Herodotus came to admire

The picturesque cemetery, shaded by oaks, on the hill above the Genoese Castle, overlooking the entrance to the Black Sea, a view that Darius I. and Herodotus came to admire, is also named “The Field of Witnesses,” because there, it is supposed, Saracen soldiers who fell in an attack upon the castle were buried. Such cemeteries are holy ground, and sepulture in them is regarded as a great honour. The attendance of the Sultan at the midday public prayers on Fridays is the official act of the Caliph of the Mohammedan world. He ascends the throne after girding his sword at the grave of the first standard-bearer of the Prophet, in the Mosque of Eyoub.

The mantle of the Prophet, his green standard, his staff, sword, bow, are enshrined in the Seraglio as the sovereign’s regalia, and are annually visited by the Sultan as a great State function. Around that standard all true Moslems must rally when Islam is in peril. No great act of Government may be performed until the chief doctor of the Sacred Law, the Sheik – ul – Islam, has been consulted, and sanctions the act, as in accordance with the supreme authority of faith and righteousness. Sultan Abdul Azis and his nephew, Sultan Murad, were deposed only after such sanction had been obtained.

Brought up as Moslems

Upon this theocratic conception of the State, the exclusion of the Christian subjects of the Empire from the army is based. For, how can aliens in religion be enlisted under the banner of the Faith? Hence the institution of the janissaries in the early history of the Ottoman Power, whereby children of Christian parentage were taken from their homes and brought up as Moslems, to furnish recruits for the army. It was an ingenious device to maintain the religious character of the military force of the Empire, and yet to prevent the burden of filling the ranks from resting exclusively upon the faithful. The abolition of the child-tax, however fortunate to others, proved a great injury to Turkey.

It not only deprived the Sultans of their finest troops, but has been one of the principal causes of the great decrease in the Moslem population of the country; as that class of the community alone has since been called to sustain the losses involved in military service. The mortality among the soldiers of the Turkish army from disease and war is so great that the Moslem population is rapidly dying out, and well-informed medical experts are heard to say, “ The Eastern Question will be solved by the disappearance of the Turks in the natural course of things.”

St Mary Pammacaristos Fethiyeh Djamissi

The inhabitants of Constantinople were sinners, though not sinners above all men, as they are often represented. But in their hospitals, orphanages, asylums for the aged, free caravanseries, asylums for lepers, and other institutions “to give rest to those whom trouble had distressed,” which humanised the city with compassion, they were distinguished also for that charity which covereth a multitude of sins.

The Churches of S. Mary Pammacaristos Fethiyeh Djamissi), the Church of S. Theodosia (Gul Djamissi), and portions of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora, carry us to the times of the Palseologi, the dynasty that occupied the throne of Constantinople during the last one hundred and ninety years of the city’s history as New Rome. It is the period of the long struggle with the Ottoman Turks, and the culmination of the conflict between the Mohammedan world and Christendom which had filled more than eight centuries with its hate and din; when the sign in which the Empire had conquered yielded to the sign of the crescent, and the benediction of the prophet of Islam—“ Whoso taketh the city of Constantine, his sins are forgiven ”—found at length a man upon whose head it could settle. It is a sad period of Byzantine history; yet one noble idea, at least, appealed to its mind—the Reunion of Christendom — which, if realised, would have changed the history of Europe. But it was not to be.

St Saviour-in-the-Chora

Like all the churches of the city situated near the fortifications, the Church of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora was regarded with special veneration as a guardian of the safety of “the God-defended capital/’ and there, during the siege of 1458, was placed, as an additional pledge of security, the icon of S. Mary Hodegetria, attributed to S. Luke. But the church was the first sanctuary into which Turkish troops broke on the fatal 29th May for pillage. They spumed to take the icon as a part of their plunder, and in mockery of its vaunted power hacked it to pieces. The Latin Church of S. Peter in Galata claims to possess one of the fragments.

Beautiful Gate

On the 29th or 80th of May 1458, Sultan Mehemet the Conqueror alighted from his horse at the gate of S. Sophia. It was most probably at the “ Beautiful Gate,” at the southern end of the noble inner narthex of the church, the entrance through which the Emperors of Constantinople usually proceeded to the cathedral. According to one account, the Sultan stooped down at the threshold, took some earth, and scattered it on his head in token of humiliation before God.

Entering, he saw a Moslem breaking the marble pavement. He struck at the vandal with a scimiter for daring to injure a building that belonged of right to the sovereign. Then, in what to the Eastern world was the Holy of Holies of Christendom, an imaum ascended the pulpit and cried aloud, “ There is no God but God, and Mahomet is His prophet” And so it has been ever since.

The Church of S. Saviour Pantepoptes, the All- Seeing (Eski Imaret Djamissi), the Church of S. Saviour Pantocrator, the All-Powerful (Zeirek Kiliss£ Djamissi), and the interior of S. Saviour-in- the-Chora (Kahriyeh Djamissi), recall the period of the Comneni and the Angeli (1081-1204).

In their erection ladies of considerable importance in the history of Constantinople had a part. The first was built by Anna Dalassena, the mother of Alexius I. Comnenus; the last was restored by his mother-in-law, Mary Ducaena, a Bulgarian princess famous for her beauty; the second was an erection of the Empress of John I. Comnenus, the daughter of Geysa I., King of Hungary.

These churches represent the age when Constantinople was stirred by the march of the earlier Crusades through the territory of the Empire, when Peter the Hermit and Godfrey de Bouillon encamped their followers within sight of the city walls, to be dazzled by the splendours of the Palace of Blachemae, and cajoled by the diplomacy of Alexius I. Comnenus. They also recall the time when Henrico Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, brought his fleet and the troops of the Fourth Crusade to the Golden Horn, and founded the short-lived Latin Empire of Constantinople.

It was on the terraced ground beside the Church of Pantepoptes that the Emperor Alexius Murtzuplus pitched his vermilion tents and drew up his reserve forces. There he stood to see the walls on the shore below attacked by the Venetian ships and carried by Frankish knights. From that position he fled at the approach of a body of the enemy’s horsemen, and under his un-stricken vermilion tent Count Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut, soon to succeed him as Latin Emperor of Constantinople, spent the night of that memorable day.

Beautiful Gate

On the 29th or 80th of May 1458, Sultan Mehemet the Conqueror alighted from his horse at the gate of S. Sophia. It was most probably at the “ Beautiful Gate,” at the southern end of the noble inner narthex of the church, the entrance through which the Emperors of Constantinople usually proceeded to the cathedral. According to one account, the Sultan stooped down at the threshold, took some earth, and scattered it on his head in token of humiliation before God.

Entering, he saw a Moslem breaking the marble pavement. He struck at the vandal with a scimiter for daring to injure a building that belonged of right to the sovereign. Then, in what to the Eastern world was the Holy of Holies of Christendom, an imaum ascended the pulpit and cried aloud, “ There is no God but God, and Mahomet is His prophet” And so it has been ever since.

The Church of S. Saviour Pantepoptes, the All- Seeing (Eski Imaret Djamissi), the Church of S. Saviour Pantocrator, the All-Powerful (Zeirek Kiliss£ Djamissi), and the interior of S. Saviour-in- the-Chora (Kahriyeh Djamissi), recall the period of the Comneni and the Angeli (1081-1204).

In their erection ladies of considerable importance in the history of Constantinople had a part. The first was built by Anna Dalassena, the mother of Alexius I. Comnenus; the last was restored by his mother-in-law, Mary Ducaena, a Bulgarian princess famous for her beauty; the second was an erection of the Empress of John I. Comnenus, the daughter of Geysa I., King of Hungary.

These churches represent the age when Constantinople was stirred by the march of the earlier Crusades through the territory of the Empire, when Peter the Hermit and Godfrey de Bouillon encamped their followers within sight of the city walls, to be dazzled by the splendours of the Palace of Blachemae, and cajoled by the diplomacy of Alexius I. Comnenus. They also recall the time when Henrico Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, brought his fleet and the troops of the Fourth Crusade to the Golden Horn, and founded the short-lived Latin Empire of Constantinople.

It was on the terraced ground beside the Church of Pantepoptes that the Emperor Alexius Murtzuplus pitched his vermilion tents and drew up his reserve forces. There he stood to see the walls on the shore below attacked by the Venetian ships and carried by Frankish knights. From that position he fled at the approach of a body of the enemy’s horsemen, and under his un-stricken vermilion tent Count Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut, soon to succeed him as Latin Emperor of Constantinople, spent the night of that memorable day.

Venetian fleet

Of the historical events of which the Golden Horn has been the theatre, the most important are: first, the attack upon the walls along this side of the city, in 1203, and again in 1204, by the Venetian fleet which accompanied the Fourth Crusade; second, the transportation by Sultan Mehemet into its waters in 1458, of warships over the hill that separates the harbour from the Bosporus. The movements of the Venetian fleet and of the army which accompanied it can be followed step by step, so minute is the description of Ville – Hardouin and so unaltered the topography of the country. Upon approaching the city the invaders put in at San Stefano, now a favourite suburban resort upon the Sea of Marmora.

A south wind carried them next to Scutari. From that point they crossed to the bay now occupied by the Palace of Dolma Bagtchd, near Beshiktash. There the army landed, and advancing along the shore attacked the tower to which the northern end of the chain across the harbour’s mouth was fastened. Upon the capture of the tower after a feeble resistance, the chain was cut, and the fleet of Venice under the command of Dandolo, flying the ensign of S. Mark, rode into the Golden Horn and made for the head of the harbour.

Cassim Pasha and Haskeui

At the same time, the troops marched towards the same point, along the northern shore, where Cassim Pasha and Haskeui are now situated. At the latter suburb they crossed the stone bridge that led to Eyoub on the southern bank. Then turning eastwards, they seized the hill facing the portion of the city walls above which the windows and domes of the Palace of Blachernse looked towards the west. While the army prepared to attack that point, the ships of Dandolo stood before the harbour walls, in a long line from Aivan Serai to the Phanar and the neighbourhood of the present Inner Bridge.

A desperate assault followed, in which twenty-five towers were carried by the Venetians, and the day would have been won, but for the repulse of the land forces and the necessity to hasten to their relief. Soon a revolution within the city against the usurper whom the Crusaders had come to depose, and in favour of the restoration of Isaac Angelus, whose claim to the throne they supported, seemed to bring the struggle to an end. As a sign that amicable relations had been established, and to avoid the danger of angry collisions with the citizens, the invaders removed their forces to the northern side of the Golden Horn.