Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities

by Bettany Hughes

By 323 the 25 December birthday of Sol Invictus, the ‘Unconquered Sun’, the patron god of many soldiers, had become the birthday of Christ.

The word ascetic comes from the Greek askesis, training – no surprise that these men were also described as athletes, individuals who through maximum carnal stamina and bodily stress would reach the athlon, the prize of immortality and of God.

Sophia, Holy Wisdom. The word sophia in Greek originally meant a kind of practical skill. Characters in Homer were described as sophos – wise –

The Greek word for justice, dike, derives from the Babylonian for finger (we have a trace of this root in our index finger, the decimal system and the word judge: a iudex, a judge, is someone who points out the right way for a society to behave by directing us to the ius, the law or sacred oath).

female DNA in Iceland seems to come largely from captured Celts – Scottish and Irish women dragged to the new Viking settlement as ‘comfort’, human booty. In Byzantine territory the transfer and exchange of slaves would become a key factor in the balance of the economy.11 We still recall Viking slavery every time we describe being ‘in thrall’ to someone, the Old Norse þræll meaning a slave.

The beer’s name, boza, was quickly bastardised by visiting English sailors to ‘booze’.

A translator, fixer, ambassador rolled into one, the dragoman was a fundamentally Eastern creature.

For many Western visitors Istanbul would offer the first full immersion in streets thronged with people of colour (it will be why the sight of black Ottoman leaders in the Crimean War and the world’s first black pilot in 1916 – Ahmed Ali Efendi – are eagerly commented on in the journals of Western visitors but pass without comment in Ottoman sources).

Speaking frangochiotika, their strange mix of Italian, Greek and Turkish, they were truly internationalist – and a valued and critical part of the cultural tapestry that was Istanbul.

Slave-trading, although officially outlawed in Ottoman territories in AD 1890, was reported in Istanbul up until 1916, while the Sultan’s harem quarters remained untouched in the Topkapı until 1909 and the harem itself functional in the Dolmabahçe Palace until 1922.9 10

The Anglo-phone world regularly describes overcomplicated administration as being Byzantine; corrupt and opaque is the implication.