The City Research Guide

How did the loss of one city change the history of Europe? In the Middle Ages, Constantinople's perfect geographic location--positioned along a land trade route between Europe and Asia as well as on a strategic seaway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean-- made the city extremely desirous, and as a result, prone to attack. Under the control of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, Constantinople became known as the Eye of the World, a center of government, trade, art, religion, and learning, and was even more desirous. Rulers built three sets of walls to protect Constantinople from attacks by Asiatic tribes. But the city's fall to the Turkish Ottomans in 1453 marked the official end of the Byzantine Empire--and the end of the Middle Ages.

This book explores Constantinople's mystical dimensions and examining the relationship between the spiritual and political in the city.

This book presents a vision of Istanbul as an urban cultural center, rich with the incandescence of its past--a city of minarets and pigeons rising to the heavens during the early-morning call to Muslim prayers--yet also a city riddled with ATM machines and clothed in designer jeans.

An in-depth study of this legendary city through its many different ages from its earliest foundation to the present day.

From its ancient past to the present, we meet the city through its ordinary citizens--the Jews, Muslims, Italians, Greeks, and Russians who used the famous baths and walked the bazaars--and the rulers who built it up and then destroyed it, including Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the man who christened the city "Istanbul" in 1930.

This is the first book to tell the full story of the Ottoman dynasty that for six centuries held sway over territories stretching, at their greatest, from Hungary to the Persian Gulf, and from North Africa to the Caucasus.