It would seem that there was a spice-market[[767]] in the vicinity of the Gate of the Perama, like the one which exists to-day to the rear of Balouk Bazaar Kapoussi, the latter being only the continuation of the former. According to Bondelmontius, the fish-market of Byzantine Constantinople was held before this gate, as the practice is at present; for upon his map he names the entrance Porta Piscaria. So fixed are the habits of a city.
Besides bearing the name Gate of the Perama, the entrance was also styled the Porta Hebraica. This appears from the employment of the two names as equivalent terms in descriptions of the territory occupied by the Venetians in Constantinople. For example, according to Anna Comnena,[[768]] the quarter which her father, the Emperor Alexis Comnenus, conceded to the Venetians, extended from the old Hebrew pier to the Vigla. In the charter by which the Doge Faletri granted that district to the Church of San Georgio Majore of Venice, the quarter is described in one passage, as extending from the Vigla to the Porta Perame, as far as the Judeca (“ad Portam Perame, usque ad Judecam”);[[769]] and in a subsequent passage, as proceeding from the Vigla to the Judeca (“a comprehenso dicto sacro Viglæ usque ad Judecam”).[[770]] In the grants made to the Venetians after the Restoration of the Greek Empire in 1261, the extreme points of the Venetian quarter are named, respectively, the Gate of the Drungarii and the Gate of the Perama.[[771]]
To this identification of the Porta Hebraica with the Gate of the Perama it may be objected that on the map of Bondelmontius these names are applied to different gates, and this, it may further be urged, accords with the fact that after the Turkish Conquest, also, a distinction was maintained between the Gate of the Perama and the gate styled Tchifout Kapoussi, the Hebrew Gate. But in reply to this objection it must be noted that the Tchifout Kapoussi of Turkish days was the gate now known as Bagtchè Kapoussi,[[772]] beside the Stamboul Custom House, while the “Porta Judece” on the map of Bondelmontius stands close to the Seraglio Point. Nothing, however, is more certain than that the Venetian quarter[[773]] did not extend so far east as Bagtchè Kapoussi, much less so far in that direction as the neighbourhood of the head of the promontory. Bagtchè Kapoussi corresponds to the Byzantine Porta Neoriou (the Gate of the Dockyard), which had no connection whatever with the quarter assigned to the Venetian merchants in the city, but was separated from that quarter, on the west, by the quarters which the traders from Amalfi and Pisa occupied, while to the east of the gate was the settlement of the Genoese. Consequently, the fact that in the age of Bondelmontius and after the Turkish Conquest the Porta Hebraica was a different entrance from the Gate of the Perama affords no ground for rejecting the evidence that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the two names designated the same gate. It only proves that the epithet “Hebrew” had meantime been transferred from one gate to another.[[774]]
At the distance of seventy-seven feet to the east of the Porta Hebraica, or Gate of the Perama, there stood, according to a Venetian document of 1229, an entrance known as the Gate of St. Mark (Porta San Marci).[[775]] It probably obtained its name during the Latin occupation, after the patron saint of Venice, but whether it was a gate then opened for the first time, or an old gate under a new name, cannot be determined.
Yet further east, at a point 115 pikes before reaching Bagtchè Kapoussi, stood an entrance styled the Gate of the Hicanatissa (Πόρτα τῆς Ἱκανατίσσης).[[776]] The adjoining quarter went by the same name, and there probably stood the “Residence of the Kanatissa” (τὸν οἶκον τῆς Κανατίσης) mentioned by Codinus.[[777]] The designation is best explained as derived from the body of palace troops known as the Hicanati.[[778]]
Between the Gate of the Perama and that of the Hicanatissa was situated the quarter of the merchants from Amalfi; at the latter gate the quarter of the Pisans commenced.[[779]]
The Gate of the Neorion (Πόρτα τοῦ Νεωρίου),[[780]] the Gate of the Dockyard, stood, as its name implies, beside the Dockyard on the shore of the bay at Bagtchè Kapoussi, close to the site now occupied by the Stamboul Custom House. It is first mentioned in a chrysoboullon of Isaac Angelus, confirming the right granted to the Pisan merchants by his predecessors, Alexius Comnenus and Manuel Comnenus, to reside in the neighbourhood of the gate.[[781]] While the western limit of the quarter thus conceded to Pisans was marked, as already intimated, by the Gate Hicanatissa,[[782]] the eastern limit of the settlement extended to a short distance beyond the Gate of the Neorion.
The Neorion dated from the time of Byzantium, when it stood at the western extremity of the Harbour Walls of the city.[[783]] It was, therefore, distinguished from all other dockyards in Constantinople as the Ancient Neorion (τὸ Παλαιὸν Νεώριον), or the Ancient Exartesis (Ἐξάρτησις). Nicolo Barbaro calls it “l’arsenada de l’imperador.”
Here the Imperial fleet assembled to refit or to guard the entrance of the harbour;[[784]] here, until the reign of Justin II., was the Marine Exchange;[[785]] and here was a factory of oars (coparia),[[786]] in addition to the one mentioned in the Justinian Code, which stood elsewhere. As might be expected, several destructive fires originated in the Neorion.[[787]]
According to Gyllius,[[788]] Gerlach,[[789]] and Leunclavius,[[790]] this entrance was in their day named by the Turks, Tchifout Kapoussi, and was regarded by the Greeks as the Πύλη Ὡραία (the Beautiful Gate), mentioned by Phrantzes[[791]] and Ducas[[792]] in the history of the last siege. The epithet Horaia is supposed to be a corruption of the original name for the entrance (τοῦ Νεωρίου); the Turkish designation of the gate being explained by the fact that a Jewish community was settled in the neighbourhood of the gate.[[793]]