Back in the fall I promised somebody that I would review
this book. Even when it arrived on my doorstep, all 800 pages of it, I thought I would have no trouble finishing
it up in time for people to buy copies of it for their historically minded
friends before Christmas. I soon found
that I had mistaken the nature of the book. As I sank deeper and deeper into
it, I realized Istanbul is not a
book you read, nor digest quickly. It is a book you immerse yourself in. Quite
a few readers will lack the patience for such a work. But for people who want a
book that reflects the size and variety and significance of the city of
Constantine (and so many other more interesting residents), this may prove to be a treasure. It certainly
is both well-written and well-thought out.
Hughes shows us Istanbul as many different peoples living
together in cooperation and rivalry on a landscape and seascape that is equally
varied. She knows the city
neighbourhoods and surrounding districts, the people who have lived there, the
agriculture, fishing, industry that have characterized the place over the last
8000 years. (Indeed at one point she
takes a story back 800,000 years, something I thoroughly approve of.) The network that holds place to together is network
of stories and customs, many of which have been around for very long time, and
indeed seem to have it originated or developed in Istanbul.
Take for instance the production and use of eunuchs for
specialized political and cultural functions. No historian would argue that
eunuchs were "invented" in the city. But for very long time they were
an important factor not only in the practical workings of the capital of the
Eastern Mediterranean, but part of its image abroad, an image that it was by no
means solely negative. This is part of the complex nature of Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul,
that it can be and has been simultaneously a symbol of luxury, imperial power,
religion and vice.
Constantinople/Istanbul also had periods of vulnerability
and at times it has almost been a backwater.
It might be said that Istanbul is only now emerging from its long
twentieth-century period of isolation, and isolation that Hughes clearly thinks
is quite atypical of Istanbul's history.
The theme of this book is the cosmopolitan nature of the city, its capability
to learn and invent and absorb elements from a variety of cultures, and to use
and transform those elements into a city culture that has often been
predominant in the eastern Mediterranean basin.
But since World War I the Republic of Turkey has not been a great power,
and Istanbul has not been a world city putting its own unique stamp on much of
the rest of the world. It is quite
possible, however, that this period is coming to an end.
But what kind of city may today's Istanbul be? The Great War destroyed empires, which
nationalists of many stripes tried to reorganize as national states, where one
history, one religion, and one ethnicity asserted its unique legitimacy by expelling many of the historic
"minorities" from the
"national homeland". One of
these empires became a Turkish state, while the imperial city lost its status
as a great eastern capital. It is only in the last two decades or so that
Turks have come to reconsider the role of their relatively new republic and
its greatest city. This book is a cautious argument in favor of remembering that the most
important role that Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul have played during
the long history of the city, has been to teach people how and why to be
citizens of the world.
Did I say that
Hughes was cautious? In today's
Mediterranean region, this is a radical thought indeed.
Image: A "Grand Turk" (Mehmet).
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