On Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the young Sultan Mehemmed, known to
history as "the Conqueror," launched the final assault against the
walls of Constantinople and added that imperial capital, as coping
stone; to the Empire that his fathers had conquered. As the
Sultan's Imam intoned the Muslim creed within the walls of Hagia
Sophia, the Greek cathedral become a Turkish mosque, and the
curtain went up on a new era. In this, the ninth volume of The
Centers of Civilization Series, Bernard Lewis describes the city
and its civilization in the great age of the Ottoman Sultanate,
between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Under the Ottomans, the city once again became the center of a
vest empire and of a flourishing civilization. The conquerors did
not destroy the captured Christian city, but took care to preserve
and embellish; they added four Muslim minarets to Hagia Sophia,
built many fine mosques and palaces of their own, and transformed
the shrunken remnant of the Byzantine city into a new and splendid
imperial capital.
The great new Muslim city of Istanbul which they created became
a center of cultural as well we political life. It was the gateway
between East and West, the place where Asia and Europe clashed and
blended. It was the seat of the Sultans and the Grand Viziers, of
the government of the Ottoman Empire. No less interesting than the
concepts of government and the Muslim religion practiced by the
Ottoman Turks were the imperial place and household and the people
of the city.
Mr. Lewis relies upon the first-hand accounts of Turkish
historians and poets and European travelers, thus enabling the
reader to see the city, its people, and their life through the eyes
of contemporary participants and observers.
General
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