According to Napoleon Bonaparte; 'If the Earth were a single state, Constantinople would be its capital.'
Augusta Antonina, Byzantium and Constantinople,; these were the prior names of the city now we know as İstanbul.
Constantinople was named after the Byzantium Emperor 'Constantine the Great'. Constantine the great didn't just give his name to the city but he also assigned the city as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (also called as Byzantine Empire) in 306 AD.
Constantin the Great had couple of very good reasons for choosing this city as the capital, some of these were:
1- İstanbul is located on two continents and acts like a natural bridge between Asia and Europe.
2- City is also located rather close to the Mediterranean Sea, which gives the city an easy access to Africa.
3- The city has access to the Black Sea
4- Since it is covered with sea and the designated capital area was a peninsula, it was a safe haven to invaders and attackers.
5- Has land suitable for agriculture and Bosphorus also provided fruitful fishing opportunities
6- Rome's aging infrastructure was becoming too costly, İstanbul had comparable very low infrastructure issues back then.
Choosing Constantinople as the capital was a great decision. Constantinople managed to stay as the capital of Byzantium Empire for 1147 years, up until it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. In this period of time this desirable city which was the perfect trade hub was attacked numerous of times by Arabs, Persians, Nomadic Tribes and even by the 4th Crusade.
https://aleksanderpwnz.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/the-1453-siege-of-constantinople/
The picture above is a really great one to aid explaining how the city survived so many attackers for such a long amount of time.
The city was defended by walls, and the access to the part of the city marked as Golden Horn had very thick chains blocking naval entry.
These chains can still be viewed at the İstanbul Military Museum.
Ottoman Empire used two critical tactis to accomplish a successful siege resulting in takeover of the city. One of the tactics was moving the ships over the land, on top of big logs and the other one was to use a the biggest siege cannon ever built until then. Moving ships over the land to the Golden Horn was a tactic, and its first use was reported in 626 AD during the Slavic siege by Avar Khan Abseh. What Avar Khan Abseh lacked was the siege cannon, thus his attempt in 626 AD failed.
Ottoman Empire acquired the works of the Hungarian Gunfounder Orban (also known as Urban) in order to cast the biggest cannon ever made. The cannon was able to shoot huge marble slabs approximately 2.5 km's away. After each shooting the cannon had to be cooled with oil and this process took over one and a half hours. Initially Byzantine's were able to repair the walls faster than the cannon took them down. However over the 53 day siege period after heavy bombardment and depriving the Byzantines from incoming food and supplies. Some parts of the walls ended up falling down which gave the Ottoman's access.
Replica of the cannon.
The use of cannons to bring down walls-city defences* also was a turning point in history. Constantinople's conquer ended the time period known as Middle Age's and started the time period known as Early Modern Period. Use of big siege cannons were also what ended feudalism and as feudalism ended so did the Middle Ages.
İstanbul served as the capital of the Ottoman Empire between the years 1453-1922.
İstanbul was capitals to 3 empires, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman, finally retiring from being a capital in 1922.
As of 2017 İstanbul is home to over 14.7 million people officially. Istanbul is teaching them, feeding them, sharing its beauties with them and is very generous while doing these. However we are acting very selfish and unfortunately taking a lot from the city and it seems like more wants to be taken from the city. We need to remember that Istanbul is getting old and can only be home to so many people. However more and more investments are being made to the city, which will only result in uncontrolled population growth. Investments aimed to increase the quality of the city and the quality of thepopulation is good but in this case more and more areas are getting construction permits and the city is widening day by day. Increasing the load on the current infrastructure and adding additional stressors to the city itself. The city is loosing its forest and adding more concrete everyday.
Istanbul Population Turkey Population
Year 1950 983.041 20.947.188
Year 1980 2.772.708 44.736.957
Year 2010 12.782.960 73.722.988
Between years 1950-2010 Turkey's population grew by 3.5 fold and in the same time period İstanbul grew by 13 fold. Unfortunately it seems like this population increase will keep on going. We need to start thinking about the city itself before its too late and make sure leave it to the next generations as pristine as we can. İstanbul is a pillar of history and in my opinion the whole city is a valuable part of the world heritage.