Constantinople
Constantinople was the heart of the Byzantine Empire. It became the capital of the Ottoman Empire when it was conquered in 1453 by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II.
Sultan Suleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey ©
Mehmet slaughtered many of the population and forced the rest into exile, later repopulating the city by importing people from elsewhere in Ottoman territory.
Mehmet renamed Constantinople Istanbul – the 'city of Islam' - and set about rebuilding it, both physically and politically, as his capital.
Economics
Istanbul became not only a political and military capital, but because of its position at the junction of Europe, Africa, and Asia, one of the great trade centres of the world. Another important city was Bursa, which was a centre of the silk trade.
Some of the later Ottoman conquests were clearly intended to give them control of other trade routes.
Among the goods traded were:
- Silk and other cloth
- Musk
- Rhubarb
- Porcelain from China
- Spices such as pepper
- Dyestuffs such as indigo
The economic strength of the Empire also owed much to Mehmet's policy of increasing the number of traders and artisans in the Empire.
He first encouraged merchants to move to Istanbul, and later forcibly resettled merchants from captured territories such as Caffa.
He also encouraged Jewish traders from Europe to migrate to Istanbul and set up in business there. Later rulers continued these policies.
The siege of Constantinople
When Sultan Mehmet II rode into the city of Constantinople on a white horse in 1453, it marked the end of a thousand years of the Byzantine Empire. Earlier attempts to capture the city had largely failed - so why did the Ottomans succeed this time? What effect did the fall of Constantinople have on the rest of the Christian world?
Roger Crowley, author and historian; Judith Herrin, Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College London; and Colin Imber, formerly Reader in Turkish at Manchester University discuss these questions.
Effects of the fall of Constantinople
The capture of Constantinople ended the Byzantine Empire after 1100 years. The effect of this on Christian Europe was enormous.
One unexpected effect was that many scholars fled from the new empire and went to Italy, where they were influential in sparking off the Renaissance, and increasing trade with the east.
Although the Pope demanded a crusade to recapture Istanbul from the Muslims, the Christian nations failed to produce an army for him, and no attempt to retake the city was made.
The Muslim dominance of the trading centre of the former Constantinople increased the pressure on Western nations to find new ways to the East by going westwards. This eventually led to the expeditions of Columbus, Magellan, and Drake.
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