1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West

by Roger Crowley

A red apple invites stones. Turkish proverb

They were considered to be heirs to the Roman Empire and referred to themselves accordingly as Romans. In turn they were commanded by an emperor who was half Serbian and a quarter Italian, and much of the defense was undertaken by people from Western Europe whom the Byzantines called “Franks”: Venetians, Genoese, and Catalans, aided by some ethnic Turks, Cretans – and one Scotsman.

Constantinople, constructed on the site of a settlement raised by the legendary Greek Byzas a thousand years earlier, had already been a Christian city for 400 years

A man going there would say he was going “eis tin polin” – “into the city” – which could have been interpreted by Turkish ears as Istanbul.