Having become master of the whole empire by the capture of Byzantium in 324 Emp. Constantine chose it as his new capital on account of its admirable situation on the threshold of the East. In 330 it was officially styled New Rome, but soon became generally known as Constantinopolis. Enclosed by Constantine’s new walls it now extended to the W. to the region of the present Old Bridge (Pl. F, 4) and of Psamatia (Pl. B, C, 8). The Romans retained the old division of the city into fourteen regions, and they even found in it their seven hills again. The environs as far as the 7th milestone (hebdomon), called the exokionion, were assigned to the seven milliarii of the Gothic body-guard. Under Arcadius, in 395, Constantinople became the capital of the new E. Roman empire. The rapid increase of the population and the necessity of defending it against the attacks of the Huns and Goths induced Anthemius, regent during the minority of Theodosius II. (408–50), to build the new Theodosian town-walls, ½–1¼ M. to the W. of those of Constantine. In 439 sea-walls along the Sea of Marmora and the Golden Horn were added, and after 447, in consequence of an attack by Attila and to repair the damage done by an earthquake, the land-walls were restored and strengthened.
Byzantium attained the zenith of its prosperity under Justinian (527–65). He rebuilt the city, after its almost entire destruction in 532 during the rebellion of the circus parties (Nika revolt), in a far grander style, and on the site of Constantine’s basilica founded the famous church of St. Sophia. In the form of Byzantine civilization antique culture survived until the middle ages, although finally in a merely torpid state. This Byzantine development, with its Greek language and independent Oriental church under the patriarchal government at Constantinople, was an outcome of the late Greek (‘Hellenistic’) and Roman culture.
After the time of Justinian the empire was shaken to its foundations by intestine disorders and foreign wars. The attacks of the Avars and Persians (627) were succeeded by the irruption of the Arabs under the Omaiyades (p. [485]), who in 673–8 and 717–8 besieged Constantinople by sea and by land. About the same time the Bulgarians founded an independent kingdom in the Balkan peninsula, and they too (in 813 and 924) attacked the city. Russian fleets forced their way into the Sea of Marmora in 860 and 1048. Economically, too, Constantinople was on the wane; from the 11th cent. onwards the Seljuks were gaining ground in Asia Minor, and the Italian maritime cities were rapidly acquiring wealth and power.
The quarrels of aspirants to the throne during the Angelos dynasty led in 1204 to the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders and to the foundation of a new western or ‘Latin’ empire. In 1261 the Greek emperor Michael Palaeologos, who resided at Nikæa, succeeded in driving the Franks out of Constantinople with the aid of the Genoese, to whom he presented Galata (see below) as a reward. But the Turkish peril came ever nearer. The Osmans, having conquered Asia Minor in the 13th cent., crossed the Dardanelles (comp. p. [534]) under Orkhân in 1357, and under Murad I., in 1361, made Adrianople the residence of the sultans instead of Brussa. They were weakened for a time by the attacks of Timur (p. [485]), but in 1411 and 1422 they proceeded to besiege Constantinople.
After a heroic defence by Constantine XI. Palaeologos, the last Greek emperor, the city was at length captured in 1453 by Mohammed II. (Mehemed el-Fatih, ‘the conqueror’), and under the name of Stambul became the capital of the Osmans. Its fortunes were now at their lowest ebb; it was almost entirely depopulated and reduced to ruins, as had been its fate when captured by the Crusaders in 1204. But soon Turkish settlers from all quarters thronged to the new capital, and many Christians also, their lives and religion being safeguarded, while numerous Jews banished from Spain in 1492 found a new home here and have retained their old language and characteristics ever since. The building enterprise of the Turkish sultans, especially of Selim I. (1512–20), the conqueror of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and of Suleiman the Great (1520–66), as well as of the Turkish magnates, was directed exclusively to public edifices. They erected mosques (p. [539]) on the model of the earlier church of the Apostles and of the Aya Sophia (or church of St. Sophia), tomb-chapels (p. [539]), bazaars and warehouses (han), and baths and fountains (sebil, with running water; cheshmeh, draw-well). In the midst of these sumptuous buildings lay a labyrinth of crooked streets and lanes, the brightly painted timber houses with their grated balconies (kafehs) being often of one story only, while here and there this strange sea of houses was relieved by gardens and burial-grounds.
To some extent, notwithstanding destructive fires (as in 1865 and 1908) and earthquakes (the last in 1894), the old Oriental characteristics of the city still survive in the old town of Stambul, the chief seat of the Oriental merchants and the petty traders, and also at Scutari (p. [556]). Galata, on the other hand, the centre of the European trade, is much like an Italian seaport-town. Above it, to the N., lies Pera, a suburb which sprang up in the 19th cent., and which, since a great fire in 1870, has been almost entirely rebuilt in quite European fashion.
Of Books on Constantinople may be mentioned: Grosvenor, Constantinople (2 vols., London, 1895); W. H. Hutton, Constantinople in the ‘Mediæval Towns Series’ (London, 1900); and Van Millingen, Byzantine Constantinople, The Walls, etc. (London, 1899).
a. Galata and Pera.
Galata, the oldest suburb of Constantinople, rises on the slope of a plateau on the N. side of the entrance to the Golden Horn (p. [555]), corresponding with the 13th region of the city of Constantine (p. [541]). In the middle ages it was usually called Peira. Its inhabitants are chiefly Greeks and Armenians. In 1304 the Genoese (see above) enclosed it with a wall, and down to 1453 held an almost independent position under their own rulers (podestà). The wall was often rebuilt and was at last removed (1864).
Behind the Galata Quay (Pl. H, I, 4), constructed in 1879–95, lies a labyrinth of narrow and dirty streets, extending to the other side of the Grand Rue de Galata (p. [545]), the chief thoroughfare to the N.E. suburbs. At the S.W. end of the latter are the still busier Rue de Karakeuï (Pl. H, 4), beside the New Bridge (p. [545]), and the Place Karakeuï. where the Exchange rises on the left.