{"id":5515,"date":"2011-01-21T01:01:36","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T07:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/holyrover\/?p=5515"},"modified":"2011-01-21T01:01:36","modified_gmt":"2011-01-21T07:01:36","slug":"shimmering-byzantium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/holyrover\/2011\/01\/21\/shimmering-byzantium\/","title":{"rendered":"Shimmering Byzantium"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"
image in Hagia Sophia (photo by Lori Erickson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

One of my favorite memories of\u00a0Istanbul happened during our first morning as my friend Marian and I walked with our guide through the historic center of the city.\u00a0 As we strolled, he read the buildings and structures that we passed as if they were a history book, pointing out their Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and modern elements.\u00a0 Here were the remains of a Roman hippodrome, there an obelisk from Luxor, there an ornately decorated Ottoman palace standing next to an Art Nouveau apartment building.\u00a0 It was clear that in Istanbul, within the space of a few steps one can travel a thousand years (here\u2019s perhaps the best indication of the city\u2019s age:\u00a0 its New Mosque was built in 1597).<\/p>\n

So a brief sketch of the city\u2019s tangled history is\u00a0in order, just to set the stage for further ramblings.\u00a0 As maybe you remember from your high school geography class, Istanbul is the only major city to span two continents.\u00a0 Part lies in Europe and part in Asia, and thus the city from its beginnings marked the meeting of East and West.<\/p>\n

While there was a small settlement called Byzantium in this location beginning in 667 B.C., the city came into its own when it was re-named Constantinople in 324 A.D. \u00a0to honor the Roman emperor Constantine. It grew in stature and importance in part because of its extraordinarily favorable\u00a0location\u2014at the meeting point between continents but also at the site of one of the world\u2019s best deep-water harbors, the Golden Horn.\u00a0 Whoever ruled Constantinople controlled both the land and sea routes between Europe and Asia.\u00a0 The Emperor Constantine was no fool in choosing it as his new capital, dubbing it the New Rome.<\/p>\n

As the wheel of history turned, the Roman Empire was replaced by the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople grew to become the largest and wealthiest city in the world.\u00a0 (To this day the word Byzantium<\/em> has a shimmer of gold about it, doesn\u2019t it?)\u00a0 Then after the capture of the city by Muslim forces in 1453, Constantinople became the capital of the Ottoman Empire.\u00a0 The fall of the city sent shock waves throughout the Christian world, as the great cathedral of the East, Hagia Sophia, became a mosque and Constantinople<\/em> became Istanbul<\/em> (though it would continue to be known for centuries by its former name in the West).\u00a0 The Ottoman Empire lasted until the end of World War I, with the last sultan exiled in 1922.\u00a0 In 1923 Turkey implemented its first constitution and the Republic of Turkey was born.\u00a0 Under the visionary leadership of the leader Ataturk, the country moved into the modern age.<\/p>\n

But while Istanbul is a pulsing, dynamic metropolis today, full of cars and gleaming office towers and the assorted accoutrements of high-tech life, just beneath the surface are those interwoven strands of history, ribbons of gold that shimmer if you walk slowly and attentively through its busy streets.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite memories of\u00a0Istanbul happened during our first morning as my friend Marian and I walked with our guide through the historic center of the city.\u00a0 As we strolled, he read the buildings and structures that we passed as if they were a history book, pointing out their Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2582,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[260,295,450],"class_list":["post-5515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-turkey","tag-byzantium","tag-constantinople","tag-istanbul-history"],"yoast_head":"\nShimmering Byzantium<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of my favorite memories of\u00a0Istanbul happened during our first morning as my friend Marian and I walked with our guide through the historic center of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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