Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City Read Free Page A

of Constantine. These walls have delimited the size of the old city up to the present day, so that subsequent expansion was restricted to the suburban districts along the Marmara, the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. The area thus enclosed included seven hills, the same number as in Old Rome, a matter of some mystical significance in Byzantium. Although the contours of these hills have been obscured by modern roads and buildings, they can still be discerned and form convenient reference-points for studying the old city. Six of the seven hills can be seen from the Galata Bridge, marching in stately line down the Golden Horn, each of them crowned with a Byzantine church or an Ottoman mosque, giving an imperial quality to the skyline of Stamboul.
    Great changes took place in the Roman Empire in the two centuries following the reign of Constantine the Great. After the death of Theodosius I in 395, the Empire was divided between his two sons, with Honorius ruling the West from Rome and Arcadius the East, with his capital at Constantinople. The western part of the Empire was overrun by barbarians during the following century, and in the year 476 the last Emperor of the West was deposed, leaving the Emperor in Constantinople sole ruler of what was left of the Empire. This soon brought about a profound change in the character of the Empire, for it was now centred in lands populated largely by Greek-speaking Christians. And so, although Latin remained the official language of the court up until the beginning of the sixth century, the Empire was becoming more and more Greek and Christian in character, and began to sever its connections with the classical traditions of Athens and Rome. As the great churchman Gennadius was to write in later times: “Though I am a Hellene by speech yet I would never say that I was a Hellene, for I do not believe as Hellenes believed. I should like to take my name from my faith, and if anyone asks me what I am, I answer, ‘A Christian’. Though my father dwelt in Thessaly I do not call myself a Thessalian, but a Byzantine, for I am of Byzantium.”
    A new epoch in the city’s history began during the reign of Justinian the Great, who succeeded to the throne in the year 527. Five years after his accession Justinian was very nearly overthrown by an insurrection of the factions in the Hippodrome, the famous Nika Revolt, which was finally crushed only after widespread destruction and terrible loss of life. Immediately after the suppression of the revolt Justinian set out to rebuild the city on an even grander scale than before. When he had finished his reconstruction apparently within just a few years, the city of Constantinople was the greatest and most magnificent metropolis on earth, an imperial capital beginning the first of its golden ages. The crowning glory of Justinian’s new city was the resurrected church of Haghia Sophia, whose venerable form can still be seen on the acropolis, a symbol of the ancient city of which it was so long the heart.
    During the course of Justinian’s reign his generals succeeded in reconquering many of the lost dominions of the Roman Empire, and by the time he died in 565 the borders of Byzantium stretched from the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules. But the golden age did not last long, for within a half-century after the death of Justinian his empire had fallen apart, assaulted from without by the Lombards, Slavs, Avars and Persians, ravaged from within by anarchy, plague and social unrest. The Empire was saved from total destruction by the Emperor Heraclius, who ruled from 610 till 641. In a series of brilliant campaigns, Heraclius defeated the Persians, the Avars and the Slavs, and succeeded in regaining much of the territory which had been lost in the previous half-century. Shortly after the death of Heraclius, however, much of the eastern part of the Byzantine Empire was overrun by the Arabs, who on several occasions in the seventh and eighth centuries besieged