A few years ago I walked across Istanbul's Galata bridge and sat down for a cup of coffee in an almost deserted, ramshackle cafe beside a waterfront fish market. I had just finished reading John Julius Norwich's magisterial History of Byzantium, and balancing on a rickety chair, I suddenly realised that the piece of water directly in front of me was the very location of the huge chain, each link the size of a man's arm, that was once pulled across the mouth of the Golden Horn to protect it from invasion.
Here, in 1204, a fleet of Venetian boats led by their blind Doge had filled the narrow waterway and successfully attacked the city walls. But there was no interpretative centre, no monument, just a friendly, dignified waiter and a dozen well-fed cats. Part of the charm of Istanbul is the casual attitude of the Istanbullu, as the inhabitants call themselves, to their history which is all around them, many layers deep.
For much of its history, Byzantion, Byzantium, Constantinople, Konstantinye , Asitane (the Threshold), Stambol, Islam-Bol and, finally, the city we now call Istanbul, has usually been called, simply, The City. Fought over by Greeks, Romans, Turks and Venetians, it is simultaneously liminal and central, located at the edges of both Europe and Asia, but also central to the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires.
Istanbul is proof that geography is destiny. Strategically situated on rich fishing waters, and a site of great natural beauty, full of springs and forests, the original settlement between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara was easily defensible and richly resourced.
Hughes draws on many recent archaeological discoveries. Work on a €4 billion tunnel connecting the European and Asian sides of the Bosporus uncovered the 8,000-year-old remains of a woman in what is thought to be the world’s oldest coffin. Though long inhabited before then, the city’s history begins in 657 BC when a Greek called Byza from an obscure town called Megara founded a colony on the west bank of the Bosporus, which would be called Byzantion.
Key location
Over the next hundreds of years, it would grow in importance as the Greek city states fought over it. Byzantion emerged as a key location to stop Persian expansion westwards and to control trade routes from the Black Sea. By the time of the birth of Christ, it was growing into the Eastern capital of the Roman Empire, having held at bay Persians and Goths. And already, as Hughes points out, it was becoming known as the city of Dionysus and Aphrodite, famous for drink and debauchery, prefiguring its later role as the highly coloured, erotic dreamscape for orientalising Romantic painters and poets.
As the first millennium began, the balance of power in the Empire started to shift from Rome to Byzantium, and this was consolidated by the remarkable figure of the emperor Constantine. He would be seen as the founder of the Byzantine Empire. This is a familiar story but Bettany Hughes tells it well.
Constantinople, as it would now be called, declared by Constantine to be the New Rome, would become the greatest city in the world, unequalled in wealth, culture and decadence. New rulers built on his legacy. Justinian, with the help of his wife Theodora, not only restored the Roman Empire to control the Mediterranean once again, he also undertook massive architectural works, most famously the cathedral of Hagia Sophia. Allegedly built on the site of a pagan temple, it continues in many ways to be emblematic of Istanbul.
Conquerors
But the glory of Byzantium attracted would-be conquerors. In the seventh century a new threat emerged – the new religion founded by Muhammad. It was said that Constantinople “was the bone stuck in the throat of Allah”. Almost immediately after the death of Muhammad, Muslims would launch their first unsuccessful attack on The City, the first of 13 over 800 years. The 13th, successful one was in 1453, when the declining Constantinople was conquered by Mehmed II, leader of the Turks. The first thing he did on entering the city was to visit Hagia Sophia and have it converted to a mosque, which it would remain until another conqueror, Ataturk, made it a museum in 1931.
Mehmed renamed the city as Konstantinye, and for almost 500 years it would be the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Hughes covers this period fairly cursorily compared to the other epochs, and devotes little space to the history of Istanbul in the 20th century. This is inexplicable, as that century brought enormous changes to the city, especially in terms of its ethnic makeup.
Despite this, Hughes has clearly done her research and at times unearths interesting details about daily life. The main deficiency of the book, however, is the writing style. The biographical note tells us that she is a broadcaster as well as historian, and much of the book seems written to be spoken – slightly breathlessly – to camera.
For example, writing of Theodora and Justinian, and his general Bartosius and his wife, she writes: “So it was another low-born soldier – applauded by his callgirl-cum informant spouse Antonina – processing to a sports ground to honour a peasant and his prostitute consort who enjoyed the last Roman triumph.”
In 534 AD the Byzantines enjoyed many conveniences, but not, I fear, telephones. And yet, despite this tabloid style, she is curiously coy, perhaps mindful of a TV audience, when it comes to the details of Theodora’s well-documented performances with a goose in the Hippodrome.
The book, despite its flaws, is undoubtedly timely because as Hughes argues, Istanbul is once again central to the European narrative, as a post-religious secularism confronts a resurgent religious movement.
It is said that Erdogan plans to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque again, but I’m sure the Istanbullu will shrug and think: in another 500 years it will be something else. After all, in terms of The City, Islam is a recent arrival.
Michael O'Loughlin's Poems 1980-2015 is published by New Island Books
