"If the world," Napoleon is said to have mused, "were a single state, its capital would be Istanbul." Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration at that time. It was true, however, when Constantinople was the vital core of the Eastern Roman Empire. True when Istanbul enjoyed prestige as the capital of the Ottoman Empire at the zenith of its power and resplendence.
Lamartine's rhapsodical statement holds true for all ages: "There, God and man, nature and art have combined to create the most wonderful sight that the human eye could contemplate on earth." The synthesis of natural endowments and human creativity is indeed wondrous in the "City of Cities" as it was often called through history. "The City." Byzantium and Tsargrad. Myklagaard and "New Rome." The Ottoman "Islambol" (full of Muslims) or "Dersaadet" (the abode of happiness.) The city par excellence which inspired Busbeeq, the Habsburg Ambassador to the Court of Suleyman the Magnificent, to write two and a half centuries earlier than Napoleon: "It is as if nature created Istanbul as the capital of the world."
The only city to have served as the capital of three Empires, the only one astride two continents, the meeting place of the East and the West, Asia and Europe, Christianity and Islam.
Continuosly inhabited for 27 centuries, Istanbul is one of the oldest major cities -- along with Athens, Jerusalem, Peking, Rome, Damascus, and Aleppo. Few cities have played as significant a role in history as has Byzantium-Constantinople-Istanbul. "The Emperor's City", "The Queen City", "The Ruling City".
During Justinian's reign, the historian Procopius wrote that the city is graced by the sea which "surrounds it like a garland." The Golden Horn, that enchanting inlet that Pierre Loti was enamored of. The Bosphorus, which conjures uo romantic love and exquisite beauty, about which Petrus Gyllius (Pierre Gilles) observed in mid-16th Century: "The Bosphorus surpasses all other straits..with one key, it opens and closes two seas, two worlds."
"Eternal City." Heartland of Eastern Christianity. The core of Ottoman Islam. The See of the Patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenian Church. Host to many ancient synagogues. St. Sophia, Suleyman's Mosque, Blue Mosque.
Small wonder that, in the 17th Century, G. J. Grelot, the French painter and travel writer, was moved to express his admiration: "For a gentleman to travel to Constantinople, and to view the adjacent countryside, is certainly one of the most pleasing diversions that may be, and which furnishes a man with observations the most admirable, while he beholds what nature offers to his eyes, the most charming that can be imaged, in the delectable situation of palaces, and what Time has left, in beautiful ruins, of the Magnificence and grandeur of the Eastern Empire."
Istanbul lies and lives on Seven Hills. For many Ottoman Sultans, it was a cultural ideology to create it as a masterpiece of history, architecture, and urbanity. This ideal was articulated in the 15 th Century in a register during the reign of Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror, in a rhyming couplet: "It is the true art to create a glorious city / And to fill the hearts of its people with felicity." By the beginning of the 18th Century, the British traveller Aaron Hill was writing in his "The Present State of the Ottoman Empire": "This city in her modern Dress...has open'd all the Gates of Plenty and Command to her unbounded Sway and Traffick, and the unexampled Beauties of the Prospects she affords, are such as render her the Seat of Pleasure, and the Paradise of Nature."
Ottoman poets re-created the pleasures of this paradise in countless verses, giving rise to the emergence of a genre known as "sehr-engiz" which roughly translates as "city-praise."
Topkapi Palace, known as "The Seraglio" to Europe, stood as the center of the Ottoman system. It now stands, at the entrance to Istanbul by the sea, where the Golden Horn and Bosphorus embrace the sea of Marmara. An immensely rich Museum which The London Times once called "the Eighth Wonder of the World." In his "Travels through Europe, Asia and into part of Africa" published in early 18th Century, A. de la Motraye described this home of the Sultans, the seat of the Ottoman government, and the domicile of the Harem: "The Seraglio is rather a Collection of Palaces and Apartments added to one another, according to the Caprice of several Emperors, than one single Palace. It is justly called the Great, since perhaps 'tis the largest in the Universe.
Byzantium-Constantinople-Istanbul, a triad of history and civilization, has unfurled a drama that dwarfs the imagination. Simply the mention of some of the names associated with it evokes its historical grandeur: Darius, Alexander, Constantine, Septimius Severus, Attilla the Hun, the Vikings, Mehmed the Conqueror, Suleyman the Magnificent, Ataturk. The prophet Muhemmad, it is said, had the vision of an Arab conquest of Constantinople. Leonardo da Vinci drew sketches for a bridge over the Bosphorus: Now there are two. Casonova, Florence Nigtingale, Count Dracule, Flaubert, Nerval, Sarah Bornhardt, Trotsky and Ouspensky lived in Istanbul or visited it.
R. W. Emerson's statement has a great measure of truth: "a city lives by remembering." Today's Istanbul has a memory that spans 27 centuries.
"The City" reverberetes with the whispers of history and the murmurs of human drama. It hears in its heart songs of joy, elegies, and paeans from all of its centuries. It revels in the surlight that gives lustre to its seven hills. It heeds the horns that resound through the mysteries of its fog. It listens, in its mind's ear, to triumphal marches and to requiems. It rejoices in the sounds of beauty from all the musical traditions it has ambraced.
"Standing at the meeting-place of two great worlds," Ataturk, the founder and first President of the Turkish Republic said in 1927, "as an adornment of the Turkish lands, a wealth of Turkish history, and the nation's apple of the eye, Istanbul is a city that commends the hearts of all citizens."
Authors, especially poets, not only Turkish, but from many cultures, listen to Istanbul's eternal voice and give new echoes to it. The City lives by remembering and listening.
Talat Sait Halman
[Aktaran: Ozgur Polat]