Istanbul is a large Turkish city straddling Europe and Asia, separated by the Bosphorus Strait. The Golden Horn is in Europe, it flows into the Bosphorus, to the north is the Black Sea, and to the south the Sea of Marmara, which itself leads to the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean. To understand the history of Istanbul, it is necessary to examine its geography with these lands bathed by strategic seas, which are more so than ever today.
This land has attracted all the great powers, because to control the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles strait is to dominate a large part of this region of the world. Istanbul is called La Sublime Porte, and it is not an image, as it is a door between East and West. It is the result of the installation of different civilizations, pagan, Christian, Muslim, therefore a mosaic colored and enriched by diverse and varied peoples.
From Byzantium to Constantinople, this city had 500,000 inhabitants in 1250. When it fell in 1453, when the Greeks asked for help from Rome, and other European countries, the Turks settled there, it will be the reign of the Sultans . Mehmet, the Conqueror of Istanbul, had asked never to touch the Hagia Sophia. During the Inquisition in Spain, the Jews were driven out in 1492, Bajazet II brought in ships to recover the Sephardim, so Istanbul also became a Sephardic city. They were going to live alongside Greeks and Armenians, in the neighborhoods of Balat and Fener, where the Greek Patriarchate is located.
The principle of the Sultans’ policy was inclusion. At the beginning of the 16th century, Selim 1st, father of Suleiman the Magnificent, set out to conquer Persia, taking Tabriz and taking 700 families of artists and craftsmen who would work at Topkapi Palace and contribute to Ottoman art, while like the artists who came from Cairo at that time. Thus, as long as the empire was strong it had – with regard to civilizations that were not its own – an inclusive, constructive attitude, for the benefit of the empire.
This was the case of the Janissaries, these children kidnapped during the Ottoman battles, converted and brought up in the palace, with the children of dignitaries. They were to become, for the most capable, Pasha (generals). Twenty grand viziers out of 25 were of Christian origin, or even great architects, such as Sultan Sinan, the greatest architect of the empire and of his century, who built the Suleymaniye Mosque. Sinan, of Christian origin, who at the end of his life built a church in memory of his mother. Moreover, a majority of sultans were, through their mothers, of Christian origin.
Istanbul is also and perhaps first and foremost a city of sailors to observe such dense maritime traffic. For a navigator, it is a certain dexterity and a unique know-how regarding the profusion of ships, small, medium and large, which meet, intersect, all this in a maritime ballet unique in the world.
And then, Istanbul is the Princes’ Islands. The famous Princes’ Islands called Prinkipo, where the unwanted princes of Byzantium were detained, as well as those of the Ottoman Empire. Those he is to the Princes, which can be reached from Istanbul by a short crossing, with Büyükada, the largest, the most symbolic, islands which, from Constantinople and thereafter, were taken over by the economic elites who had buildings built there. beautiful houses. Büyükada, the island of horse-drawn carriages, without cars, the island that combines the flowers that embellish it and the Sea of Marmara.
From 1930, Constantinople will become Istanbul, the empire will have disappeared, and as Metin Arditi says: “The empire was strong when it was pragmatic, and it lasted as long as the sultans preferred war to pleasure, when they favored pleasure over war, at the beginning of the 19th century, this marked the beginning of the end of the empire a century later…” Today the city retains its charm, its mysteries, its magnificence, in a word, it is still magical.