Posts Tagged ‘Stimpol’
History Of Istanbul
History of Istanbul:
The first settlement is thought to have been founded by the colonists from Megara led by Byzas in the 7th century BC. According to the legend before coming here, Byzas consulted the oracle in Delphi about founding a new settlement. The answer was short ‘opposite the blind people’. When Byzas and his colony arrived to the Bosphorus in 657 BC, they saw the settlement on the Asian shore at Chalcedon. When they discovered the spectacular natural harbour of the Golden Horn on the European shore they thought ‘these people in Chalcedon must be blind’. They named their new settlement ‘Byzantium’ after their leader Byzas.
Due to its important location, over the next thousand years, Byzantium became a rich trade and commerce center.
When Constantine I defeated Licinius in 324 AD he became the sole ruler of the Roman Empire and began to build a new capital at Byzantium, later named Constantinople which ment the city of Constantine.
Christianity was declared the official religion of the Roman Empire in 330 AD and Constantinople became the capital city of the Byzantine Empire which was rebuilt by Constantine I.
Besides being the new capital of the Empire, Constantinople was also the symbol of the Christendom. Constantius II and Constans the two suns of Constantine, took over the leadership of the empire his death in 337.Ruler of the western provinces was Constans and in 341, he decreed that all pre-Christian Graeco Roman worship and sacrifice should cease and he warned the ones still persisted in practicing ancient Graeco-Roman polytheism with the threat of the death penalty.
The Persian Darius (513 BC), the Athenian Alcibiades (408 BC), the Macedonian Philip II (339 BC), the Arabs (673-78, 717-18 AD), the Bulgarians (813, 913 AD) and the armies of the Fourth Crusade, which twice succeeded in taking the city (1203, 1204 AD) are among the assaliants that besieged the city before it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453. After it was conqured by the Turks, the city became the capital of the Ottoman Empire until 1923. In the very same year Ankara was declared the capital city of the newly founded Turkish Republic. Great Britain, France and Italy occupied the city from 1918 until 1923.
Before the name was officially changed to Istanbul in 1930 the city went through some name changes; Konstantiniyye, Polis, Stimpol, Estanbul, Istambol and Istanbul.
