Constantinople (Latin: Greek Constantinopolis , : Κωνσταντινούπολις - Konstantinoupolis ) is the old name of the current town of Istanbul in Turkey. Its original name, Byzance ( Byzantion in Greek, but meaning “shore” in thrace), remains largely used.
The inhabitants of Byzance are the Byzantine and those of Constantinople the Constantinopolitains (in Latin Constantinopolitanibus which wants to say “to the inhabitants of Constantinople” east one of the longest words of this language). Constantinople is the Francization of Konstantinoupolis , which, in Greek, means the town of Constantin . This name was given to him in homage to the Roman Emperor Constantin I {{er}}, which chooses to make of it the capital of the empire from 330. The Souda gives for the entry “Constantinople” (Κ, 2287):
In a few decades, the city becomes one of the largest metropolises of the Roman East thanks to its political role and to its economic activities and the imperial financial incentives. In 332, Constantin ensures corn the free supply of the people of the new capital. In 334 the architects and the craftsmen of the building of the city are exempted certain loads, those which make build houses are entitled to free breads. The land great landowners of Asia Mineure have the obligation to build a house in the city. Of died of Constantin, certain contemporaries think that the city is a whim of its founder and that she will not play any more any part after the death of the emperor.
As of Constantin 1st, the city counts 100.000 inhabitants and extends on more than 7 km ². It reaches 200.000 inhabitants at the end of the 4th century. Constantinople, located out of the zones of conflict, sees its population increasing. The number of its inhabitants is discussed: 800.000 inhabitants during the 5th century for Bertrand Lançon, 4 to 500.000 for A. Ducellier, Mr. Kaplan and B. Martin. The embellishment of the city is the principal building site of the emperors starting from Constantin 1st. This one made built there, the imperial palace, the hippodrome, the new name given to the Roman circuses, the church of Crowned Wisdom (Holy-Sophie). The city increases then towards the West. The enclosure of origin enclosing 700 hectares sufficient more, Théodose II surrounds it by new ramparts between 412 and 414, which increase the surface of the city to 1.450 hectares. The Concile of Chalcédoine of 451, in its twenty-eighth gun, gives to the town of Constantinople the title of “Rome News”, which makes of its bishop, the Patriarche of Constantinople, the second character of the Church. This still contributes to give to the city its character independent of capital of the Byzantine Empire.
Constantinople and its Empire had five centuries of prosperity thanks to the trade Europe-Asia (it state the Western terminus of the Silk route and resisted grinds invasions (Avars, Slaves, Arab, Vikings, etc) until of 1204, when the Fourth crusade was diverted by the Venetian ones towards Constantinople, taken by treachery. There was on this occasion the famous Sac of Constantinople. The " beginning of the fin" for civilization gréco-Roman and Christian orthodoxe of the Empire, thus came not from the Moslems, but from the Westerners. The city and the Empire definitively lost their commercial resources with the profit of the Venetian ones and Génois, and the Empire was divided into three states: Despotat d' Epire, the Empire of Nicée and the Empire of Trébizonde.
Constantinople became the capital of the Latin Empire of Constantinople rested by the Crusaders, until in 1261, when the forces of the Empire of Nicée led by Michel VIII Paleologist took again the city. But the city, emptied of all its richnesses, its inhabitants and with the three quarters in ruin, sorrow to be rebuilt. The Emperors are involved in debt more and more with respect to Génois and of Venetian to which they concede enormous privileges. In 1355 the Othoman Turks , who already seized the totality of the Anatolia, pass to Europe and seize in forty years the Peninsula Balkans: Constantinople is encircled and the Empire is reduced to its capital, with Trébizonde, Mistra and some Aegean Islands.
The May 29th 1453, Constantinople is taken by the Othoman forces led by Mehmet II. The last Roman Emperor Constantin XII Dragasès dies on the ramparts by defending his city.
fall of Constantinople puts an end to empire which had lasted 1000 years, which had seen Rome crumbling and, which very seldom arrived in the history, which had survived in two eras (Antiquity and the Middle Ages). Its fall marked for the East the end of civilization that Hyeronymus Wolf called hundred years later Byzantine , but for the Occident, which inherited via Italy this civilization, it was the advent of a Renaissance.
At the time of the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, in 1923, the capital was transferred to Ankara. But Istanbul continued to grow, a colossal bridge was built over the Bosphorus, then a second, and it is now a metropolis comparable with New York, with the same problems of overpopulation, price, transport and pollution. On nearly 10 million inhabitants for the whole of the agglomeration, from now on with horse on Europe and Asia, it remains less than 3000 Roumis of origin, of which the Patriarche of Constantinople, last memory of the Empire.
Abdülhamid Ier (1725 -1789), Othoman sultan (1774 - 1789)
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