Dear Brothers & Sisters, my name is Bashir Wardini an Orthodox Christian from Lebanon, the Middle East. In the course of the next few weeks I will try (whenever I get some free time to write) to briefly reconstruct the rise of the Byzantium Empire. In this first post I tried to capture the birth of the empire and structure a vision with words of Constantinople, the capital. It's highly necessary to understand and rebuild using your imagination the map of the city in order to understand later chapters.
Byzantium such a magical and charming word to your ears that hides behind it the history of the most complex and sophisticated empire of its time and certainly the greatest Christian empire that there has even been, one that stretched from Spain to Syria. Its capital was the Constantinople hence "City of Constantine" named after the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who converted to Christianity in 324 and built this capital in the year of 330 on the site of an ancient city named Byzantium – that's how the Byzantine Empire, the Empire of Christ on earth was born.
Constantinople, the currently occupied Istanbul, set between the East and the West, seen as the centre of the World, strategically situated at the crossing between the empire's European and Asiatic provinces. "The Great City" was just one of the many terms that the awestruck foreign visitors and the Byzantines proudly referred to Constantinople. The city placed on a narrow promontory surrounded by water on two sides, the Golden Horn and the Bosporus to the North and the sea of Marmara to the South. A heavy Iron chain strung from a tower within the city reaching across the waters another tower in Galata, a city on the other side – blocking unwelcomed access to the Golden Horn. On land a massive fortified nine to twelve meters high and four and half meters thick wall with ninety six towers stretching all the way from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara kept the city impregnable for thousand years of wars, attacks and sieges.
The Walls through the ages
The walls of Constantinople, still standing today, were originally built to protect the old city of Byzantium – with the arrival of Constantine and the moving of the Roman Empire's capital to Byzantium, the city which became the Constantinople after it was greatly expanded and a new wall was built. The fortification during Constantine consisted of one wall protected with towers. During the reign of Emperor Theodosius II, the construction of an already undergoing and a new second wall was completed which became known as the Theodosian Walls. To better understand the system of defense at that time; it consisted of two lines of walls, the main Inner "Great" Wall surrounded by 96 towers and the Outer Wall which was around 20 meters away from the Great wall and also had 96 towers of its own. The Walls of Constantinople became one of the most complex and elaborate systems ever built that surrounded the city on all its sides from land to water and its efficiency was clear and tested.
The Queen of all Cities
The Golden "Main" Gate used for triumphal emperors returning from successful campaigns, along with seven other main gates and numerous smaller military ones granted access to the inner city.
On the inside the city was well-organize and exceptionally planned in such an unprecedented fashion which was not common in other cities of that time. The wealth was clearly shown in its amazing buildings and palaces surrounded by open public spaces; everything was marvelously put instead of just a number of buildings randomly spread. The roads were straight-ahead, notably the Mese, a 25 meters wide street, which connected the Golden Gate at the land walls with a series of public squares and forums such as: the forum of Arcadius, forum of Bovis, forum of Theodosius, forum of Constantine, a Hippodrome which could seat up to 100,000 persons and the Mese continued all the way reaching the Augousteion, Constantinople’s central square – north to that square stood the great Cathedral of Hagia Sophia (In Greek; The Holy Wisdom) built on a rectangular base and topped with an enormous 32 meters dome, which was visible for ships far in the sea. Hagia Sophia or the Great Chuch as the Byzantines referred to it, was constructed in the 6th century on the orders of Justinian I. Some of the other impressive Churches were “St.Geoges”, “The Fourty Martyrs” and “The Holy Apostles” built in 550 which had the tombs of previous emperors including Constantine and Justinian – basically all of the city's churches and monasteries were remarkable for their sizes and beauty.
The Mese was also used to reach The Great Palace, the main residence for most of Imperial Emperors, located in between the Hippodrome and Hagia Sophia. The other Imperial palace was the Blachernae a complex of multiple structures that enjoyed great view over the city, the Golden Horn and the countryside outside the walls, located on the northwestern section of the city (refer to map below), multiple churches were built there next to a spring site – originally they were outside the city’s walls but it was later expanded to host them along the Blachernae palace.
Constantinople became the world’s best commercial center; merchants from all around the world would come to trade their goods at the Golden Horn, the empire benefited from the Kommerkion –a duty paid by the merchants. Also at the Golden Horn existed a mosque for the use of Arab merchants.
In medieval standards the Constantinople stood for its enormous size, with around 375,000 inhabitants - it was around 20 times the size of London at the time. The largest and certainly unmatched in the Christian world. Cordova in Spain was around the same size; however it was under Islamic rule while Baghdad was larger.
The glory and imperial majesty the Constantinople enjoyed was unseen in other cities and for that it truly deserved the title of “Queen of All Cities”
In the next part, I will focus on the Ideology of the Constantinople and what made it such an important city in the Christian World.
-Bashir Wardini
No comments:
Post a Comment