Constantinople City of the World's Desire 1453-1924

About this book

"The only city situated on two continents, Constantinople has always been both meeting-place and battlefield. This remarkable new study describes the city and its dual role when it was the capital of the Ottoman Sultans, dominating an empire which at its height stretched from Morocco to Russia and from the Danube to the Persian Gulf." "The story begins in 1453 with the triumphant entry into the city of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror on a white horse. It ends in 1924 with the hurried departure of the last Ottoman ruler, Abdulmecid, on the Orient Express. In studying the five hundred years between those two events, the author goes beneath the surface of the traveller's bustling and cosmopolitan Constantinople to record the history of what was at once an imperial capital, a holy city, a trading entrepot, a pleasure resort and, in its cultural and intellectual life, a laboratory of modernization. It was indeed 'the city of the world's desire' - irresistible, insidious, capable of driving its inhabitants to extremes of grandeur, piety or depravity." - Publisher.

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