The City of Countless Names– History 1

The city of Constantinople sits at the juncture of two continents, two seas and countless empires across time. Since the cities’ founding, it’s mercantile, political, and religious significance ensured its constant growth and the covetous desire of others. The Greeks, the Romans, and the Christians once possessed this strategic city, and now it is the shining gem in the increasingly tarnished crown of the diminishing Ottoman Empire. In 1853, the Russian Czarina used a squabble over religious sites to threaten the Ottoman Empire with war, pulling the city into greater international import. With more English, French and Italian forces passing through the city each day, and its young Sultan’s new progressive policies, Constantinople faces enemies and allies unused to its exotic ways and ancient dangers.

Long ago, when all men ignorantly worshiped Archons, the god Zeus lusted after Io, one of the priestesses of his wife Hera. He seduced Io, and Hera, enraged at Zeus’s infidelity, turned her priestess into a heifer. A gadfly summoned by Hera, chased Io across the world until she reached Thrace. On the banks of the Golden Horn, Io gave birth to Zeus’s child, a girl she named Keroessa, before she crossed the Bosporus (thus giving the strait its name meaning Ox-Passage).

The water nymph, Semestra, found Keroessa crawling near her shrine, and raised the girl as her daughter. After Keroessa grew into a beautiful maiden, the ocean god Poseidon fell in love with her. From their union, Keroessa had a son she named Byzas, who, as an adult, ruled the Megarians of Greece. When the Megarians sought land for a new city, Byzas followed the advice of the Oracle of Delphi and built a mighty city near his mother’s birthplace, in 658 BC, called Byzantium.

Byzantium prospered from the trade with Asia and shipping on the Bosporus. In 512 BC, Darius I, the king of Persia, crossed the Bosporus and took Byzantium as a stepping stone to conquer Europe. The Persians held the city until 478 BC when the Spartan general, Pausanias, recaptured Byzantium for the coalition that would become the Delian League. Pausanias rebuilt the much-ruined city and made many civic improvements.

Byzantium peacefully joined the Roman Empire as a free city in approximately 150 BC. The Byzantines found the peace of the Roman Empire, its independent governance, and the opportunity of trade well worth the price of tribute, not to mention the right to charge tolls on all the ships coming out of the Black Sea. Roman rule suited Byzantium until 195 AD when the emperor Septimius Severus, having won the Roman crown, avenged himself on all of the supporters of his rival Pescennius Niger, including Byzantium. Severus’s forces destroyed the city after starving out the population in a three year siege. Six years later, Severus realized he destroyed a key center of trade between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and more importantly Rome’s first line of defense against Asian invaders. He rebuilt the city naming it Augusta Antonina.

 In 323 AD, their descendants, forgetting Byzantium’s past destruction, gave their support to Licinius I as emperor. When Licinius’s rival, Constantine, routed his forces at Adrianople in 324 AD Licunius fled to Byzantium. The city foolishly harbored the would-be emperor. Constantine defeated Licinius a few months later and had him hanged.  Rather than destroy Byzantium for backing his enemy, as had his predecessor Severus, Constantine had a much more grandiose plan for the city.

Adventure Ideas

Keroessa means “the horned” and legend says the Golden Horn is named after her. Her mother, Io, is often depicted as beautiful women with horns. Were they simply bovine beastfolk or something more infernal?

Byzas is the son of Poseidon, his mother was saved by a water nymph, and according to legend, Poseidon helped build the foundation of Byzantium. The city thrives because of it wealth in sea trade and its people live off the abundant fishing. It seems like water spirits really want Byzantium to exist. Are they the real reason Severus rebuilt the city? They don’t seem to care who owns the city as long as the city remains on the peninsula. Are water spirits (gods, nymphs, or djinn) manipulating the Crimean War?

The palatial complex of Topkapu (or Top-kapi) stands on the same ground where the long lost Acropolis of Byzantium once stood.  Long ago, temples to Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Dionysus, and Poseidon stood high over the city. Now their ruins lie under one of the most important government buildings in the Ottoman Empire. I’m sure it’s fine and there will be no consequences to that.

That will do it for Constantinople’s ancient history…partly. Next, I’ll look at the man who put the Constantin- in Constantinople.

The City of Countless Names- Introduction to Constantinople

The city of Constantinople sits at the juncture of two continents, two seas and countless empires across time. Since the cities’ founding, it’s mercantile, political, and religious significance ensured its constant growth and the covetous desire of others. The Greeks, the Romans, and the Christians once possessed this strategic city, and now it is the shining gem in the increasingly tarnished crown of the diminishing Ottoman Empire. In 1853, the Russian Czarina used a squabble over religious sites to threaten the Ottoman Empire with war, pulling the city into greater international import. With more English, French and Italian forces passing through the city each day, and its young Sultan’s new progressive policies, Constantinople faces enemies and allies unused to its exotic ways and ancient dangers.

The Ottoman capital, Constantinople, is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Its bright blue waterway reflects hilltops covered in enchanting minarets and domes rising over the city. Brightly painted houses in all colors built to the shore, peak out in the fog of morning and blaze at sunset. The panorama of cypress groves, ancient walls, mosques, palaces, ships, terraces, and lighthouses is overwhelming. 

Waterways separate the sprawl and grandeur of Constantinople into three cities. The Bosporus Strait divides Scutari on the Asian continent from Stambul and Pera-Galatia in Europe, and the Golden Horn estuary further divides Pera-Galatia from Stambul. Each section of Constantinople holds diverse peoples, pleasures, and secrets.

Although not the oldest inhabited part of Constantinople, Stambul’s monuments, and walls show the majesty left over from the cities’ days as ancient Byzantium.  As the center of Turkish culture, Stambul houses the finest mosques, most opulent palaces, the Grand Bazaar, and the Government for the Ottoman Empire.

Few foreigners live in Stambul, and its labyrinthine streets puzzle all outsiders. 

The Crimean war changed Scutari from Asian trading town at the feet of mount Bulgurlu to a mustering site for cavalry, fleets of ships, and casualties back from the front lines. Florence Nightingale and her nurses famously tended to the wounded here. The largest cemetery in Constantinople ominously lies near her hospital.

Pera-Galata houses the Europeans of Constantinople along with all the embassies, hotels, and shops catering to foreigners. Spreading away from most populous centers, the suburbs fan out from Galata-Pera into the cyprus groves and hills of the Turkish countryside. In the east, great harbors and shipyard cut into the northern shore of the Golden Horn where the Ottoman Navy is docked and Admiralty is headquartered. 

The Bosporus flows from the Black Sea into the Sea of Marmara which flows into the Dardanelles, which flow into the Aegean Sea,  which flows into all the way into the Mediterranean connecting central Europe and Easter Asia to the rest of Europe and North Africa for trade and transport. Whoever controls Constantinople controls this vital merchant route. 

Although Turkish Nithamiyeen make up the majority of Constantinople’s population, the cities colorful cosmopolitan history ensures an incredibly ethnic and religious diversity among the minorities.  Turks, Greeks, Kurds, Bosniaks, Jews, North Africans, Armenians, Bulgars, Circassians, and Levantines live and trade in a confusing mélange of languages, customs, and beliefs. Its population of about 800,000 is nowhere near London or Paris, but to anyone in the Great Bazaar or near the shoreline, its crowds will be both shocking and familiar.

Now that we’re past the overview, we can move into the real stuff. After covering the foundational facts, I’ll post information helpful to adventuring in the city, and then a guide to the districts and suburbs of Constantinople. Next week we’ll start our look at Constantinople’s history, starting with its days as Byzantium.

Constantinople- Not Istanbul

The Al Qadim setting for Dungeons and Dragons takes all the best tropes of Arabesque fantasy (ala Sinbad and the Arabian Nights) creating a terrific setting full of genies, flying carpets, and sinister viziers. TSR produced a line of great campaign books full of exciting swashbuckling adventures for Al Qadim. Unfortunately, I don’t blog about, or run 2^nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Fortunately, I blog about and run Victoriana.

The arabesque fantasy flavor of Al Qadim is perfect for Victoriana’s alternate fantasy 1850s, I need just somewhere to put these adventures. So, I picked the most interesting place I could think of in the Ottoman Empire: Constantinople.

For the next…however many weeks, I’ll be looking at the people, places, and most of all names of Constantinople. Seriously, “Istanbul was once Constantinople” is just the start. Every place has a name in Turkish, Greek, or Armenian, let alone the English translation, the Anglicized spelling, the incorrect Anglicized spelling, the Phonetic Spelling, and more. I’m digging through the history, checking period map, reading Victorian letters, memoirs, and travel guides trying to find out what is the right name for everything.

To help us all out, I’ll be making a series of maps which eventually I’ll paired with descriptions of Constantinople’s districts, neighborhoods and suburbs. I’m elbow deep in research right now, so this post is little more than a teaser. To make up for that, here is the current rough unfinished map of Constantinople: