Istanbul: The Imperial City

516 Pages·1998·9.63 MB·English

by  John Freely

PENGUIN BOOKS

ISTANBUL

John Freely was born in New York in 1926. He joined the US Navy at the age of
seventeen and served with a commando unit in Burma and China during the last
months of the Second World War. He received a Ph.D. in physics from New
York University in 1960, and since then he has lived in New York, Boston,
London, Athens, Istanbul and Venice. His first book was Strolling Through
Istanbul (1971, with Hilary Sumner-Boyd). Since then he has written over
twenty books, including Classical Turkey, Strolling Through Athens, Strolling
Through Venice, Inside the Seraglio and The Lost Messiah.
I S T A N B U L
THE IMPERIAL CITY
John Freely

PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Viking 1996
Published in Penguin Books 1998
18

Text copyright © John Freely,1996
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired
out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN:978-0-14-192605-6
For Toots
Istanbul Memories
Contents

List of Colour Plates and Picture Acknowledgements
Maps
Preface
Turkish Spelling and Pronunciation
PART I – BYZANTIUM

1 The Strait and the City, up to c. 658 BC
2 The Greek City-State of Byzantium, c. 658 BC–AD 196
3 Roman Byzantium, 196–330
PART II – CONSTANTINOPLE

4 The City of Constantine, 330–337
5 The Imperial Capital, 337–395
6 The Theodosian Walls, 395–450
7 The Late Roman City, 450–527
8 The Age of Justinian, 527–565
9 The Struggle for Survival, 565–717
10 The Iconoclastic Crisis, 717–845
11 Born in the Purple, 845–1056
12 The Dynasty of the Comneni, 1056–1185
13 The Latin Conquest, 1185–1261
14 Renaissance and Civil War, 1261–1354
15 The Fall of Byzantium, 1354–1453
PART III – ISTANBUL

16 Istanbul, Capital of the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1520
17 The Age of Süleyman the Magnificent, 1520–1566
18 The House of Felicity, 1566–1623
19 The Procession of the Guilds, 1623–1638
20 Decline and Gilded Decadence, 1638–1730
21 In the Days of the Janissaries, 1730–1826
22 The Age of Reform, 1826–1876 268
23 The Fall of the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1923
24 Istanbul under the Turkish Republic, 1923–1995
PART IV– NOTES ON MONUMENTS AND MUSEUMS

APPENDICES

Glossary
List of Emperors and Sultans
Bibliography
Index
Colour Plates and Picture Acknowledgements