Description
What follows the Fall of Constantinople? How does the Ottoman capital develop? How do its residents survive and how do the Greek-Orthodox people organize their life? How deep is the effect of the Fall? Is there continuity from the pre-fall period? The book draws information from Constantinople chronicles, travellers’ narratives, diaries of Westerners who lived among the Greek-Orthodox people, preacher sermons revealing the existing social problems, from the heroic new martyrs commemorated in the Synaxaria, as well as from older texts of Greek historians and articles of contemporary Ottomanists. The reader follows the travellers in their exploration of Constantinople at the time –in its historic centre and its outskirts. Eventually, the city’s ancient and byzantine monuments cease to exist; the Byzantine Poli (City) becomes “blurry.” A new, Ottoman capital arises and begins to flourish, though its heyday is besmirched by chronic scourges: fires, earthquakes, epidemics, famine, and sufferings, against which everyone is powerless. The life of the Greek-Orthodox people, and others, develops around their “mahallah” (neighbourhood), their parish, their guilds, the market. This is also the period when Greek Orthodox begin their first contacts with both the West, mostly with Protestants, and the orthodox Russia.
