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 2nd 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:
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