The Walls of Constantinople
I’m standing on an ancient rampart on the edge of Istanbul’s old city, looking at an enormous, ruined wall of meticulous construction. It was built in the early 5th century by the Byzantine emperor Theodosius to protect the city of Constantinople, as Istanbul was then known. Even in ruins, it’s an impressive sight. Faced with blocks of well-dressed white limestone separated with bands of Roman brick, it’s one of the most extensive and yet least-visited Byzantine sites in modern Istanbul.
For pictures, see http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.442560205915.241421.535635915&type=1&l=a205aa5b15
Part of the reason could be standing uncomfortably close to me. A middle-aged Turkish man dressed in the invisible garb of everyday istanbullus - dark tweed jacket, black pants, and socks with sandals - is carrying a string of prayer beads and insists on talking to me in Turkish, even though I don’t understand. He smells slightly sour, like yoghurt left out too long, and he continues to jabber and point at the ruined walls. I nod sagely and move away, closer to the edge of the ramparts where two policemen patrolling the walls are watching us intensely.
The reason for the police presence in this underpopulated (and dodgy) part of town is beneath my feet. The Byzantine wall consisted of a tall inner wall and a stout outer wall with a terrace in between where troops could muster. Instead of grass though, at this stretch of the wall, the ground is packed solid with the detritus of modern life: jackets, gloves, bottles, fragments of furniture, all pounded to a soft, sludgy platform beneath my feet.
Until recently this part of the wall was a notorious slum inhabited largely by the local Roma or gypsy population. In one of their more controversial acts, the city council had the slum bulldozed and the Roma dispersed ahead of Istanbul’s turn as European City of Culture 2010.
In any other city, this would be a perfect gay cruising ground. In the light of day however, it’s just me, the smelly man who won’t stop talking, and the 2 policemen eying us warily. I take my pictures and move on. Meanwhile, there is the sound of wind tugging on the ancient stones, the non-stop verbiage, and the slow disintegration of the newsprint beneath my feet into earth.
What I’m currently undertaking is a pilgrimage of sorts. When I was in my teens, I watched a documentary hosted by the egyptologist John Romer about the lost civilisation of Byzantium. The images and stories captured my imagination, and I told myself that one day I would go and see the remnants of this culture myself.
The sublime Hagia Sofia may be the world’s most important surviving Byzantine building - evidenced by the huge multilingual crowds that swarm it day in and day out - but far fewer visitors ever pay much heed to what is probably the most evocative of Byzantine remains: the land walls of Constantinople.
Built in the early 5th century by the emperor Theodosius and running 4 miles from the Sea of Marmara in the south to the Golden Horn in the north, the land walls have laid witness to virtually all the major events in the city; from the day the first Constantine founded his new eponymous capital in 330 AD, to the last Constantine XI Palaiologos who fought and died on these walls in 1453 AD.
My plan was simple, to walk the full length of the land walls (or as much as practical) from south to north, mapping out the locations of the important events (in particular the fateful Ottoman siege of 1453), and ending my journey at a miniature jewel of late-Byzantine sacred architecture at the northern end.
I began at the beginning, so to speak. The Ottoman Turks built the Yedikule fortress at the southern end overlooking the Sea of Marmara. Though shaped like a typical medieval star fort, they only ever used it as a prison. It’s still largely intact, and has a forlorn air about it. Lizards dart amidst the dusty stones baking white in the sun, and wild thyme grows prolifically in the cracks. But the fortress itself is not the reason why I chose to begin here.
The Yedikule is built around what in medieval times was the most celebrated city gate in the western world - the Porta Aurea - the legendary Golden Gate. This was the ceremonial archway that led to the very centre of Roman Constantinople; the emperor Justinian, builder of the Hagia Sofia, passed through here in triumph in the 6th century after his successful campaigns against the huns, the goths and the arabs, as did his successors. Elephants, carriages loaded with the treasure of the orient, captive kings in chains would have passed under its grand arch, decorated with the enormous doors faced in gold which gave it its name.
Sultan Mehmet, the conquerer of Constantinople, ended the Golden Gate’s function as a city gate; there were too many legends associated with it, of emperors rising up from the grave to retake the city from the turks, and he was a superstitious man. It takes some imagination to see it now, blocked up except for a tiny wooden door - a man of average height would have to bend to enter it. It’s also currently blocked by a dilapidated concert stage - probably built for a pop concert some years ago - adding to the air of desolation. Part of the original road is still barely visible as a hollowed-out trench; it still points, straight as an arrow, towards Hagia Sofia for a few metres before burying itself beneath a shabby residential neighbourhood, no doubt another measure by Mehmet to prevent old legends from resurfacing.
No trace remains too of the picture that once stood above the Golden Gate, once the most recognisable image in all christendom: Christ Pantocrator. We know it from modern orthodox churches - it’s a bust image of Christ, shown bearded, bushy-haired, and rather stern. His right hand is raised in a blessing; the left holds a book. Tradition held that the image above the Golden Gate was derived from one that the gospel-writing St Luke painted of the Saviour from life.
From the towers of the Yedikule, you can see the line of the land walls as they march inexorably northwards. I took this lead and began walking along the outside. On the inside, buildings were frequently built against the wall itself, making progress uncertain. It was a bright, autumn day. Apart from the cars whizzing by on the perimeter road, there was little movement - no tourists, only a few pedestrians, open space. I was happy.
From the outside, you can pretty much still see how Constantinople must have appeared to a traveller glimpsing it for the first time. Impressive as it is today, it must have been awesome to see it rising from the horizon, this gargantuan structure built seemingly by non-humans. The wall in its mature state was the culmination of a thousand years of graeco-roman engineering. It consisted of a tall inner wall and a stout outer wall with a terrace for mustering troops in between (where I had encountered the stinky old man). Down from the outer wall were the remains of a continuous, wide moat. In addition, great towers punctuated the walls every 20 metres or so using the entire Roman repertory of forms - circles, squares and octagons. Some of the towers were partially collapsed, exposing their meticulous construction like dollhouses. Domes, half-domes and arches, crumbling away in the wind.
Most Istanbullus have little use for the crumbling gates and towers that form the dramatic backdrop to their city, but the moat has been transformed into something quite practical - neat rows of carefully tended vegetable gardens now grow where the bodies of soldiers once fell; before it was filled with the sound of clashing armour and screams of the dying - today it resounds with nothing more than the sound of spades, quietly sinking in earth. Here the full range of delicacies for the Turkish table grow: radishes, cos lettuce, spinach, carrots, courgettes and pumpkins. There are little stalls set up on the roadside to sell these vegetables to passing motorists, all the more strange for being apparently unattended. The produce seems to grow by itself, and sell itself.
In addition to these elements of the wall were the city gates, some of which - in contrast to the Golden Gate - are still in use today. Some look pretty much as they did in Byzantine times, used by pedestrians and one-way traffic. Some still bear their greek inscriptions above the door, living traces of the Byzantine past.
I was particularly interested in the locations of two gates. The Topkapi Gate - “Gate of the Cannon” - is the main arterial highway into modern Istanbul, with four-lane traffic on each side blaring their dusty way into the old city. The old gate was of course insufficient for this purpose, and so the city council blew a massive hole in it - maybe with the same cannon that the gate is named after.
Cannons were of special interest to the Sultan Mehmet in his careful planning of the 1453 siege. Until then, artillery had played a minor role in medieval warfare, and never in the taking of a major city. Mehmet was about to change siege strategy for ever: he commissioned the casting of the largest cannon ever built then or since (a massive 27-footer beast) to pound the walls of Constantinople day and night. Up to then, the durability of the land walls had ensured that the city had never been taken by force alone (the Crusaders, and after then the Byzantines who retook the city, had inside help). The walls had protected the city for a thousand years, and were deemed impregnable. But when Mehmet’s guns started roaring, thus forever changing the soundscape of warfare, the Byzantines watched, horrified, as the entire history of city defense literally collapsed before their eyes.
The second gate I sought is now known as the Edirnekapi (Edirne being the city east of Istanbul from which Mehmet launched his siege). It was in the area between these two gates, separated by a stretch of wall a kilometre or so long, that the final chapter of the Byzantines was written. The great siege of 1453 is wonderfully captured in meticulous research and thrilling prose in Roger Crowley’s eminently readable book, Constantinople: The Last Siege.
If you look at the statistics of the 1453 siege, they seem utterly incredible for its inequalities. On the Ottoman side, sources vary but Mehmet had anywhere between 160,000 to 400,000 men. To compare it with another 15th century battle, a total of 35,000 men fought at Agincourt. In addition there were the pack and farm animals, the tents, and the war machines. When they encamped opposite the city, they must have seemed less like a large army and more like a mass migration. Sultan Mehmet had cunning, meticulous planning, and endless resources. He imagined himself as a muslim Alexander, bringing conquest to the ends of the earth, and he was determined to master the most fabled city in the known world. He tempted his men with images of the great wealth of Constantinople, its palaces brimming with gold, its churches with treasures.
The city’s defending guardian, emperor Constantine XI, had no such illusions about his city. From a height of half a million, the city’s population had dwindled to 50,000. The shameful crusader sack of 1204 had destroyed much of the city within the walls, now a series of autonomous villages separated by pasture. Constantine’s army consisted of no more than 8,000 men, a polyglot army of Greeks, Italians, Catalans and other allies. They had the impregnable land walls in their favour however - with luck, they might just hold out and survive.
Both Mehmet and Constantine were aware of a major weak point in the construction of the walls. It was this spot that I was looking for, midway between the Topkapi and the Edirnekapi, near where I met the smelly old man.
As I walked northwards from where the Roma slums at Topkapi were, a strange thing happened to the landscape. There was a sudden dip, and the walls followed suit, falling down and up again like the Great Wall of China. This was the Lycus river valley, where a small culvert in the wall allowed the brook to enter the city. This is the only place where the ground outside the city is higher than the wall itself, giving the advantage to the besiegers. It was also the only unmoated part of the wall. Even to the casual observer today, it’s so obvious - if I were to attack a city, this would be the place to do it.
An odd, tower-like sculpture now stands on the high ground opposite the wall today - it may well be the very spot where Mehmet pitched his tent, glowing red and gold amidst the sea of plain tents. His monster cannon too was here, where Mehmet could monitor its gift of destruction. In response to this, Constantine too made his headquarters within the city directly opposite. They faced each other across the wall, like two pieces in a vastly unequal chess game.
The situation was dire for the Byzantines, but it may not have been as unequal as the statistics seem to suggest. The defenders were fighting for their survival, but while the Sultan had massive resources and planning skills, he too had his drawbacks. Mehmet was 21, precocious but not universally popular with his people. He had led the army here to Constantinople against the advice of elder statesmen, at great expense, and at great risk to his own authority. If the defenders managed to resist him for long, he would have to call off the siege and return home in disgrace.
For Constantine, survival was limited to 2 scenarios. They could hold out until a) Mehmet exhausted his resources and had to lift the siege, or b) help came from their fellow christians in the west.
When Byzantium made their panic-stricken appeals to the west, the pope in Rome prevaricated. He wanted proof of the orthodox church’s submission to the Vatican before they offered help. The two great Italian maritime powers, Venice and Genoa, were not keen to be drawn into a conflict with the powerful Ottomans, with whom they had trading ties. The Holy Roman emperor, the princes of France and Germany, were all conspicuous in their silence.
By nightfall of the 28th of May 1453, it was painfully clear to the beleaguered Byzantines that no help was coming from the west, no ships with distinctive crosses were sighted on the Mediterranean. They were on their own, against a vast and determined foe.
For both sides, it was the moment of decision. For Sultan Mehmet, who had risked all with enormous expense, the patience of his troops was wearing thin: they either had to win this battle or go home. The Byzantines too seemed to sense that this was a do or die moment. They were stretched perilously thin, bombarded by guns for 48 days. They could sense that they were close to victory.
During the night, Mehmet organised his troops and guns before the Lycus valley for the final assault. Constantine and his general, the valiant genoese Giustianini, also marshalled what remained of their army into the terrace between the 2 walls. As a sign of the finality of this battle, Constantine had the doors behind them locked. There was to be no retreat from this encounter - the defenders, exhausted as they were, would fight to victory, or to the death.
On the 29th of May 1453, at approximately 1.30 in the morning, with a bloodcurdling cry, the Turks launched themselves at the wall. Mehmet’s great cannons unleashed their apocalyptic blasts against the crumbling walls. The defenders fought back ferociously, holding the valuable ground behind the outer walls.
Finally, the cannons achieved their desired aim. A section of the ancient wall fell with a crash. The Turkish troops swarmed towards the breach. The gap was however too small for a large force to enter en masse - spurred to action, the defenders rallied and pushed back the Ottomans.
And then, in a twist of fate reminiscent of Homer, the luck of the Byzantines finally ran out. The general Giustianini, whose personal bravery and skill had contributed so much to the defense, was seriously injured. His men requested leave from Constantine to take him through the locked doors back into the city for treatment. The emperor was reluctant, knowing just how crucial this man’s presence was to the spirits of the troops, but he acceded.
It was a mistake. When Giustianini’s fellow Italians saw the door unlocked and their commander being taken out of the fray, they panicked and made for the door to follow him. The Greeks had to force them back into position.
The Turks seemed to sense this slackening of the defense, and they made for the breach with a new ferocity. They could sense victory was at hand. Meanwhile, on the northern part of the wall at the Blachernae palace, a moment of inalertness had allowed a small posse of Turks to breach the wall and raise the Ottoman standard in place of the genoese flag. The intruders were quickly repulsed, but the sight of the Ottoman banner flapping in the dawn had done its damage.
“The city is taken!” the came the cry, and with that, the Byzantine defense of Constantinople collapsed. Within minutes, the Turks had overrun the stockade in their tens of thousands. The Byzantines, sure enough, were backed up against the locked doors and, to a man, were either hacked or crushed to death. The dream of Byzantine, of a thousand years of classical greek and roman culture, died on the battlements.
No one really knows for sure what happened to Constantine XI, the fateful last emperor who fought alongside his troops in that stockade. No certain identification of any corpse was officially made, thought Mehmet would have certainly searched obsessively for his foe. As such, the last Constantine vanished from the midst of the melee into the realm of legend. Legend said that he sleeps still under the battered stones of the land wall, waiting to rise up one day and bring Byzantine rule back to Istanbul. It was perhaps on account of this prophesy that the paranoid Mehmet left the Golden Gate sealed.
What happened next is now history. The Ottoman troops ran amok in the city, sacking and pillaging. Venerated icons were torn into pieces, the valuable gold and silver frames melted down. Hagia Sofia was stripped of its treasures. Only by the Sultan’s decree that no buildings were to be touched did it survive the catastrophe.
The image of Sultan Mehmet entering Constantinople in triumph through what is now the Edirnekapi is one of the most famous in Islam. The 21-year old Sultan had done what neither his father, grandfather, and even armies under the companions of the Prophet Muhammed had done - he had conquered the most famous christian city in the world. He was hailed as the muslim Alexander. Western Europe shook in their boots, horrified by what they had let happen. They had long taken Constantinople’s role as a buffer against the muslim east for granted. Now the Turks had a foothold in Europe. Over the next few decades they would advance within striking range of Venice itself, whose senate had decided to abandon Constantinople to its fate. Only when Mehmet died in 1481 (perhaps poisoned) was the muslim advance into Europe halted.
Of all the trauma and horror of the 29th of May 1453, very little remains in evidence today. Where Mehmet might have once pitched his tent, there is a busy tangle of highways, weaving traffic in asphalt ribbons like an arabesque. The Topkapi was torn down to make way for large roads. Only the walls and its surviving gates remain, bearing silent witness to those events long ago, to the bones of fighting men that lie beneath its walls.
My pilgrimage ended at the northern end of the land walls, near the scant remains of the Blachernae palace where the Ottomans had first succeeded in raising their banner. Close by to the Edirnekapi stands a little jewel of a church, built in the closing years of the story of Byzantium. It’s the Church of the Holy Saviour in the Chora, turned into the Kariye mosque by the Ottomans and now a museum. Completed by a wealthy Byzantine nobleman who endowed it with its splendid mosaics, it gives a glimpse into the lost glories of Byzantium.
While Hagia Sofia had suffered the ignominious loss of much of its mosaics and fresco decoration over the centuries, leaving it pretty much a burnt-out shell albeit a glorious one, the Chora suffered far less loss, giving us an image of Constantinople that still persists in the Ottoman city today. The domes, miniature copies of Hagia Sofia, still glow with Byzantine gold, the muted colours still fresh in the hushed space. Among its treasures, a magnificent anastasis scene above the apse - Christ pulling Adam and Eve from their graves on his ascent to heaven. Mosaics of both saints Peter and Paul, haloed in gold, gesturing to one another across a doorway. Images of the ministry of Christ, and the life of the Virgin. A wonderfully vibrant gallery of angels in a lapis lazuli sky. A monumental Virgin and Christ, mirror of the one in Hagia Sofia’s upper gallery, Mary’s head still tilted sadly towards her stern-looking Son.
And of course, there is the image of Christ Pantocrator, high up in the dome where Hagia Sofia’s version would also have been. This is the image of Christ that once hung above the Golden Gate, at the beginning of my pilgrimage. He still stares down at us wordlessly, from an unbroken lineage of nearly two thousand years, a divine image frozen in time for us and generations to come. It’s good to know that some things aren’t lost forever.
For pictures, see http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.442560205915.241421.535635915&type=1&l=a205aa5b15
Part of the reason could be standing uncomfortably close to me. A middle-aged Turkish man dressed in the invisible garb of everyday istanbullus - dark tweed jacket, black pants, and socks with sandals - is carrying a string of prayer beads and insists on talking to me in Turkish, even though I don’t understand. He smells slightly sour, like yoghurt left out too long, and he continues to jabber and point at the ruined walls. I nod sagely and move away, closer to the edge of the ramparts where two policemen patrolling the walls are watching us intensely.
The reason for the police presence in this underpopulated (and dodgy) part of town is beneath my feet. The Byzantine wall consisted of a tall inner wall and a stout outer wall with a terrace in between where troops could muster. Instead of grass though, at this stretch of the wall, the ground is packed solid with the detritus of modern life: jackets, gloves, bottles, fragments of furniture, all pounded to a soft, sludgy platform beneath my feet.
Until recently this part of the wall was a notorious slum inhabited largely by the local Roma or gypsy population. In one of their more controversial acts, the city council had the slum bulldozed and the Roma dispersed ahead of Istanbul’s turn as European City of Culture 2010.
In any other city, this would be a perfect gay cruising ground. In the light of day however, it’s just me, the smelly man who won’t stop talking, and the 2 policemen eying us warily. I take my pictures and move on. Meanwhile, there is the sound of wind tugging on the ancient stones, the non-stop verbiage, and the slow disintegration of the newsprint beneath my feet into earth.
What I’m currently undertaking is a pilgrimage of sorts. When I was in my teens, I watched a documentary hosted by the egyptologist John Romer about the lost civilisation of Byzantium. The images and stories captured my imagination, and I told myself that one day I would go and see the remnants of this culture myself.
The sublime Hagia Sofia may be the world’s most important surviving Byzantine building - evidenced by the huge multilingual crowds that swarm it day in and day out - but far fewer visitors ever pay much heed to what is probably the most evocative of Byzantine remains: the land walls of Constantinople.
Built in the early 5th century by the emperor Theodosius and running 4 miles from the Sea of Marmara in the south to the Golden Horn in the north, the land walls have laid witness to virtually all the major events in the city; from the day the first Constantine founded his new eponymous capital in 330 AD, to the last Constantine XI Palaiologos who fought and died on these walls in 1453 AD.
My plan was simple, to walk the full length of the land walls (or as much as practical) from south to north, mapping out the locations of the important events (in particular the fateful Ottoman siege of 1453), and ending my journey at a miniature jewel of late-Byzantine sacred architecture at the northern end.
I began at the beginning, so to speak. The Ottoman Turks built the Yedikule fortress at the southern end overlooking the Sea of Marmara. Though shaped like a typical medieval star fort, they only ever used it as a prison. It’s still largely intact, and has a forlorn air about it. Lizards dart amidst the dusty stones baking white in the sun, and wild thyme grows prolifically in the cracks. But the fortress itself is not the reason why I chose to begin here.
The Yedikule is built around what in medieval times was the most celebrated city gate in the western world - the Porta Aurea - the legendary Golden Gate. This was the ceremonial archway that led to the very centre of Roman Constantinople; the emperor Justinian, builder of the Hagia Sofia, passed through here in triumph in the 6th century after his successful campaigns against the huns, the goths and the arabs, as did his successors. Elephants, carriages loaded with the treasure of the orient, captive kings in chains would have passed under its grand arch, decorated with the enormous doors faced in gold which gave it its name.
Sultan Mehmet, the conquerer of Constantinople, ended the Golden Gate’s function as a city gate; there were too many legends associated with it, of emperors rising up from the grave to retake the city from the turks, and he was a superstitious man. It takes some imagination to see it now, blocked up except for a tiny wooden door - a man of average height would have to bend to enter it. It’s also currently blocked by a dilapidated concert stage - probably built for a pop concert some years ago - adding to the air of desolation. Part of the original road is still barely visible as a hollowed-out trench; it still points, straight as an arrow, towards Hagia Sofia for a few metres before burying itself beneath a shabby residential neighbourhood, no doubt another measure by Mehmet to prevent old legends from resurfacing.
No trace remains too of the picture that once stood above the Golden Gate, once the most recognisable image in all christendom: Christ Pantocrator. We know it from modern orthodox churches - it’s a bust image of Christ, shown bearded, bushy-haired, and rather stern. His right hand is raised in a blessing; the left holds a book. Tradition held that the image above the Golden Gate was derived from one that the gospel-writing St Luke painted of the Saviour from life.
From the towers of the Yedikule, you can see the line of the land walls as they march inexorably northwards. I took this lead and began walking along the outside. On the inside, buildings were frequently built against the wall itself, making progress uncertain. It was a bright, autumn day. Apart from the cars whizzing by on the perimeter road, there was little movement - no tourists, only a few pedestrians, open space. I was happy.
From the outside, you can pretty much still see how Constantinople must have appeared to a traveller glimpsing it for the first time. Impressive as it is today, it must have been awesome to see it rising from the horizon, this gargantuan structure built seemingly by non-humans. The wall in its mature state was the culmination of a thousand years of graeco-roman engineering. It consisted of a tall inner wall and a stout outer wall with a terrace for mustering troops in between (where I had encountered the stinky old man). Down from the outer wall were the remains of a continuous, wide moat. In addition, great towers punctuated the walls every 20 metres or so using the entire Roman repertory of forms - circles, squares and octagons. Some of the towers were partially collapsed, exposing their meticulous construction like dollhouses. Domes, half-domes and arches, crumbling away in the wind.
Most Istanbullus have little use for the crumbling gates and towers that form the dramatic backdrop to their city, but the moat has been transformed into something quite practical - neat rows of carefully tended vegetable gardens now grow where the bodies of soldiers once fell; before it was filled with the sound of clashing armour and screams of the dying - today it resounds with nothing more than the sound of spades, quietly sinking in earth. Here the full range of delicacies for the Turkish table grow: radishes, cos lettuce, spinach, carrots, courgettes and pumpkins. There are little stalls set up on the roadside to sell these vegetables to passing motorists, all the more strange for being apparently unattended. The produce seems to grow by itself, and sell itself.
In addition to these elements of the wall were the city gates, some of which - in contrast to the Golden Gate - are still in use today. Some look pretty much as they did in Byzantine times, used by pedestrians and one-way traffic. Some still bear their greek inscriptions above the door, living traces of the Byzantine past.
I was particularly interested in the locations of two gates. The Topkapi Gate - “Gate of the Cannon” - is the main arterial highway into modern Istanbul, with four-lane traffic on each side blaring their dusty way into the old city. The old gate was of course insufficient for this purpose, and so the city council blew a massive hole in it - maybe with the same cannon that the gate is named after.
Cannons were of special interest to the Sultan Mehmet in his careful planning of the 1453 siege. Until then, artillery had played a minor role in medieval warfare, and never in the taking of a major city. Mehmet was about to change siege strategy for ever: he commissioned the casting of the largest cannon ever built then or since (a massive 27-footer beast) to pound the walls of Constantinople day and night. Up to then, the durability of the land walls had ensured that the city had never been taken by force alone (the Crusaders, and after then the Byzantines who retook the city, had inside help). The walls had protected the city for a thousand years, and were deemed impregnable. But when Mehmet’s guns started roaring, thus forever changing the soundscape of warfare, the Byzantines watched, horrified, as the entire history of city defense literally collapsed before their eyes.
The second gate I sought is now known as the Edirnekapi (Edirne being the city east of Istanbul from which Mehmet launched his siege). It was in the area between these two gates, separated by a stretch of wall a kilometre or so long, that the final chapter of the Byzantines was written. The great siege of 1453 is wonderfully captured in meticulous research and thrilling prose in Roger Crowley’s eminently readable book, Constantinople: The Last Siege.
If you look at the statistics of the 1453 siege, they seem utterly incredible for its inequalities. On the Ottoman side, sources vary but Mehmet had anywhere between 160,000 to 400,000 men. To compare it with another 15th century battle, a total of 35,000 men fought at Agincourt. In addition there were the pack and farm animals, the tents, and the war machines. When they encamped opposite the city, they must have seemed less like a large army and more like a mass migration. Sultan Mehmet had cunning, meticulous planning, and endless resources. He imagined himself as a muslim Alexander, bringing conquest to the ends of the earth, and he was determined to master the most fabled city in the known world. He tempted his men with images of the great wealth of Constantinople, its palaces brimming with gold, its churches with treasures.
The city’s defending guardian, emperor Constantine XI, had no such illusions about his city. From a height of half a million, the city’s population had dwindled to 50,000. The shameful crusader sack of 1204 had destroyed much of the city within the walls, now a series of autonomous villages separated by pasture. Constantine’s army consisted of no more than 8,000 men, a polyglot army of Greeks, Italians, Catalans and other allies. They had the impregnable land walls in their favour however - with luck, they might just hold out and survive.
Both Mehmet and Constantine were aware of a major weak point in the construction of the walls. It was this spot that I was looking for, midway between the Topkapi and the Edirnekapi, near where I met the smelly old man.
As I walked northwards from where the Roma slums at Topkapi were, a strange thing happened to the landscape. There was a sudden dip, and the walls followed suit, falling down and up again like the Great Wall of China. This was the Lycus river valley, where a small culvert in the wall allowed the brook to enter the city. This is the only place where the ground outside the city is higher than the wall itself, giving the advantage to the besiegers. It was also the only unmoated part of the wall. Even to the casual observer today, it’s so obvious - if I were to attack a city, this would be the place to do it.
An odd, tower-like sculpture now stands on the high ground opposite the wall today - it may well be the very spot where Mehmet pitched his tent, glowing red and gold amidst the sea of plain tents. His monster cannon too was here, where Mehmet could monitor its gift of destruction. In response to this, Constantine too made his headquarters within the city directly opposite. They faced each other across the wall, like two pieces in a vastly unequal chess game.
The situation was dire for the Byzantines, but it may not have been as unequal as the statistics seem to suggest. The defenders were fighting for their survival, but while the Sultan had massive resources and planning skills, he too had his drawbacks. Mehmet was 21, precocious but not universally popular with his people. He had led the army here to Constantinople against the advice of elder statesmen, at great expense, and at great risk to his own authority. If the defenders managed to resist him for long, he would have to call off the siege and return home in disgrace.
For Constantine, survival was limited to 2 scenarios. They could hold out until a) Mehmet exhausted his resources and had to lift the siege, or b) help came from their fellow christians in the west.
When Byzantium made their panic-stricken appeals to the west, the pope in Rome prevaricated. He wanted proof of the orthodox church’s submission to the Vatican before they offered help. The two great Italian maritime powers, Venice and Genoa, were not keen to be drawn into a conflict with the powerful Ottomans, with whom they had trading ties. The Holy Roman emperor, the princes of France and Germany, were all conspicuous in their silence.
By nightfall of the 28th of May 1453, it was painfully clear to the beleaguered Byzantines that no help was coming from the west, no ships with distinctive crosses were sighted on the Mediterranean. They were on their own, against a vast and determined foe.
For both sides, it was the moment of decision. For Sultan Mehmet, who had risked all with enormous expense, the patience of his troops was wearing thin: they either had to win this battle or go home. The Byzantines too seemed to sense that this was a do or die moment. They were stretched perilously thin, bombarded by guns for 48 days. They could sense that they were close to victory.
During the night, Mehmet organised his troops and guns before the Lycus valley for the final assault. Constantine and his general, the valiant genoese Giustianini, also marshalled what remained of their army into the terrace between the 2 walls. As a sign of the finality of this battle, Constantine had the doors behind them locked. There was to be no retreat from this encounter - the defenders, exhausted as they were, would fight to victory, or to the death.
On the 29th of May 1453, at approximately 1.30 in the morning, with a bloodcurdling cry, the Turks launched themselves at the wall. Mehmet’s great cannons unleashed their apocalyptic blasts against the crumbling walls. The defenders fought back ferociously, holding the valuable ground behind the outer walls.
Finally, the cannons achieved their desired aim. A section of the ancient wall fell with a crash. The Turkish troops swarmed towards the breach. The gap was however too small for a large force to enter en masse - spurred to action, the defenders rallied and pushed back the Ottomans.
And then, in a twist of fate reminiscent of Homer, the luck of the Byzantines finally ran out. The general Giustianini, whose personal bravery and skill had contributed so much to the defense, was seriously injured. His men requested leave from Constantine to take him through the locked doors back into the city for treatment. The emperor was reluctant, knowing just how crucial this man’s presence was to the spirits of the troops, but he acceded.
It was a mistake. When Giustianini’s fellow Italians saw the door unlocked and their commander being taken out of the fray, they panicked and made for the door to follow him. The Greeks had to force them back into position.
The Turks seemed to sense this slackening of the defense, and they made for the breach with a new ferocity. They could sense victory was at hand. Meanwhile, on the northern part of the wall at the Blachernae palace, a moment of inalertness had allowed a small posse of Turks to breach the wall and raise the Ottoman standard in place of the genoese flag. The intruders were quickly repulsed, but the sight of the Ottoman banner flapping in the dawn had done its damage.
“The city is taken!” the came the cry, and with that, the Byzantine defense of Constantinople collapsed. Within minutes, the Turks had overrun the stockade in their tens of thousands. The Byzantines, sure enough, were backed up against the locked doors and, to a man, were either hacked or crushed to death. The dream of Byzantine, of a thousand years of classical greek and roman culture, died on the battlements.
No one really knows for sure what happened to Constantine XI, the fateful last emperor who fought alongside his troops in that stockade. No certain identification of any corpse was officially made, thought Mehmet would have certainly searched obsessively for his foe. As such, the last Constantine vanished from the midst of the melee into the realm of legend. Legend said that he sleeps still under the battered stones of the land wall, waiting to rise up one day and bring Byzantine rule back to Istanbul. It was perhaps on account of this prophesy that the paranoid Mehmet left the Golden Gate sealed.
What happened next is now history. The Ottoman troops ran amok in the city, sacking and pillaging. Venerated icons were torn into pieces, the valuable gold and silver frames melted down. Hagia Sofia was stripped of its treasures. Only by the Sultan’s decree that no buildings were to be touched did it survive the catastrophe.
The image of Sultan Mehmet entering Constantinople in triumph through what is now the Edirnekapi is one of the most famous in Islam. The 21-year old Sultan had done what neither his father, grandfather, and even armies under the companions of the Prophet Muhammed had done - he had conquered the most famous christian city in the world. He was hailed as the muslim Alexander. Western Europe shook in their boots, horrified by what they had let happen. They had long taken Constantinople’s role as a buffer against the muslim east for granted. Now the Turks had a foothold in Europe. Over the next few decades they would advance within striking range of Venice itself, whose senate had decided to abandon Constantinople to its fate. Only when Mehmet died in 1481 (perhaps poisoned) was the muslim advance into Europe halted.
Of all the trauma and horror of the 29th of May 1453, very little remains in evidence today. Where Mehmet might have once pitched his tent, there is a busy tangle of highways, weaving traffic in asphalt ribbons like an arabesque. The Topkapi was torn down to make way for large roads. Only the walls and its surviving gates remain, bearing silent witness to those events long ago, to the bones of fighting men that lie beneath its walls.
My pilgrimage ended at the northern end of the land walls, near the scant remains of the Blachernae palace where the Ottomans had first succeeded in raising their banner. Close by to the Edirnekapi stands a little jewel of a church, built in the closing years of the story of Byzantium. It’s the Church of the Holy Saviour in the Chora, turned into the Kariye mosque by the Ottomans and now a museum. Completed by a wealthy Byzantine nobleman who endowed it with its splendid mosaics, it gives a glimpse into the lost glories of Byzantium.
While Hagia Sofia had suffered the ignominious loss of much of its mosaics and fresco decoration over the centuries, leaving it pretty much a burnt-out shell albeit a glorious one, the Chora suffered far less loss, giving us an image of Constantinople that still persists in the Ottoman city today. The domes, miniature copies of Hagia Sofia, still glow with Byzantine gold, the muted colours still fresh in the hushed space. Among its treasures, a magnificent anastasis scene above the apse - Christ pulling Adam and Eve from their graves on his ascent to heaven. Mosaics of both saints Peter and Paul, haloed in gold, gesturing to one another across a doorway. Images of the ministry of Christ, and the life of the Virgin. A wonderfully vibrant gallery of angels in a lapis lazuli sky. A monumental Virgin and Christ, mirror of the one in Hagia Sofia’s upper gallery, Mary’s head still tilted sadly towards her stern-looking Son.
And of course, there is the image of Christ Pantocrator, high up in the dome where Hagia Sofia’s version would also have been. This is the image of Christ that once hung above the Golden Gate, at the beginning of my pilgrimage. He still stares down at us wordlessly, from an unbroken lineage of nearly two thousand years, a divine image frozen in time for us and generations to come. It’s good to know that some things aren’t lost forever.