It is said that the four ancient cities of the world are Italy's Rome, Greece's Athens, Egypt's Cairo and China's Xi'an, and the source is unknown. However, Athens has never been the ancient capital, and there is no imperial capital in Athens in ancient times, if you really want to choose the four ancient capitals, then it is obviously more appropriate to choose Constantinople.
Constantinople, located at the eastern tip of the Balkan Peninsula, is now called Istanbul, and the Bosphorus divides it into two parts: the west coast belongs to Europe and the east coast belongs to Asia. Constantinople is the gateway to the Black Sea, the only way for the Black Sea to enter the Mediterranean Sea, and the key point of communication between Asia and Europe, and its strategic position is unparalleled.
For thousands of years, Constantinople has had three names – Byzantium ~ Constantinople ~ Istanbul, and these three names bear witness to the thousand-year history of hegemony along the Mediterranean coast.
1. Byzantium – The Past Life of Constantinople (Greek Phase)
Byzantium, is the original name of Constantinople.
Around 658 BC, a colonist from Greece, named "Byzantus", was said to have been instructed by the gods to build a city opposite the "Kingdom of the Blind".
When Byzantus came to the Bosphorus, he found that there were already people on the east bank of the strait, and there was no one on the west bank, the most perfect natural harbor. Byzance thought to himself: It seems that God's instructions are correct, and the people on the east bank must be blind. So Byzantium built a city here and named it "Byzantium" after himself.
When the Greeks built Byzantium, our country was in the period of the supremacy of the Duke of Qi Huan, and the Middle East was the heyday of the Assyrian Empire, which had just conquered Egypt, and the brutal and bloody Assyrian slaughtered the earliest twin civilizations of mankind, the Two Rivers Civilization and the Ancient Egyptian Civilization.
Ancient Greece at this time had just entered the stage of city-state civilization, where Western and Eastern civilizations had not yet met, and the strategic value of Byzantium (Constantinople) had not yet been reflected.
2. Constantinople - New Rome, the Roman phase of Constantinople
Byzantium (Constantinople) is home to two continents, Asia and Europe, "three continents and five seas".
Eastward, through Asia Minor into the heart of the Middle East, Mesopotamia (Roman Empire)
To the west, take control of the Balkan Peninsula and enter the heartland of Europe (Ottoman siege of Vienna)
To the north, to control the Black Sea, to influence all of Eastern Europe (later Tsarist Russia)
To the south, occupy the Mediterranean Sea and dominate the world
Thus, when the Mediterranean world entered the age of empire, the extraordinary fate of Constantinople came.
After the rise of Rome, it stood on three feet in the Mediterranean with Greece (Macedonian period) and Carthage. In 264-146 BC, Rome destroyed Carthage through three Punic wars, and then in 214-146 BC, Rome conquered the entire Greek region through four Macedonian wars, and Since then Byzantium (Constantinople) has become part of the Roman Empire.
The rise of Byzantium (Constantinople) was due to the reign of Constantine the Great.
Constantine the Great, a military man, was proclaimed Roman Emperor by his subordinates in Britain in 306 AD. Later, in order to keep the eastern part of the empire from the threat of the Goths and Persians, Constantine decided to build a new capital in the eastern part of the empire, and Constantine visited Troy, Jerusalem, Thessalonica and other places, and finally chose Byzantium.
In 324 AD, Constantine the Great began to build a new capital in Byzantium, named "New Rome", and five years later a large and luxurious new capital appeared on the shores of the Bosphorus. In 330, constantinople, the "New Rome", officially became the capital of the Roman Empire.
After the Roman Empire was divided in two, Constantinople remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire until it was destroyed by the Ottoman Empire. Constantinople's original name, "Byzantium", is also the reason why the Eastern Roman Empire is called the "Byzantine Empire". For more than a thousand years, Constantinople has always been the center of civilization in all of Europe, and Constantinople has witnessed a thousand years of hegemony along the Mediterranean coast.
Roman Empire vs. Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD)
Eastern Roman Empire vs. Persian Sassanid Dynasty (224-651 AD)
Eastern Roman Empire vs. Arab Empire (632-1258 AD)
The Eastern Roman Empire and the Crusades (1096–1291 AD)
Eastern Roman Empire and Ottoman Empire (1299–1922 AD)
The Persians established the Achaemenid dynasty of the Persian Empire in 550 BC, and the Persian War led to a thousand-year struggle between the West and the East (Middle East) on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Persia, after three stages of the Achaemenid dynasty to the Parthian Empire to the Sassanid dynasty, and the Greek and Roman wars on the other side of the Mediterranean sea for a thousand years, was never completely defeated, but finally lost to the rising Arabs on the Arabian Peninsula.
The Arabs besieged Constantinople
After the rise of the Arabs, persia in the east, Egypt in the west, and Asia Minor in the north, the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire was reduced to only the Balkan Peninsula, but the Arab siege of Constantinople was eventually defeated by the Byzantines with "Greek fire".
Greek fire
The year was 717 AD, when the siege of Constantinople was lifted, allowing the Byzantine Empire to continue and enter its heyday.
The Seljuk Turks defeated Byzantium
In 1071 AD, the Seljuk Turks of the Arab Empire defeated the Byzantine Empire in Manchicat in Asia Minor, and Byzantium did not recover after this defeat, in order to "defend the country", Byzantium called on the whole of Europe to launch a "holy war" against Muslims, which was the "Crusade".
Western Europeans conquered Constantinople, the Latin Empire
The Crusades made the "barbarians" of Western Europe see the wealth of the East, so they not only fought against the Muslims, but also captured and looted Constantinople, where they established the "Latin Empire" (1204-1261), although it did not last long, but it was fatal to the Byzantine Empire, which was later restored, but only The territory of Constantinople and its surrounding territory was left.
3. Istanbul – The Present Life of Constantinople (Ottoman Period)
The Crusades had a profound impact on the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The Byzantine Empire thus completely declined, and a branch of the Seljuk Turks established the Ottoman Empire in Asia Minor in 1299 AD by Ottoman I.
The Ottoman Empire, located in Asia Minor, next to Constantinople, began to expand after its establishment, so the fate of Constantinople was predestined.
In 1453, the Ottoman Sultan and "Conqueror" Mehmed II besieged Constantinople, and finally Constantinople was breached, the last emperor of the empire, Constantine XI, was killed in battle, and the Byzantine Empire was destroyed.
It should be said that the Ottoman Empire was very tolerant of religion, where the "Orthodox Church" of the Byzantine Empire and the "Islam" of the Ottoman Empire could coexist, and the Ottoman Empire claimed to be the "Lord of the World" and claimed to inherit both the "Eastern Roman Empire" and the "Arab Empire", which is why Greece is still an Orthodox country today.
The Ottoman Empire that captured Constantinople was once in the ascendant, and Constantinople became the capital of the Ottoman Empire, but the name became Istanbul until the defeat of Ottoman Turkey after World War I.
Today's Istanbul, then Constantinople, now belongs to Turkey, but it is no longer the capital. But it was once the hub of the world, the capital of the great empires, and it had a long history of stability and prosperity, and it belonged both to Europe, because it was Constantinople, and to the Ottomans of the East, because it became Istanbul.
Constantinople ~ Istanbul, which was once the core of the Orthodox Church and converted the Slavs to the Orthodox Church; it was once the capital of the Ottoman Empire, the bridgehead of the Ottoman siege of Europe, which once controlled the infinite wealth of the Mediterranean Sea and became rich, but eventually in the modern Industrial Revolution, like China, it became a semi-colony and became the capital of the "sick man of West Asia".
Today's Turkey is still very wandering, does it belong to the "Islamic world" in Asia, or should it belong to Europe?