Download PDF | (The Medieval Mediterranean 33) Nevra Necipoğlu (ed) - Byzantine Constantinople_ Monuments, Topography and Everyday Life (The Medieval Mediterranean)-BRILL (2001).
382 Pages
PREFACE
The papers collected in this volume were presented at a workshop devoted to the city of Constantinople, which took place in Istanbul on 7-10 April 1999. The workshop, organized jointly by the History Department of Bogazic¢i University and the Institut Frangais d’Etudes Anatoliennes (IFEA), was the most significant conference on Byzantine Studies to convene in Turkey since 1955, and the first scholarly forum of wide scope on the capital of the Byzantine Empire, attended by a distinguished group of international academics, to be held in Istanbul, the historic site of Constantinople. Taking full advantage of its unique location, the workshop participants undertook excursions to examine monuments and sites that were discussed in a number of papers. Two related special events accompanied the workshop: an exhibition entitled “The Mediterranean’s Purple Millenium— Byzantine Coins from the Yapi Kredi Coin Collection,” and a concert of Byzantine chants performed by Sister Marie Keyrouz and the Ensemble de la Paix, both organized and sponsored by Yap Kredi Kiilttir Sanat Yayincilik A.S.
The present publication, which includes all but two of the papers delivered at the workshop, brings together the work of Turkish Byzantinists with that of Byzantinists from several countries and makes an important contribution to scholarship on Byzantine Constantinople. In terms of chronological scope, the collection covers the entire course of the city’s history from the time of its foundation by Constantine I in 330 to its conquest by Mehmed II in 1453. Within the three main themes of the workshop enumerated in the title of this volume, individual papers address a wide range of topics, including topography, ritual and ideology, archaeology, art and architecture, daily life, economy, communities, urban development and planning. Interdisciplinary approaches, intended to generate fruitful interaction among historians, art historians and archaeologists of the Byzantine Empire, are featured in the collection whose appeal is by no means limited to Byzantinists.
This volume owes a considerable debt to all those who made the workshop possible—the sponsors, the staff assistants, the participants, and above all the speakers. Special thanks are due to the following institutions and persons:
Bogazi¢i University, and particularly Selcuk Esenbel, Chair of the Department of History, Ayse Soysal, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Ustiin Ergiider, President of the University at the time, for enthusiastically supporting the workshop and making it possible for this institution to act as a pioneer in the field of Byzantine Studies in Turkey.
The Bogazici University Foundation (BUVAK) for contributing funds and providing free on-campus accommodation for the majority of participants.
The Institut Francais d’Etudes Anatoliennes (IFEA) for meeting the travel costs of the French and several other European participants, and for providing additional premises for accommodation.
Yapi Kredi Kiilttir Sanat Yayinciik A.S. for generously acting as the principal sponsor of the workshop, and especially Miinevver Eminoglu and Zeynep Ogel for their invaluable help in all aspects of the organization of this event.
The USIS-Istanbul for a travel grant towards the airfare of one American participant.
The American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) and the Consul General of France, Mr. Eric Lebédel, for providing receptions. The Turkish Academy of Sciences (TUBA) for its moral support. Alpay Pasinli, Director General of Monuments and Museums, for guiding the participants on a tour of his excavation at the site of the Great Palace, and for hosting a reception at the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul.
Nusin Asgan, Melek Delilbas, Antony Greenwood, Cigdem Kafescioglu, Zeynep Mercangéz and Ayla Odekan for chairing sessions.
Ash Akisik, Mevliide Bakir, Mehmet Besikci, Giinhan Bérekgi, Murat Dagh, Koray Durak, Esra Giizel Erdogan, Ayse Ozil and Ece ‘Turnator, all graduate students of Bogazici University History Department, for acting as assistants throughout the workshop; and Selahattin Hakman, above all, for his ready help and support at all the cnitical stages of organization.
Bala Eyiipoglu for the generosity with which she put her creative energy into designing the graphic materials, greatly admired by all who attended the workshop.
Edhem Eldem, Ash Ozyar and Cemal Kafadar for their help in editing some of the papers in this volume; Yesim Sayar for providing assistance in technical matters.
Finally, we would like to dedicate this volume, with fond memories and profound sadness, to Nikos Oikonomides, whose untimely death has left Byzantinists deprived of the scholarly depth, the intellectual riches and the human warmth he brought to the field, which we were able to enjoy and benefit from, once again, on the occasion of his participation in our workshop.
August 2000 Nevra Necipoglu Bogazigt Uniwersity, Istanbul &
Stefanos Yerasimos
Former Director of IFEA
INTRODUCTION
Nevra Necipoglu
. sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices’ accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old...
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
It is tempting to read almost any one of Calvino’s “invisible cities” into one’s own favorite historical city. Constantinople/Istanbul, with its rich and complex heritage, certainly invites such readings. But this is not merely because the city is there, more or less, as a physical entity, with its monuments and historic sites, with its material environment or topographic features that.induce contemplation. One is inclined to think that this spectacular city fascinates its admirers and connoisseurs primarily because so many of those sites and monuments have, through the ages, been endowed with legends and tales, embellished in poems and novels, interpreted in frescoes and miniatures, and investigated by dilettantes and scholars.
Neither Byzantine Constantinople nor Ottoman Istanbul has ever suffered from a lack of scholarly interest. Insofar as the Byzantine city is concerned, the last decade has witnessed, in fact, a resurgence of interest, as revealed by the proliferation of books and international conferences devoted to the subject. Amongst the latter, three outstanding events immediately come to mind: the twenty-seventh Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies on “Constantinople and its Hinterland” held in 1993 at the University of Oxford, the 1994 Princeton University Conference on “Merchants and the Fall of Constantinople,” and more recently the 1998 Dumbarton Oaks Symposium entitled “Constantinople: The Fabric of the City.”!' All the same, it was astonishing that Istanbul thus far had not hosted a comparable event, even though on account of its unique position as the former seat of the Byzantine imperial capital this city should have been predestined to become one of the world’s major centers for Byzantine studies, playing a leading role especially in the field of scholarship on Constantinople. Hence, guided by this awareness, in April 1999 the History Department of Bogazici University and the Institut Francais d’Etudes Anatoliennes jointly organized the Workshop on “Byzantine Constantinople: Monuments, Topography and Everyday Life,’ out of which the present volume has grown. Besides being the first comprehensive international conference on Constantinople to take place in Istanbul, the 1999 Workshop was only the second major international gathering in Turkey devoted to the general field of Byzantine studies since 1955—an infelicitous year, indeed, for the Tenth International Congress of Byzantine Studies which met in Istanbul on the days of 15-21 September.’ The sessions of the Workshop were appropriately convened at the former Alexander Van Millingen Library of Bogazicgi University, named after one of the pioneering scholars of Byzantine Constantinople who taught at this institution for many years back in the days when it was known as Robert College.’
The particular attitude that has impeded the development of Byzantine studies in Turkey (and of Ottoman studies in Greece, for that matter) is not necessarily a deep-rooted, historical phenomenon that bore its stamp on the mental or ideological outlook of the premodern era. Quite a different attitude is displayed, for instance, by Hilmi, an early seventeenth-century author in Ottoman Istanbul, who wrote a book of moralistic tales dedicated to sultan Osman II (r. 1618-1622). One of the chapters in this book deals with the story of “Konstantin,” a mythical Byzantine ruler, “with his throne in Istanbul.” From Hilmi’s viewpoint, shared presumably by his readers at the Ottoman court too, the fact that Konstantin and his people live in infidelity does not undermine the further fact that his realm is blessed with justice and equity. Stunningly handsome and always elegant, Konstantin dreams of eternal life. Upon hearing that the king of Algiers, over one hundred years old, might know the secret, he sends an ambassador to North Africa to inquire. ‘The Algerian ruler arrests the Byzantine ambassador and keeps him chained to an immense tree overflowing with leaves. ‘The poor envoy remains like this for a long time, sighing and cursing the injustice incurred on him. The tree eventually dries up, and the disheveled ambassador is brought back to the king of Algiers, who makes the point that no worldly glory can be long-lasting for a ruler if the people are suffering from tyranny; trees will dry up, cities fall, animals become unable to reproduce. Justice, on the other hand, will make things flourish. When the envoy returns to Constantinople and relates his tale of woe, Konstantin learns his lesson and realizes that he already possesses the most essential gift in life. He vows to focus henceforth on maintaining justice in his realm.*
Perhaps banal in terms of its moral lesson even for the seventeenth century, the story told by Hilmi is a remarkable one for a modern reader who knows something about the image of Byzantium and the state of Byzantine studies in contemporary Turkey. It was also in the seventeenth century that at least two Ottoman intellectuals, and both of them renowned in their lifetime and later, ventured to write histories of the Roman Empire, including the Eastern Empire, with materials translated from Greek and Latin sources by their friends and associates among Ottoman Christians.’ Like the story of the mythical Konstantin, these histories are remarkably neutral, bearing no trace of a categorical rejection or enmity vis-a-vis the rulers of Byzantium before the Ottomans. In other words, the attitudes of active and selective neglect or hostility manifested in contemporary studies pertaining to the histories of others are distinctively modern attitudes. ‘They have more to do with modern ideologies of nationalism and nation-state-fetishism than with historical precedents.®
Contrary to objections raised among particular circles in modern times, the city that constitutes the subject matter of this volume is, after all, one and the same: Byzantion—Konstantinoupolis—Kostantiniyye-——Istanbul, to name only its most common appellations throughout the long course of its multi-layered history. And whether one studies Byzantion, Constantinople, or Istanbul, it is indispensable that one should ultimately become familiar with and try to understand the city in all its successive phases. Thus, anyone who studies Istanbul knows well that he/she would need to start by investigating Byzantion and/or Constantinople, as Dogan Kuban has done in a recent book.’ Likewise, it would advantage anyone who studies Constantinople to take into account Ottoman, and even modern, Istanbul in his/her inquiry, given that these cities shared the same geography and that post-Byzantine sources as well as present sites may provide additional insights that can effectively improve one’s knowledge of the Byzantine city.
As pointed out already, Constantinople has been the subject of several specialized studies in recent years, which have done much to deepen our understanding of the city. Compared to earlier works on the Byzantine capital, these studies reflect certain new trends and approaches that are also captured—selectively, as the topics invite one or another—by the essays in this volume. Among recent trends, a notable tendency has been the shift away from the static perspective that once dominated the field towards a concern with the urban development of Constantinople, as revealed by the title of Cyril Mango’s excellent monograph, Le développement urbain de Constantinople, focusing on the early centuries of the imperial capital.’ Thus, the question of “how Constantinople developed as a city” has to a large extent superseded the centuries-old concern with topography, a tradition going back to Pierre Gilles (Petrus Gyllius) and Charles Du Cange, who pioneered the scholarly study of Byzantine Constantinople in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, respectively.® ‘This, of course, is neither to deny the fundamental value of topography, nor to disclaim the fact that very important topographic research continues to be conducted in our day.’® Yet a parallel shift can be observed in the study of topography, too, wherein the traditional approach regarding the city as a fixed locus with certain buildings at certain sites has now given way to a new kind of historical approach that views topographic elements in the context of their changes and development through time.
Another noteworthy trend in the field has been the turn towards the study of urban structures and their evolution, as illustrated brilliantly by Paul Magdalino’s 1996 book on medieval Constantinople, which extends in chronological scope into the twelfth century.'' ‘This book, as well as CG. Mango’s aforementioned book, have contributed moreover, each in its own way, to the old but still ongoing debate about the extent of continuity and change between late antique and medieval Constantinople. In the context of this debate, as respective exemplars of the two general trends noted above, the earlier book by Mango tends to bring into focus the changes that the city underwent through the centuries, whereas that by Magdalino insists rather on the longue durée and the permanence of certain structures inherited from Late Antiquity, and by so doing lays greater emphasis on elements of continuity, without, however, altogether dismissing the notion of urban transformation and the evolution of urban structures within the long-term perspective.
Individual monuments, their reconstruction, interpretation, and reinterpretation based on material as well as textual evidence continue to occupy the architectural historians of Byzantine Constantinople.” Thus, in the realm of architecture, in addition to works that are mainly concerned with problems of form and structure, we find ones that use a semiotic approach to decipher the symbolic meaning and. ideological message conveyed by particular buildings in the city. An alternative approach to the study of monuments from the perspective of their builders is featured in a new book on Byzantine masons that deals, if not exclusively, extensively with Constantinopolitan architecture.'* Alongside studies of major public buildings, it is to be noted that domestic architecture is now attracting more and more the attention of scholars. Patronage of architecture and art is another theme that.is currently popular. Finally, a recent book on construction and restoration activity in Constantinople during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries has duly focused attention on the late Byzantine city, the study of which lags considerably behind that of early and middle Byzantine Constantinople."*
When we turn to archaeology, perhaps the one field where the ereatest potential exists for the advancement of our present state of knowledge on the monuments and topography of Constantinople, progress has been relatively slow compared to archaeological work being conducted by Byzantinists elsewhere in Turkey. Due principally to the technical difficulties of excavating in a modern metropolis like Istanbul, archaeological discoveries have been few, haphazard, and limited mostly to chance findings.’ Among notable exceptions, however, one ought to mention the recent excavation of the substructures of the Great Palace, under the direction of Alpay Pasinh, which the workshop participants had the opportunity to examine and discuss extensively during a special on-site session led by Dr. Pasinh himself.
At a very different level of interpretation, we find studies that deal not with the “real” but with the imaginary Constantinople, studies highlighting the myths and legends surrounding the city, its monuments, and its people. I am thinking in particular of Gilbert Dagron’s Constantinople imaginaire, published in 1984, which is considerably different from the same author’s monumental book of ten years earlier on the genesis of the Byzantine capital and its institutions, in terms of chronological scope, method, as well as source material.!®
It is also a welcome development that the spiritual heritage of Byzantium is now being investigated by art historians through the cult objects stored among the little explored treasures of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, as demonstrated by Ioli Kalavrezou’s recent article on the relic of the arm of St. John the Baptist. This article, which appeared in a volume devoted to Byzantine court culture, reveals furthermore the ongoing interest of scholars in the imperial palace and in courtly life at Constantinople."’
As for studies on the economic and social history of Constantinople, another subject that is both old and new, it may be observed that such topics as trade, exchange, investment, social relations, and aspects of daily life have lately been investigated by some scholars from the perspective of a gendered approach, taking into account gender relations and the role of women.'* Meanwhile, the provisioning of the city, the organization and activities of artisans and traders, as well as the expansion of foreigners in its commercial economy continue to attract the attention of social and economic historians.'? With respect to the city’s ethnic composition, too, progress has been achieved through further investigations of the internal organization, socio-economic position, and interrelations of diverse ethno-religious communities within the urban population (e.g., Jews, Armenians, Muslims, Latins, etc.), as well as the degree and mechanisms of their integration, or assimilation, into Constantinopolitan society.” Finally, hagiographical sources, which have long been used in a more or less random or selective fashion, are now being systematically exploited for the invaluable data they embody on daily life, material culture, and other aspects of the social and economic history of the imperial capital.”
This brief sketch of key trends and approaches featured in recent scholarship on Byzantine Constantinople does not claim to be allinclusive. It certainly has not touched on new treatments of several significant topics, such as the city’s relations with its hinterland (which was given full coverage at the aforementioned Oxford Symposium of 1993), its administrative structure, political institutions, or diplomatic exchanges with foreign courts, its religious history including its role as a pilgrimage center, questions of infrastructure, its image in the eyes of foreigners, and, most importantly, its intellectual and cultural life. Nonetheless, two general observations can be readily made. First, a comprehensive work of synthesis has not yet been written on Constantinople and remains very much of a desideratum. Second, despite the existence of important studies on various aspects of Constantinople, there are still considerable gaps in our knowledge of the city, especially as regards certain topographic details, a num- ber of no longer extant monuments and artworks, patterns of residence and questions related to housing in general, several additional features of everyday life and social organization, development of urban structures in the Palaiologan city, along with numerous other traits of the late Byzantine period. The papers gathered together in this volume aim to fill some of these gaps, seek answers to a Series of questions that have so far not been asked or properly answered, and enable us to grasp much better the urban world of Constantinople in all its complexity during the eleven centuries of its existence as the capital of the Byzantine Empire. As will be evident in the chapters that follow, there is still a lot to be learned from previously unexplored archaeological evidence, as well as from newly discovered or so far inadequately exploited textual evidence. The major portion of the contributions will confirm, on the other hand, how much can be accomplished by new insights to be gained from fresh interpretations of old evidence, both written and material. Organized thematically into eight sections, the studies collected here, thus, reflect many of the general trends reviewed above, but also break new ground and point the way to further information. In the first section devoted to particular topographic problems, Cyril Mango’s opening paper (Chapter Two) sets out to reconstruct the original shoreline of the Constantinian city, prior to its alteration through progressive infilling of large tracts of the surrounding sea, and concludes with a discussion of the implications of the proposed coastline in terms of the early maritime walls and the initial positioning of the Mese. ‘The paper hence provides a suggestive framework within which to consider how the builders of Constantinople adapted the landscape and urban artifacts to each other, and how the city’s geographical setting defined the course of its urban development. The role played by the colonnaded or porticoed street at Constantinople, a characteristic feature of the new capital on the Bosphoros without parallel at Rome, is the subject of the following contribution by Marlia Mundell Mango (Chapter Three). Reviewing the available written and archaeological evidence, and drawing also upon comparative data from other cities of the Empire in the east, she discusses the extent, location, configuration, component parts, and uses of the porticoed street in early Byzantine Constantinople, and inquires whether or not it survived in the middle and late Byzantine city. In a meticulously researched study that pieces together scattered bits of textual evidence and prosopographic information, Paul Magdalino (Chapter Four) tries to locate five mansions belonging to women of the Theodosian family in the tenth and eleventh regions of Constantinople and investigates their subsequent fate. In doing so, he broadens our knowledge not only of topography and patterns of aristocratic residence, but also of the role of imperial women in the configuration of fifth-century Constantinople.
In the next section devoted to imperial and’ ecclesiastical ceremonies,” Albrecht Berger (Chapter Five) highlights the interrelationship between ceremonial and topography, by tracing the routes followed and the monuments visited by public processions through Constantinople. He sets forth how the space of the city was conceived and defined in public rituals, noting major changes in itinerary and protocol that occurred from the late eleventh century onwards, due pnmarily to the move of the imperial residence from the Great Palace to the Blachernai. Engin Akyiirek (Chapter Six) addresses the subject of death rituals in late Byzantine Constantinople, in his paper eliciting the funerary ceremonies that were performed at the parekklesion of the Chora monastery. He interprets these ceremonies in the light of the iconographic program of the frescoes situated inside the parekklesion, using a method that correlates the building’s decoration and its function as a mortuary chapel.
The three papers that follow deal with particular problems related to the study of the religious monuments of Constantinople.” In the light of the archaeological explorations conducted at Kalenderhane throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Cecil L. Striker (Chapter Seven) raises general questions about method and approach in the field of Byzantine architectural history. Drawing special attention to the shortcomings of the prevailing linear conception of the evolution of building types and forms in Byzantium, borrowed in large part from the study of western medieval architecture, he calls for a revision of the established historical and methodological premises underlying the study of Byzantine architecture. Metin and Zeynep Ahunbay (Chapter Eight) present the results of the restoration work carried out at the Zeyrek Camii during the 1997-98 season, which was focused on the roof level of the building and disclosed new information pertaining to its construction history all through its successive Byzantine, Ottoman and modern phases. In another paper concerned with the same monument, Robert Ousterhout (Chapter Nine) delves into the meaning of the Pantokrator monastery and its interior decoration to its twelfthcentury audience in Constantinople. He interprets the rich and multilayered message of the Komnenian monument through an analysis of the unique iconography of its surviving opus sectile floor.
In the subsequent section focused primarily on secular monuments of the imperial capital and their legacy, Henry Maguire (Chapter Ten) reconstructs the now lost medieval pavements of the Great Palace that were laid down between the seventh and ninth centuries, with the aid of literary descriptions and comparative material drawn from surviving floors elsewhere in and outside of Constantinople. Yildiz Otiiken (Chapter Eleven) sketches an interesting portrait of the emperor Constantine IX Monomachos, based on the evidence and implications of the building projects he commissioned in Constantinople and elsewhere. In a comparative study, Sema Alpaslan (Chapter Twelve) addresses the question of the influence of Constantinopolitan art forms in the provinces, by examining architectural sculpture in the capital and in Byzantine Anatolia. Finally, Peter Schreiner (Chapter Thirteen) brings to light a previously unnoticed collection of texts copied by John Malaxos in the sixteenth century, which, in combination with the contents of other known manuscripts written by the same author, presents an image of Byzantine Constantinople through the eyes of a Greek inhabitant of Ottoman Istanbul, revealing how Malaxos and his circle perceived the urban world in which their predecessors had lived.
The fifth section devoted to new archaeological evidence comprises a single paper by Mehmet I. Tunay (Chapter Fourteen), who reviews a large sample of new Byzantine material brought to light mostly by restoration projects and building activity in Istanbul during the past decade. This richly illustrated survey makes accessible important yet on the whole relatively little known archaeological findings of recent date, some of which are not even extant any longer, partly due to neglect shown in general to the city’s Byzantine remains, and partly due to practical problems of preservation posed by the crowded environment of a modern metropolis. Thus, indirectly, the paper demonstrates how crucial it is to have a team of Byzantinists in Istanbul engaged in the urgent task of tracking down and systematically recording, both in drawing and by means of photographic documentation, all the new archaeological data that turn up in the city aside from official excavations, as these are most likely to get covered over and perish forever.
The next group of papers concentrate on economic life at Constantinople, highlighting various aspects of the city’s role as a commercial and manufacturing center through the ages. Nicolas Oikonomides (Chapter Fifteen) sets out to resolve certain controversial issues with regard to the kommerkiarios of Constantinople and sheds further light on his role particularly in silk trade during the seventh and eighth centuries. Michel Kaplan (Chapter Sixteen) examines the organization of labor in the middle Byzantine city, looking into the role of artisans in Constantinopolitan society from the seventh to the eleventh century. Angeliki E. Laiou (Chapter Seventeen) explores the role of women in the marketplace and commercial economy of the imperial capital between the tenth and fourteenth centuries.
The Latin community of Constantinople subsequent to the Fourth Crusade is the topic reserved for the following section, where David Jacoby (Chapter Eighteen) investigates the urban evolution of the city under the Latin Empire (1204-1261) and suggests, on the basis of western documentary sources largely overlooked until now, that the extent of urban decline and disruption during this period was not as bad as the literary sources would have us believe. Michel Balard (Chapter Nineteen) undertakes a challenging analysis of the Genoese colony of Pera in the context of the phenomenon of acculturation and assimilation. Using as evidence the experiences of two new “colonial” families that rose to prominence in Pera in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, he draws general conclusions about the gradual “orientalization” of the Genoese of Pera following their settlement in a predominantly Greek milieu, which, in turn, helps explain their rapid adaptation to the new Ottoman regime after 1453.
Finally, in yet another section devoted to late Byzantine Constantinople, particular aspects of building activity during the last centuries preceding the city’s collapse before the Ottomans are considered. Venturing into virtually unexplored territory, Klaus-Peter Matschke (Chapter Twenty) illuminates the construction sector in Palaiologan Constantinople, where building activity remained quite lively and builders evidently continued to make up one of the largest groups of artisans. He supplies information on a wide range of relevant subjects, including the nature, organization and supervision of building projects, the internal hierarchy and specialization of construction workers, their social standing in late Byzantine society, forms of state control over builders and their appointment, procurement of building materials, and mobilization of workers for big construction projects. Alice-Mary Talbot (Chapter Twenty-One) takes a close look at female monastic patronage during the reign of Andronikos II (r. 1282-1328) and presents a collective portrait indicating the social backgrounds, marital status, and motivations of about ten women who founded or restored religious establishments in Constantinople at this time.
The volume ends with the concluding remarks delivered at the closing of the Workshop by Ihor Sevéenko (Chapter Twenty-Two), who evaluates the overall success of the meeting by grouping the individual contributions according to their typological features under eight general categories that serve as a means for appraisal, and then proceeds to comment on future prospects for the study of Byzantium in Turkey.
On a final note, it is worth calling attention to yet another important theme, one that was not directly addressed by any of the panel sessions of the Workshop, but was touched on at any rate in various papers, discussions, and the concluding remarks; namely, the theme of continuity and change between Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul. This is a subject that has yet to be investigated thoroughly and objectively, through an exhaustive study of all the sources available on the Byzantine and Ottoman sides. In order to accomplish this major task, however, the sharp divide that has traditionally kept Byzantine and Ottoman studies apart must first be eliminated. The advantages to be gained from a greater interaction and cooperation between these two disciplines are quite obvious and need not be enumerated here; suffice it to point out that they will by no means be limited only to the last topic brought up above. As C. Mango noted in 1992 with reference to the field of scholarship on Byzantine Constantinople at large, “we have ‘nearly reached the limit of what can be learnt [from topography and textual evidence]. Any further addition to our knowledge will come from other quarters, namely either archaeological discovery or the study of Ottoman sources, which have as yet been little exploited for the hght they may shed on Byzantine monuments and topography.”
While the quest to re-create Byzantine Constantinople will no doubt continue, it 1s hoped that the essays offered in this volume, which make no claim of presenting a comprehensive history of the city, will collectively help capture the physical and social environment in which Constantinopolitans lived and illustrate the constant interplay between the architectural and topographic setting of the city, its socio-economic, political and religious structures, and the historical developments.
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