History of Istanbul

"Lygos" redirects here. For other uses of the term, see Lygos (disambiguation).

Depiction of Istanbul, then known in English as Constantinople, from Young Folks' History of Rome by Charlotte Mary Yonge

Neolithic artifacts, uncovered by archeologists at the beginning of the 21st century, indicate that Istanbul's historic peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE.[1] That early settlement, important in the spread of the Neolithic Revolution from the Near East to Europe, lasted for almost a millennium before being inundated by rising water levels.[2][3][4] The first human settlement on the Asian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500 to 3500 BCE.[5] In the European side, near the point of the peninsula (Sarayburnu) there was a settlement during the early 1st millennium BCE. Modern authors have linked it to the possible Thracian toponym Lygos,[6] mentioned by Pliny the Elder as an earlier name for the site of Byzantium.[7]

There is evidence suggesting there were settlements around the region dating as far back as 6700 BC, and it is hard to define if there was any settlement on exact spot at city proper established, but earliest records about city proper begins around 660 BC[a][13][14] when Greek settlers from the Attic town of Megara colonized the area and established Byzantium on the European side of the Bosphorus. It fell to the Roman Republic in 196 BC,[15] and was known as Byzantium in Latin until 330, when the city, soon renamed as Constantinople, became the new capital of the Roman Empire. During the reign of Justinian I, the city rose to be the largest in the western world, with a population peaking at close to half a million people.[16] Constantinople functioned as the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which effectively ended with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Constantinople then became the capital of the Ottoman Turks.

The population had declined during the medieval period, but as the Ottoman Empire approached its historical peak, the city grew to a population of close to 700,000 in the 16th century,[17] once again ranking among the world's most popular cities. With the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, that country's capital moved from Constantinople to Ankara (previously Angora).

  1. ^ "Istanbul's ancient past unearthed". BBC. 10 January 2009. Retrieved 5 August 2021.
  2. ^ Algan, O.; Yalçın, M.N.K.; Özdoğan, M.; Yılmaz, Y.C.; Sarı, E.; Kırcı-Elmas, E.; Yılmaz, İ.; Bulkan, Ö.; Ongan, D.; Gazioğlu, C.; Nazik, A.; Polat, M.A.; Meriç, E. (2011). "Holocene coastal change in the ancient harbor of Yenikapı–İstanbul and its impact on cultural history". Quaternary Research. 76 (1): 30. Bibcode:2011QuRes..76...30A. doi:10.1016/j.yqres.2011.04.002. S2CID 129280217.
  3. ^ "Bu keşif tarihi değiştirir". hurriyet.com.tr.
  4. ^ "Marmaray kazılarında tarih gün ışığına çıktı". fotogaleri.hurriyet.com.tr.
  5. ^ "Cultural Details of Istanbul". Republic of Turkey, Minister of Culture and Tourism. Archived from the original on 12 September 2007. Retrieved 2 October 2007.
  6. ^ Janin, Raymond (1964). Constantinople byzantine. Paris: Institut Français d'Études Byzantines. pp. 10ff.
  7. ^ "Pliny the Elder, book IV, chapter XI". 29 December 2016. Archived from the original on 29 December 2016. Retrieved 4 August 2021. On leaving the Dardanelles we come to the Bay of Casthenes, ... and the promontory of the Golden Horn, on which is the town of Byzantium, a free state, formerly called Lygos; it is 711 miles from Durazzo,...
  8. ^ Herodotus Histories 4.144, translated in De Sélincourt 2003, p. 288
  9. ^ a b Isaac 1986, p. 199
  10. ^ Roebuck 1959, p. 119, also as mentioned in Isaac 1986, p. 199
  11. ^ Lister 1979, p. 35
  12. ^ Freely 1996, p. 10
  13. ^ Bloom, Jonathan; Blair, Sheila S.; Blair, Sheila (14 May 2009). Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art & Architecture: Three-Volume Set. OUP USA. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-19-530991-1.
  14. ^ "Istanbul | History, Population, Map, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  15. ^ Smith, William George (1860). A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology and Geography. p. 1003.
  16. ^ Harl, Kenneth (26 August 2015). "Early Medieval and Byzantine Civilization: Constantine to Crusades". Archived from the original on 26 August 2015. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  17. ^ Bosworth, Clifford Edmund (1 January 2007). Historic Cities of the Islamic World. BRILL. p. 210. ISBN 978-90-04-15388-2.


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