Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/338

Rh 308 CONSTANTINOPLE generally been under French direction. A large school for orphans of different nationalities was opened some years ago near the mosque of Selim in Stamboul. Among the philanthropic establishments of the capital must be reckoned the Imarets, intended like the Greek Xenones to be at once hospitals and poor-houses. They are attached to most of the mosques, and may be about 300, though many are fallen into decay. The bazaars call for particular notice. They are large fire-proof buildings, lighted from above, where the varied wares of the city are retailed. The city numbers, besides, about 180 khans (groups of offices and store-houses for merchandize), and some 130 hammams, or baths. The trade of Constantinople carried on now, as under the Greek empire, by foreigners, is not distinguished by any speciality. Its harbour is a convenient centre to many lines of commerce, sheep s wool, mohair, goat-skins, grain, &c., being transhipped from the coasts of Asia and the Black Sea. Great improvements have been introduced of late. Besides the steamers which secure communication with foreign ports, others ply between the city and its suburbs on the Horn, the Bosphorus, and the Sea of Marmora. The streets, though ill paved, have been some of them enlarged, and many on the Pera side are lighted with gas; but the greatest improvement of all is the formation of an active and highly disciplined fire-brigade. It is sometimes said that modern Constantinople, after so many earthquakes in earlier centuries, and conflagrations in all, retains few relics of the past ; but several monu ments have been already named, and others might be added. They are most numerous about the Hippodrome that centre and focus of the city s life, and theatre of its revolutions, its festivities, and its crimes. Besides the re mains of six palaces, five columns entire or in fragments are pointed out memorials of the 1st, 3d, 4th, and 5th centuries, and associated with the historical names of Claudius II and Constantino, Theodosius and Arius, Arcadius, Eudoxia, Marcian, and Chrysostom. Tombs of the great lie about in various corners and courts. It is to be remembered, moreover, that the greater part of the Greek city is under ground, that besides the ruins or remains of more than 20 churches, and of the colonnades that lined the streets or divided the bazaars, and which still are met with by the passenger along its public thoroughfares, there spread out of sight beneath his feet labyrinths of passages, cisterns, and prisons of length and direction un known, so that he may be said to walk not so much on terra fir ma, as on a continuous roof. The history of the city is almost a record of its sieges. About 100 years after its enlargement or foundation by Constantino the Great (330 A.D.) began that series of assaults by sea and land before which it gave way only thrice, when its gates were opened to Dandolo, Michael Palaeologus, and Mahomet II. Michael, by the aid of his Varangians, recovered, 200 years before its final capture, what the Latins had held nearly 60 years ; and 100 years before it surrendered, the Ottoman Turks profited by the divisions in the empire, and were called into the east of Europe as the followers of the same anti-Christian standard had been called into the west, till the last Constantine fell in defending the city which the first had raised and named. Constantinople was threatened by the Huns in the reign of Theodosius the Younger, 450 ; by the Huns and Slavs in that of Justinian, 553 ; by the Persians and Avars in that of Heraclius, G26. The Arabs besieged it in three different expeditions. They came under Sophian in GG8,and attacked it six times, once every year (G72-G79), when Con stantine Pogonatus was emperor. Leo the Isaurian repelled a second invasion under Moslemeh in 717. They were finally led by Haroun-al-Rashid, who made peace with Constantine and Irene in 782. The Russians assailed the sea-walls of the capital four times from 8G5 to 1043, in the reigns of Michael III. and his successors. Romanus Lecapeuus, who beat them back when they were come down the second time, had to repel another enemy the Hungarians in 924. It was not by arms, but by the treachery of Gilpracht, the leader of the German guard, that Alexius Conmenus entered one of the land-gates and seized thethrone(lOSl); and another Alexius, with his father Isaac Angelus, brought the Latins, who occupied the city for 56 years, after the two sieges of 1203 and 1204, until Michael Palaeologus embossed bis name as conqueror on the bronze gates of St Sophia. In the 15th century Con stantinople was attacked by the Turks twice ; under Manuel it resisted Amurath in 1422: but under Constantine PalaBologus it yielded to Mahomet in 1453. The city has thus been often the aim, rarely the prize, of invasion. The captures of the city by the Latins and the Turks brought loss to the East and gain to the West. In an age when the Goths on the one side, and Arabs on the other, had ruined traffic elsewhere, Constantinople was the great est and almost the only commercial town in the world, while Greek supremacy at sea secured a flow of riches into the state ; but, the citizens being dispersed during the sixty years of Latin occupation, all commerce was trans ferred to the cities of Italy. To that Latin conquest is mainly attributed the sudden development of the formative arts in the 13th century, for then there arose more frequent intercourse between the Greeks and the Italians, and many Greek artists were established in Italy, especially at Venice, Siena, Pisa, and Florence. In like manner, the fall of the city before the Turks scattered Greek learning among the Latin and Teutonic races ; when Greek libraries were burnt arid the Greek language proscribed, Greek MSS. of the Bible, sedulously copied by the monks of Constantinople from the 5th to the 15th century, conveyed the text into Western Europe ; the overthrow of the capital of Greek literature synchronized with the invention of printing, and in a great measure caused the revival of learning. Since that last siege which introduced the Ottoman rule, the city from being the object became the starting-point of invasion; for long ages the busy hive of science and art, it was turned into a swarming nest of hornets. The mausoleum of Haireddin (Barbarossa) at Beshiktash, a suburb of the city, is a memorial of the subjugation of the Northern States of Africa ; a ruin, beneath the Burnt Column, once the resi dence of Busbek, in the 16th century, bears witness to the privileges and the restraints of the ambassadors of Germany ; and inscriptions left on the inner walls of the Seven Towers, ranging in date from 1698 to 1800, record the imprisonment and the liberation or death of captives, Venetians, French, &c., and the obstinate struggles in which the Ottomans engaged with the different powers of Europe. The last European ambassador imprisoned there was Le Brun, envoy of the French republic ; he was thrown in on the news of the French landing in Egypt, and remained three years. A fter the tide of fortune turned on the repulse of the Turkish forces from Vienna in 1683, Constantinople began to be once more the special mark for ambition or re venge. When the peace of Carlowitz was signed in 1G99 a new enemy was rising in the North ; in 1770 the city was threatened by thr&amp;gt; Russian fleet joined by the English, squadron. In 1807 Vice-Admiral Duckworth, having forced the passage of the Dardenelles, appeared before Constan tinople, but the Turks put themselves in a posture of defence, and after eight days his squadron retreated. For further his torical details, see TURKEY. Authorities Pasp^ti, Detlrier, Clavany (local), besides Alemann OH Procopius, Byzautius, Gibbon, Montesquieu, &c. (C. G. &amp;lt;J.)