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Fantastic book that gets into the place in many languages that just means 'The City'...from Byzantium....to Constantinople to finally Istanbul this book tracks the rise, fall and rebirth of the city into what it is today. A city that has just as many relics of Christianity, Islam and ancient Greece and Rome...

- Istanbul was founded in about 675 for profit by Greek traders who wanted to take advantage of its great waterways and strategic location in the seas.

- Byzantium was named after a real king (Byzantine) who was an ally of Rome and supported the Empire consistently. Due to this support the city was allowed the grace to operate independently for hundreds of years. The city supported Rome militarily but as Rome grew richer many in Rome started to look at the treasures in Byzantium with envy.

- This support for Rome though would lead to problems as Rome fell into a brutal civil war. With rival generals demanding support from the city and Rome plunging into chaos those same generals who said they ruled the Empire...sometimes no one could tell who was in charge...would lead the city to be put under siege leading them to eventually surrender.

- In 303 AD Diocletian banned Christianity throughout Rome leading to the persecution of believers everywhere. But a general named Constantine who had converted to Christianity after having a vision became emperor after a civil war and made his home in Byzantium renaming it Constantinople.

- Constantine rebuilt the city making it practically invulnerable. Because he was in love with his own building projects (which some still stand today) he moved most of the holy relics from the Empire and the imperial archives to the city.

- The city had considerable stability going forward but a lot of the Roman Empire was challenged. After the Emperor Justinian (who was hated) the city seemed to go through a procession of clowns in charge all the while the Persian Empire was growing in strength and getting to a point where it began to slowly circle the city.

- Constantinople would remain under siege. Because it was a link to Europe this became a rallying cry for the foundation of the crusades. Europe rallied sending troops to Constantinople to try to regain the Empire. But the avarice of the Emperors often got in the way and split the motivation of the crusades (when many crusaders found he emperor did not support them they took lands for themselves). This led to crusaders establishing the kingdoms of Israel and other domains in the Middle East.

- In the 1200's the city of Constantinople fell not to foreign invaders but actually crusaders who sacked the city after being turned on by the emperor. This weakened the city and more importantly put forward a distrust of Europeans that the city dwellers couldn't get over.

- Eventually they were surrounded by the Ottoman Empire and became a vassal state. But they would later be taken over by Mehmet the first who repopulated the city (often by force) and remade all of the churches into mosques.

- The Muslim rulers were quite a force in medieval times...but they sucked at modernizing. In fact many of the modern inventions of Europe that could have helped them they rejected in religious grounds...the printing press of all things was one example.

- In the 1800's though they finally tried to modernize. Progressive rulers came forward and tried to bring the empire into modern times but they went back and forth with rulers being rejected, kicked out, strangled, new rulers trying to assert themselves. All the way into the 1920's when a group of progressives called the Young Turks finally got traction.

- Their leader (Mustafa Kamal) finally got the support of the military and foreign governments displacing the ruler of the country and turning the country into the ground work for modern Istanbul in Turkey.

Great book that brings a lot of the medieval history which I really enjoyed...