus, who's fighting various rivals to be emperor, and they end up being besieged by him. He has a very tough job taking the place, but he does in the end, and he punishes the city in various ways. He pulls down its fortifications and removes a lot of its privileges.
10:18 Dan Snow? That's called being on the wrong side of history there. You don't want to mess with Septimius Severus.
10:21 Speaker 06 You did not, no.
10:23 Dan Snow? So it's not clear at this point that Byzantium is about to become this, well, this new Rome, this world city. What happens? How does it change?
10:31 Speaker 06 Very shortly after Septimius Seferus's death, his son realises it's not a good idea to leave Byzantium undefended and has its walls rebuilt. Strategic importance means that you can't sort of just ignore it. And then, of course, come the early 4th century, when Roman emperors are spending most of their time on the frontiers, very little time at Rome, because there's a much more dangerous situation with the Persians attacking in the east and various tribes on the Danube. Roman emperors are looking for some kind of forward base, somewhere where they can reside and be within easy reach of both the eastern and Danube frontiers. So Byzantium actually is a very good place to be, because
11:10 Speaker 06 you are between the two. And so the Emperor Constantine decides to found a new city there, not necessarily a new capital at this stage, but somewhere which is a suitable imperial residence, where he can pretty quickly get to the frontiers when necessary. So in the year 324, he founds a new city on the site of Byzantium and changes its name in his own honour. So he calls it the city of Constantine, Constantinople. That's when the name change happens.
11:40 Dan Snow? And again, nothing too strange about this. Hadrian constantly refounded cities and gave them his name, right? So this is not necessarily an epochal decision at the moment?
11:50 Speaker 06 Oh, absolutely not. We've had Hadrianopolis or Hadrianopolis, we've had Trajanopolis, oh yes, this is all that. So we've got Constantinopolis, effectively. So in itself, this isn't a groundbreaking moment, but it's going to lead to great things. And immediately, of course, now the myths start kicking in again, which are invented several hundred years later. But no, an angel comes down from heaven to guide Constantine, because he doesn't know where to have the boundary of the city. So the angel comes down, says, "Follow me", and he and his courtiers follow the angel, and eventually the angel says, "Right here", because Constantine is, of course, a Christian. He's the first Christian Roman emperor. So
12:29 Speaker 06 it's seen as a seminal moment, really, in founding a Christian city. I don't think Constantine meant it quite like that, but that's how it was seen with hindsight.
12:40 Dan Snow? So it's so interesting, isn't it? You're absolutely right. And you look at a map, it's sort of equidistant from your Syrian frontier, your sort of beyond Damascus, beyond Antioch, and then what is now Serbia, Romania, bits of Romania, Hungary. So this dangerous Danubian frontier as well. So it does make perfect sense, just as the power in the West was moving up into the Rhineland. So they could be within marching distance of the Channel, but also the Rhinish frontier.
13:06 Speaker 06 Absolutely, yeah.
13:08 Dan Snow? Okay, so we've got Constantine founding it. When does it start to take on this, almost an imperial city, a real centre of Roman power?
13:17 Speaker 06 Well, it proves a very attractive place to live. I mean, the emperor spends a lot of time there. Increasingly, you've got two emperors, one in the West who lives in Ravenna or Milan, and one in the East who tends to live in Constantinople. So if the court's there, anyone who wants to make their way in the world is going to go there as well. So the population skyrockets during the 4th and 5th centuries. So by the time we get to about the year 500 CE, we're talking a population that must be edging on to a million. There are complaints that the whole place is a kind of building site, and they're actually putting piles into the sea and building out, you know, to make a platform out into the
13:59 Speaker 06 sea so they can stick more houses in, because there's so many people there. So the sheer size of Constantinople means it's become a capital city. Certainly the capital city of the eastern half of the Roman Empire, whether Constantine meant it to be like that, but that is effectively what it's become, simply by this huge increase in population.
14:21 Dan Snow? And we should also talk about the famous walls, because I always think it's fascinating. The great catastrophic defeat at Adrianople suffered by the...
14:31 Dan Snow? Roman Empire, when the Goths destroy an imperial army and an emperor is killed. Actually Byzantium, Constantinople is threatened then, but the Goths are unable to capture it because of its natural position, its walls, its fences.
14:43 Speaker 06 Well, yes, I mean, one of the first things Constantine did was to provide his new city with a wall. The problem with that wall, though, when the city grew so huge, the suburbs stretched far beyond it. You know, the walls hadn't enclosed a large enough space. So come the early 5th century, following the defeat by the Goths, the news arrives that the Huns are on the way, and this causes absolute panic. At this point, the emperor is called Theodosius II. He's only a child at this time. He's the emperor. So they build a new set of walls in record time. In the year 413, they begin, and they come up with
15:23 Speaker 06 these sort of three-tier walls, which are a moat, an outer wall, and an inner wall. And these stretch all the way from the Golden Horn down to the Sea of Marmara, with about 96 towers on the inner wall. And they are, to all intents and purposes, impregnable. The Huns take one look at them and decide, well, we'll go for something a bit easier, thank you very much. And off they go. They do save Constantinople again and again and again.
15:49 Dan Snow? So Constantinople is not just a strategically important place. It really is just an incredibly well-defended nature. And then Theodosius and others have given it incredible artificial protection as well. So it's a real rock for the Eastern Empire.
16:04 Speaker 06 Well, it is very much so. And it's defended not only by land, but by sea as well, partly by geography, because the currents in the Golden Horn would make it very difficult to make a landing on, certainly on the southern coast of Constantinople's triangle. And the Golden Horn, of course, could be sealed off with a chain. And there are seawalls as well going all around it. So it is really a very tough nut to crack. But then within it, to make it even more impressive, successive emperors provided it with an extraordinary set of monuments, buildings, and churches, some of which still survive today, of course.
16:42 Dan Snow? You know, you say tough nut to crack. I mean, there's examples, aren't there, of enemies marching right across Roman provinces, but then falling short when they get to Constantinople? And just having that little kernel, having that little source of strength, allows people like Heraclius and others to then launch counterattacks that can win back entire provinces. So it feels like a very important base.
17:04 Speaker 06 Well, it does, really, because you think what happens really from the 5th century onwards, the whole of the Western Roman Empire is lost. That's all gone by 500. Then come the 7th century, most of the East is lost as well. So North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, those all fall to the Arabs. The Empire, and I suppose you ought to call it the Byzantine Empire now rather than the Roman Empire, that's left with Constantinople, Asia Minor, that is pretty much what is now Turkey, and then a few enclaves in the Balkans. They've lost most of the Balkans to the Slavs. So it looks as though it's doomed. How can it possibly survive?
17:42 Dan Snow? And in this period, they've got these magnificent buildings. You've mentioned these churches. They've got gear from the Roman Empire. They've got sort of, you know, artefacts and statues. Did they call themselves Romans?
17:53 Speaker 06 They did, right up to the end. Just about to the end, yes.
17:56 Dan Snow? But historians like to call it the Byzantine Empire. We should call it the Roman Empire, but it is just a bit confusing, isn't it?
18:04 Speaker 06 Well, it is at the end of the day. If you say Romans, we think of people with short hair, wearing togas, the men, anyway. And Byzantines tended to have long hair, long beards, and to wear long robes. And they spoke Greek, and they're Christian. There is a cultural difference, although there is a political continuity. The emperors of Byzantium are the direct successors of the emperors of Rome. So it's for our convenience, really, we adopt this adjective Byzantine.
18:33 Dan Snow? And so, as you mentioned, the Arab conquest explodes out of Arabia and strips away many of the richest provinces of the Eastern Empire. So that's Palestine, Syria, Egypt, all the way through North Africa, back into Western Europe, in fact. Is Byzantine quite beleaguered at this point? Does it hold its own?
18:51 Speaker 06 Well, during the 7th and early 8th centuries, it comes under siege three times. First time by the Avars and the Persians in 626. Then again, we reckon in 674 to 8 for four years by the Arabs. And then again in 717 to 18 by the Arabs again. And these got progressively worse because by the last one in 717, the Arabs attacked by both land and sea. They've literally got a large fleet which they brought into the Sea of Marmo and sealed it off by water. And they've built a trench which actually shadows the land walls and cuts it off by land. So we've got it in a vice.
19:34 Speaker 06 And we're not going to go home, we're going to stay here, say the Arabs, until we take the place. So that is a very dangerous moment indeed. And it looked very likely for a time that the city would fall.
19:46 Dan Snow? How did they hold out?
19:48 Speaker 06 Well, there's two stories to that. There's the real one and the mythological one. As far as the Byzantines were concerned, the Virgin Neri was the special protector of the city and she intervened to ensure that the Arabs were defeated. And then you can take the other view, which is the Arabs were unlucky in many ways. The winter was very harsh in 717 to 18. And the Arabs are there in their trench besieging the land walls and the ground is very hard. They've got nothing to eat. They're freezing cold, they start eating the camels and the horses and they suffer huge casualties from illness. Their fleet at sea is attacked by the Byzantines using their little secret weapon, which is
20:32 Speaker 06 Greek fire, which is some kind of accelerant which shoots out of a siphon and sets enemy ships on fire. That doesn't exactly help. Many of the Arab ships are actually crewed by Christians who then desert and take the ships over and join the Byzantines. It was just one thing went wrong after another really for the Arabs and in the end they withdrew.
20:56 Dan Snow? You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. This is an episode all about the history of Istanbul. More coming up.
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24:08 Dan Snow? So that's what I find extraordinary about Constantinople's history, Byzantine imperial history, is they're clinging to their city walls at various points, and yet they go on as a regional power, if perhaps not a great power, for another seven centuries or something. I mean, it's extraordinary, isn't it?
24:23 Speaker 06 Well, it is, and I think they don't just bounce back. I mean, they become for a time really a very important regional power. Say by about 1050, they've pushed the frontier back to the Danube. They've incorporated Armenia, which had never been part of the Old Roman Empire. They've retaken northern Syria, including Antioch. They have part of Italy. Constantinople itself, which had the population had shrunk because of, you know, in the difficult times, 7th, 8th century, because of plague and siege, population increases. I mean, we're talking about 375,000 by about the year 1050.
25:03 Speaker 06 And the city is rich, notoriously rich, because Byzantines do very well out of trade. You've got the Arab merchants coming in along the Silk Road, bringing silk and spices. You've got Russians coming down the Black Sea, bringing furs and... Amber, you've got Western European, Italian merchants coming, bringing with them tin and wool. And these merchants bring their cargoes to Constantinople, where they can sell them and then stock up with the products of other parts of the world, which they then take back home and sell for a huge markup. Now, most of these merchants are not Byzantine, but the Byzantine Emperor does very well out of this because he charges a tax of ten percent.
25:47 Speaker 06 Ten percent on everything that comes in and ten percent on everything that goes out. And they hadn't read Adam Smith, the Byzantines, imports and exports are taxed at exactly the same rate. So he's skimming off all this money from this vibrant trade without lifting a finger. Which means that he always has a plentiful supply of gold coins, which he can use to field very large armies against his enemies.
26:12 Dan Snow? Well, cash is the sinews of war for sure. So he managed, they do, that's how they managed to hold out in a pretty rough neighbourhood.
26:18 Speaker 06 Yeah.
26:19 Dan Snow? Strangely, one of the bizarre things about Byzantine history is when the city does fall, is in fact to a Christian army.
26:28 Speaker 06 Yes, I mean, it's power comes and goes, doesn't it really? I mean, the Byzantines are riding high in ten fifty, but then everything starts to go wrong. The Seljuk Turks start to encroach on their eastern frontier. And by about the year ten eighty five, they've lost most of Asia Minor, what is now Turkey. It's in fact when Turkey becomes Turkey. So the Byzantines tended, when in a difficult situation, to see if they could find somebody else to do the fighting for them. They had large numbers of gold coins, so you can simply pay somebody. And so they thought, well, we'll pay those Western Europeans, we'll bring them in, the Western European Christians, Normans and Frenchmen and those kind of people, and we'll set them against the Seljuk Turks.
27:13 Speaker 06 So embassies are sent and the Western Europeans do come, it's called the First Crusade. And the Byzantines do quite well about out of it because thanks to passage of the First Crusade, they can reconquer quite a lot of Asia Minor. The trouble is, of course, is that it doesn't. Does lead to some tension between the Christians of Byzantium and those of the West. There is a religious schism. And Christians in the West think the Byzantines haven't really been very helpful when it comes to retaking and holding Jerusalem. Now, the Fourth Crusade didn't aim to go to Constantinople, it was supposed to go to Egypt, but it it got diverted when a Byzantine prince sort of recruited them to take his side in a civil war. Um. So they go to Constantinople.
27:57 Speaker 06 They help him in the civil war, but then he can't pay them like he promised. He found he didn't actually have as much money as he thought he did. Uh. They end up capturing the place and they they they sack and burn it and cause immense damage. And even set up one of their own as a new Byzantine emperor. For a moment, it looks as if the Byzantine Empire is dead. So you're right, it ironically, the blow came from the West, from the Christians, not from the traditional Muslim enemy.
28:23 Dan Snow? And yet, like a dead man walking, Byzantium comes back, the empire staggers on for a couple hundred more years. I mean, it's the, it is one of the great survivors.
28:32 Speaker 06 Never underestimate the Byzantines, yeah, they always come bouncing back. And they did come bouncing back in twelve sixty one and reconquered Constantinople, reconstitute the Byzantine Empire. But it's never quite the same again, really. They're smaller and they're shrinking. And really, the the the seminal date is actually thirteen fifty four. Because in thirteen fifty four, a small, almost unnoticed Turkish emirate manages to cross the Dardanelles and gain a foothold at Gallipoli. They capture the town of Gallipoli. An earthquake had leveled the walls of the town. Now, the the this Turkish emirate was known as the Osmanli or Ottoman Emirate.
29:17 Speaker 06 And from that moment, it ceases to be just an obscure bunch of Turks in Asia Minor and becomes the beginnings of a great empire because from Gallipoli, they spread out into the Balkans, they capture Adrianople, they cut Constantinople off by land. So from about thirteen sixty, Constantinople really is a kind of island in an Ottoman sea, but it's still got an emperor. He still calls himself the Emperor of the Romans. Emperor and autocrat of the Romans and signs himself in in purple ink, but he's not really emperor of anything very much.
29:50 Dan Snow? Does it still have a sort of moral, intellectual authority? Do people kind of go there and pilgrimage? And do they listen to what the emperor or the patriarch and the religious patriarch have to say? Does it matter in the world at all, even in its shrunken form?
30:03 Speaker 06 Well, it does, believe it or not, because the Russians and other Orthodox Christians looked to it as a kind of spiritual centre. They had received Christianity from Constantinople. They certainly go on pilgrimage there. And curiously as well, as the 14th century goes on, more and more Italians are wanting to learn Greek as the Italian Renaissance gets going. So many of them travel there specifically to learn Greek and also to get hold of books of the ancient Greek classics, which are not available in Western Europe. I mean, you couldn't get the works of Plato in Western Europe. They'd been lost. So it still is a kind of intellectual centre. It's a spiritual centre. And it's also an economic centre because the Venetians and Genoese run its trade, which is still buoyant.
30:48 Speaker 06 It's no longer really the centre of an empire, but it's still an important city.
30:54 Dan Snow? Did the Ottomans make several attempts to capture it? Or is it just with the one great effort in the middle of the 15th century?
31:01 Speaker 06 Oh, and it wasn't for want of trying. They certainly did. They actually in 1394 launched a siege and they are determined to take it. They besieged it for eight years. How long they would have gone on for, I don't know. But then they're distracted by an attack from the ruler of Samarcand in the east. So they had to break off the siege and that's that in 1402. They try again in 1422 and this time they bring cannon with them. And they set up their cannon. They start bombarding the Theodosian walls. They concentrate their fire on one particular tower, which looked a bit dodgy. They hit it 70 times and it still doesn't fall down. So the siege has to be broken off. So they certainly had tried.
31:44 Dan Snow? But it's a portent of things to come because in 1453, is it, they bring back more cannon and bigger cannon?
31:52 Speaker 06 Well, yes, there's a new Sultan on the throne. He's young and ambitious. His name's Mehmed the Second. And he's also thought very carefully about what we're going to need to take Constantinople. And he looks at the other sieges and there were certain things they didn't have. The main one was not so much lack of cannon, it was lack of a fleet. Because the Ottomans, you know, they originate in Central Asia, then they'd never been much of a sea power. And Mehmed decides to remedy that. So he builds a fleet of several hundred vessels at Gallipoli and sails those up to blockade the city by sea. So we've got that to try and keep out any hope of anyone relieving the city by sea.
32:33 Speaker 06 But he also brings along much larger cannon that can have a real impact on masonry. But it's also, it's the way he uses them. He doesn't just use them to battle the walls. He puts them on the Bosphorus to sink any vessels that might be coming down from the Black Sea to bring supplies to Constantinople. And he moves them around as well, trying out various places. Eventually he finds the best place. And that's where he concentrates his fire with these very large cannon. Apparently the biggest had been built for him by a Hungarian engineer called Urban. And he'd actually offered this cannon to the Byzantine Emperor, but the Byzantine Emperor couldn't afford it. So he took it to Mehmed, who very much could afford it.
33:16 Dan Snow? Wow, highest bidder, interesting. And tell me, what effect did that have on the walls?
33:22 Speaker 06 Well, I mean, they don't fall straight away. It takes six weeks, but in medieval terms, that is actually quite a short time really, isn't it? Because when news reaches Western Europe that Constantinople is being attacked, well, they remember last time when, you know, they remember that time back in thirteen ninety-four, it's eight years. So they think, oh, we've got plenty of time to send help. So the Venetians, who don't want it to fall because they have commercial interests there, start to gather a fleet. But what they don't know is going on is the walls are coming down. Now, the Byzantines are very lucky because they've got a Genoese mercenary called Giovanni Giustiniani commanding the defence. And what he does is as the walls come down, he
34:01 Speaker 06 He plugs the gap with piles of earth and branches and anything else that can go in them. And actually, tho- those piles of earth are a lot more effective because they just, they just soak up the cannonballs. So it's certainly, thanks to Giovanni, it's not, it takes six weeks and not actually one week. Nevertheless, the gaps are there and what Mehmed has done is he's brought up an army of about eighty thousand men. So the one in fourteen twenty-two was about ten thousand, so it's a much larger army. And he just sends in on the night of the twenty ninth of May, fourteen fifty-three, human waves.
34:40 Speaker 06 So he sends in first his Christian allies, they're kind of dispensable and they're, you know, he knows full well they won't break through. He's got actually his, his elite troops, the Janissaries behind them with, with drawn swords. So if any of them try to run away, they'll be cut down by the Janissaries. So they get hurled up against the defence and they're just to get, to tar the defence out. Then he sends in the Basybuzuk, which are the, the Turkish troops. They get quite a long way, but eventually they get pushed back. But by this time, Mehmed has noticed that Giovanni Justiniani has disappeared. The guy had been injured. So he's gone, you know, to the dressing station to have his wound tended to. And the defence starts to waver.
35:22 Speaker 06 And Mehmed sees that and now he says, right, send in the Janissaries, the, the elite. And they then go in and the defence, they put up a very good fight, but they're overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. The emperor dies, leading the defence and the Turks break in. It's the early hours of twenty ninth of May, fourteen fifty-three.
35:40 Dan Snow? Giovanni Justiniani, his departure from the battlefield arguably causing that collapse in morale. But does he, does he get to that dressing station? Does he escape?
35:48 Speaker 06 Well, yes, a, a lot of people were ready to blame him, especially the Venetians, because the Venetians hated the general. Very raw deal, very, very raw deal. I mean, he, he really did. I mean, the man, the man had been injured and he'd also done absolutely marvellous work in a hopeless situation. They get him to a ship and they, they, he does escape, but he, he dies a few weeks later on the island of Hios of his wounds. So he clearly had been pretty badly injured. To be fair.
36:14 Dan Snow? And the city's population, including the emperor, what happened to them?
36:19 Speaker 06 Well, the emperor, we assume he dies. There's various accounts of how he died. Nobody knows, but certainly he was never seen again. I think it's about 3,000 people are killed in the fighting, they reckon. And anyone who's in the city, who the Turks find will be enslaved, literally chained up, taken away to Adrianople and sold into slavery. I think some people did manage to hide. The Venetians and Genoese had ships, so most of them got away by ship. A lot of them got away by ship. But for the Byzantines, I'm afraid, yes, it was slavery. What you could do, if you have friends on the outside somewhere, they could buy your release. But a lot of people, for the rest of their lives, would have been slaves.
37:03 Dan Snow? You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. This is an episode all about the origins of Istanbul. More coming up.
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38:52 Dan Snow? Does it make any sense it's got the last vestige of the Roman Empire? Or was it so changed by that stage that it's almost meaningless?
38:58 Speaker 06 Well, it is really. And of course, Constantinople in that last 100 years, large parts of it were derelict. So many of those splendid buildings had fallen into decay. I mean, the the Great Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom or Iosofia, which had been built by Justinian in the 6th century. That, of course, was still in good repair. And that just is turned into a mosque. But many of the other buildings were not. For example, there was another church, the Church of the Holy Apostles, which was almost as large and splendid as Iosofia, also built by Justinian. But the whole place was crumbling. So the Ottomans demolished it and put the Mosque of the Conqueror in its place.
39:41 Speaker 06 So to some extent, the old Byzantine city had largely vanished even before the Ottomans arrived.
39:48 Dan Snow? So the fall of Constantinople traditionally was said to be one of the great turning points of history. And helped that the idea was that lots of the center of sort of Christian learning moved west and spurred the Renaissance, all that kind of stuff. But anyway, but let's talk about its effect on the city itself and indeed this new empire. Was this a big moment in terms of the Ottoman expansion?
40:12 Speaker 06 Well, it is really because the Ottomans had always up to that point been a bit looked down on by some of their neighbors. And they don't speak Arabic or Persian, you know, civilized languages like that. They come from Central Asia. You only have to go back a few generations and all they are are sort of sheep stealers, really. So they're looked down on. And now suddenly, A, they've pulled off this fantastic victory for Islam. After all, the prophet Muhammad himself in one of the hadith had said, well, you know, what a wonderful army it would be of the faithful that takes Constantinople. And they'd done it. And secondly, they've got one of the great centers of authority.
40:53 Speaker 06 So it's clear that Mehmed is seeing himself as a kind of replacement of the Caesars. That's really how he's pitching himself. He wants to be seen not just a ruler of Turks, but as a universal ruler. So one of the first things he does, once he's got this new city, he says, well, A, I want a city that's got important buildings in it. So build me a nice new palace, please, and we'll have the mosque of the conqueror. And I would also like it to be repopulated, not just by Muslims and Turks. He specifically invites Jews and Christians to inhabit his city. They're useful to him because he can levy an extra tax on them, and they can do a lot of the jobs that the Muslims don't necessarily want to do,
41:38 Speaker 06 particularly involving themselves in trade. So he wants a universal city, not just a Turkish city.
41:46 Dan Snow? And to a large extent, he achieves that?
41:50 Speaker 06 He certainly did, and it's taken further, of course, by by his successors, very much so, because in due course, the Ottoman Sultans are going to adopt the title of caliph as well, leaders of of Islam, leaders of the faithful. So Constantinople then becomes the seat of the caliph, as well as being the seat of this very important Islamic empire. And come the early 16th century, they're going to conquer Egypt, put paid to the the Mamluk Sultanate there, which was their main rival, and push along the African coast. So it does become a major metropolis, the centre of an empire once again, which it hadn't really been for quite a long time.
42:30 Dan Snow? Now, we can't possibly turn this podcast into just another whole separate thing about the Ottoman Empire. But so let's keep our focus on the city itself. It remains one of the world's great cities. Does it mirror the fortunes of the empire? Or is it still in, as the empire starts to crumble and fragment, does Constantinople remain dynamic, rich, important?
42:50 Speaker 06 Well, certainly, you know, mirrors the fortunes of the Ottoman Empire and so far, as the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent is perhaps always considered the sort of high point of Ottoman fortunes, that's a period where some of the greatest Ottoman buildings are put up, particularly by the architect Sinan, who was responsible for the extraordinary Suleimanye mosque complex, built between 1550 and 1557, which is one of the big domes and minarets on the skyline of Istanbul even today. And as time goes by, of course, yes, the Ottoman Empire does go into decline, but Constantinople remains a very important regional centre and of course, the capital of the Ottoman Empire,
43:32 Speaker 06 right up to its disappearance after the First World War.
43:36 Dan Snow? And interestingly, its geography remains important because the French and British spent a lot of time propping it up as a bulwark against Russian expansion. So again, that just its simple position on the face of the planet means that it draws in the gaze of the great powers.
43:50 Speaker 06 Well, it is. It's a sort of nightmare that the Russians will have access to the Straits and be able to take their fleet into the Mediterranean, which is something that the British and French are not keen on at all. Although it's ironic, of course, that they spent all the 19th century time to keep the Russians out. And then, of course, during the First World War, when the Russians were their allies, and then, of course, try and themselves force the Dardanelles and fail spectacularly.
44:15 Dan Snow? Well, indeed. And then the Ottomans and the Habsburgs, to throw in another name people won't have heard in this podcast yet, but the Ottomans and the Habsburgs who spend centuries juking it out for control of Eastern Central Europe, they end up going down and embraced together in 1918. I mean, the First World War is absolutely full of these weird reversals.
44:32 Speaker 06 Yes, indeed. They go down and the Russians are, Turkey then becomes a republic under its new president Kemal Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, as was. And it's a huge change in Turkish society. They change the alphabet, they change the way they dress, and they even all adopt surnames. Turks had never had surnames before, and suddenly they're all told, "Find yourself a surname."
44:56 Dan Snow? So Turkey, we should say, the Ottoman Empire loses the First World War. It is catastrophically defeated in the Balkans and in Arabia, Syria and Palestine. What is the effect on the capital city of this new Turkish republic that emerges in the ashes of the old empire?
45:13 Speaker 06 To start with, Istanbul had been occupied, I'll call it Istanbul from now on. Istanbul had been occupied by the British and French and other powers while it was decided what to do with Turkey. Meanwhile, the Turkish Republic goes to war with Greece over possession of Asia Minor and comprehensively wins. So the allied powers are left in a dilemma. What do we do with Istanbul? Do we try to hold on to it against the Turkish Republic or do we withdraw? And they withdraw. So Kemal Atatürk's Turks march into Istanbul. And one of the first things that Atatürk does is announce that the capital city is
45:55 Speaker 06 actually not going to be Istanbul, it's going to be Ankara. Because he wants to break with the old regime. He wants to set up a completely secular republic, which has nothing to do with the religious belief of the individual. The Ottoman Empire, of course, emerged the two because the Sultan was both the head of state and the caliph of Islam. So we're going to separate the two, says Atatürk. We're going to have a new capital in Ankara which relocates us in our heartland, much further away from Europe. So Istanbul is relegated to second city, even though it was and is much, much bigger than Ankara. So to some extent, it loses out.
46:39 Speaker 06 It's no longer a capital, it ceases to be a capital for the first time in a very long time. But it also, it has an impact on its Byzantine inheritance. Because Atatürk says, okay, what we'll do is some of these Byzantine buildings, which are a kind of world heritage, let's not have them as mosques anymore, let's make them museums, which everyone can visit. So the obvious example is Hagia Sophia, which had been a mosque since 1453. In 1936, Atatürk says it's going to be, from now on, a museum. And he calls in American archaeologists, who then do a very careful job picking the whitewash off the Byzantine mosaics that still survive.
47:23 Speaker 06 They'd been whitewashed over in the in the wake of the Turkish conquest. But they'd been preserved by the whitewash. And these suddenly emerged to the light of day for the first time in centuries. And people are astonished by them. It's extraordinary. So it's this secularisation has a big impact on the way Istanbul's non-Muslim history is viewed.
47:47 Dan Snow? But Istanbul remains the biggest game in town. Ankara is the political capital. Istanbul sort of remains and grows and is a world city.
47:56 Speaker 06 Well, it certainly is. There's no doubt about it. I mean, it's 25 million and rising. Its suburbs stretch for for miles along the Bosporus, right into Anatolia, along the Sea of Marmara. So it is a kind of megalopolis, no doubt about it. In recent years, of course, it's been acquiring the infrastructure to reflect that. The first Bosporus Bridge was built in 1973, but they've got two more now. Spanking new airport and another one on the other side of the Bosporus. And of course, the new metro system, which actually goes underneath the Bosporus. So it's it's infrastructure is is very impressive. But there are huge problems simply because of the number of people.
48:39 Speaker 06 Any any intensely populated urban area like that is going to encounter problems.
48:46 Dan Snow? So they're complaining about it in the sixth century and we're still complaining about it in the 21st.
48:50 Speaker 06 They certainly are. There were big protests, of course, in 2013, when one of the last green spaces just on the north of the Golden Horn, at Gezi Park, was threatened with being conquered over as a shopping mall. And there were huge and quite violent protests all over Turkey.
49:07 Dan Snow? So the streets of Constantinople, of Istanbul, still direct action taken by its citizens when they're angry at the their governors.
49:15 Speaker 06 Well, exactly. In Byzantine times, you didn't mess with the people of Constantinople. And I suspect that Mr. Erdogan hopefully has learned the lesson. Don't mess with the people of Istanbul.
49:24 Dan Snow? Well, thank you very much for that sweeping view of thousands of years of the history of this extraordinary place. Jonathan Harris, you tell us what the book you wrote about Istanbul is called.
49:35 Speaker 06 It's called Constantinople, Capital of Byzantium. It focuses on Constantinople as it was in the year 1200. And then you get the kind of backstory and then we flash forward as well to look at what happens either side of that. So it's a kind of snapshot.
49:51 Dan Snow? Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
49:57 Dan Snow? Thank you very much for listening, folks. Remember to tune back in next week. We'll be running an episode featuring the great Matt Lewis on our sister podcast Gone Medieval that delves into the really extraordinary story of the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Still, I think widely regarded as one of the most seismic dates in history. Till next time. Bye bye.
50:27 Speaker 02 This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake
51:12 Speaker 02 City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.
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