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I'm on the edge of Anatolia.

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It's a Greek word. Greeks had lived
here for thousands of years.

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In Greek, it just means
"the land where the sun rises".

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But a thousand years ago,
another people arrived here.

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When they met people on the road,
they'd say, "Where are you going?"

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They would normally answer in Greek,
"eis tin poli" - "to the city",

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and that's how this city got
its new name.

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"Eis tin poli" - Istanbul.

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Those people were the Turks.

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And this is the story
of how Greek Constantinople
became Turkish Istanbul.

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How the ancient capital
of Christianity became
the imperial city of Islam.

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CALL TO PRAYER

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I've come here
as both historian and traveller...

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..to find that story written
into the fabric of the living city.

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So far, I have uncovered
its transformation
from a small, pagan fishing village

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to the Christian capital
of the Roman Empire.

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But that set it on a collision
course with Rome itself

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and with new forces to the east.

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After 700 years,

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this place had come
on an incredible journey.

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What happened over
the next 400 years would define
not just this city, but the world.

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Now I want to get
to the heart of that moment

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when global history seemed to pivot

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on the fight to possess
and identify this one fickle city.

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Byzantium, Constantinople,
Istanbul -

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three names
for one totally extraordinary city.

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It's been occupied by the Greeks,
the Romans, the Byzantines,
the Venetians and the Turks.

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It's been a world city,
a cosmopolitan city,
a capital of empires.

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It owes its place to its unique
position astride Europe and Asia,

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but also to its history

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as a holy city
and an imperial capital.

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Constantinople in AD 1000 -

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the new Rome.

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For 700 years,
this city had been the capital

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not just of an empire,
but of a religion,

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a different kind of holy city.

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Holy cities are places
where men encounter the divine,

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but Constantinople was always
different from Jerusalem or Mecca,

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the settings of the great dramas
of the monotheistic religions.

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When Constantine the Great converted
to Christianity,

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he made Constantinople the capital
of his unified Christian empire -

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one faith, one empire, one emperor.

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A fusion of power and sanctity.

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This was a new idea.
Jesus had been a carpenter's son

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and now this was a city
of sacred emperors.

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And it defined one thing.

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The possession of Constantinople
gave you God's authority
to rule the world.

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Constantinople was about religion
and power.

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It was a heady cocktail coveted
by every empire that came after it.

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And over the centuries,
two great rivals emerged

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with their own ambitions
to rule the world for God -

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the Caliphs of Islam
and the Popes of Rome.

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The fall of Constantinople to Islam
is one of the great stories
of world history,

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but what is less well known

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is that the real story of the death
of Byzantium began 400 years earlier
in AD 1054.

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Not with a conflict
between Christians and Muslims,

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but a war of words between
Christians and other Christians.

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The story unfolded
in the sacred heart of this city -

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its awesome cathedral, Hagia Sophia.

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It was more than 500 years old
at the turn of the millennium.

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And even today,

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it's still one of the most
awe-inspiring buildings on Earth.

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This was the holy of holies
of Byzantine Christianity,

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the place where,
ever since the fall of Rome,

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emperors had been crowned

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who claimed rightful sovereignty
over every soul in Christendom.

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But in 1054, the peace of this
building and that universal vision
were shattered...

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..by the agents of Byzantium's
resurgent, ancient rival -

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Rome.

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On July the 16th,
papal legates burst into the service
here in Saint Sophia

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and laid a sentence of
excommunication right on the altar.

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Four days later,

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the Orthodox Patriarch
of Constantinople excommunicated
the papal legates.

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It seemed like just
the latest skirmish in centuries
of ecclesiastical bickering,

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but in fact, this time, it would
bring total catastrophe to the city.

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They called it the Great Schism,

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the moment Christianity split
into two rival camps.

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On one side were the Byzantines,
Greek-speaking, Orthodox,

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and on the other, the Latins,

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so called because they held services
in Latin, not Greek.

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But their differences went
far deeper than language.

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They disagreed
on the fundamental nature of God.

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But that was nothing compared
to the cultural differences.

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You can meet the Byzantine Emperors,
appropriately enough,
up in the gods.

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In this high-up part of the church,
you can almost feel the air
becoming a bit more rarefied.

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This is the Marble Gate
and up here the Empresses
would sit on their throne

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and watch the services going on
down below,

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while over here, the Emperor
and his entourage would arrive

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via a secret passageway
from the Great Palace.

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There's no better place to get
into the heads of the Byzantine side
of the quarrel

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because here you can come
face to face with the person
who was in charge

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in the run-up to the Great Schism.

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Here's Zoe.

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Princess Zoe was
a plain old spinster

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who, crowned Empress
in the autumn of her life,
discovered the joys of sex

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which she embraced with unabashed
and brazen enthusiasm.

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She married three times
and each husband became Emperor.

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You can see here
that every time she remarried,

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they had to rub out the head and rub
out the name and put a new one in.

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Now, the first husband exhausted
himself taking aphrodisiacs
to keep up with her,

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but her minister, the sinister
John the Eunuch, set her up
with his teenage brother Michael.

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Zoe fell passionately
and head over heels in love.

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She had her first husband
murdered in her bath

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and he was still lying there
when she married
her teenage lover Michael

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who turned out to be actually
a very good emperor.

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But he died of exhaustion

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and so she married
for the third time -

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Constantine, who we see up here.

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But he had a problem. He was in love
with his mistress Skleraina.

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This didn't put off Zoe at all.

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The three of them set up home
happily in the Imperial Palace

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where they lived together
in a very Byzantine menage a trois.

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It's a juicy story
and it gets you into the heads
of the Byzantine elite.

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They were refined, elegant.

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They loved strong women
and they despised petty morality.

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Down the hall, you can get a sense
of what they thought
of their upstart western rivals.

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The Great Schism
had divided Christendom

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into two warring sects -

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Roman Catholicism
and Eastern Orthodox.

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But the hatred wasn't just
religious. It was also cultural.

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And this graffiti here tells
some of the story.

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The Byzantines
had really got to know westerners

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through the arrival
of the Varangian Guard,

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the new Emperor's bodyguard
made up of Norsemen and Vikings

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and Anglo-Saxon mercenaries.

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This is probably some
of their graffiti.

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Byzantines regarded themselves
as the greatest civilisation
history had ever known,

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the Roman Empire
and their Emperor as Christ's
own vicegerents on Earth.

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To them, the westerners were
the sort of shaggy-haired axemen

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who left graffiti
in their favourite church.

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Christianity was divided
into two camps -

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the Greek-speaking,
effete, elegant Byzantines

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and the hardy warrior culture
of the Latin-speaking west.

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But an amazing twist in the tale
was coming.

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Byzantium was going to need
the west's hairy axemen
more than ever before

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because it was now facing a war
on two fronts.

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Just 17 years after the schism
with Rome,

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Christianity and Byzantium
faced the greatest ever threat
to their existence.

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To the east, the Turks
were sweeping into the Empire.

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And in 1071,
they destroyed the Byzantine Army.

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It was the start of a new chapter

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in Byzantium's history,

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one in which the city would face
enemies to both east and west.

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No-one knew
what was going to happen.

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Islam had been on the march
for 400 years

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and the big question now
was would Christendom,
would Constantinople survive.

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This was the beginning
of a 400-year struggle

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in which there were not two sides,
but three

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in the coming struggle that pitted
the invading Turkish Muslims

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against the two feuding sects
of Christendom, east and west.

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The big question now would be could
they put aside their differences
and unite to face the common enemy.

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This was the last chance
for Christian Constantinople

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to use one enemy
to fight off the other.

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Of their two possible allies,

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they chose the ones
who were at least Christian.

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The new Emperor, Alexios Komnenos,
held his nose
and sent an appeal to the Pope

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for armed forces to counter
the threat of the infidel.

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He had hoped for a battalion
or two of well-trained knights.

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What he got was the Crusades.

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It was as if the entire world
of the west, from the Adriatic
to the Straits of Gibraltar,

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had come here to Constantinople

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and the Crusades really were
an extraordinary
and enormous movement of people,

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80,000 of them,
some in unruly mobs and some
in organised, princely armies,

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but they all came here.

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It was actually the last thing
the Emperor wanted.

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It was a moment
of enormous potential

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and latent threat to Byzantium.

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Could they harness the power
of these western hordes

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or would they be overrun by them?

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St Mary of the Mongols

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is the only Byzantine church
still operational in the city.

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Historian Peter Frankopan took me
there to understand what happened

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when the westerners found themselves
in the capital
of eastern Christianity.

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So when the first Crusaders arrive,
how did it go,
their first visit to Byzantium?

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The first wave that arrives here
behave like football hooligans

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on tour who have had
too much to drink,

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so they steal lead
off the roofs of the churches,
they go berserk through the city

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and riot police methods
are put in place to make sure
that the city stays safe.

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They're quickly shunted off
across the Bosphorus
to keep them out of harm's way,

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but even when they get there,
they are said to impale children,
to kill men, women

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without asking whether they're Muslim
or Greek or Christian

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and they behave in a way
that polite society in Constantinople
just thinks is horrific.

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00:16:54,800 --> 00:16:59,240
Alexios, the Emperor at that time,
who is the architect of the Crusades,

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has real concerns that he's let
a genie out of the bottle.

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00:17:05,120 --> 00:17:09,400
They are like country boys
visiting a big, big city.

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00:17:09,400 --> 00:17:15,200
A traveller walks into Saint Sophia
and he says, "I don't even know
if I'm in Heaven or I'm on Earth."

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00:17:15,200 --> 00:17:19,280
There is a sense that the Orthodox
are closer to early Christianity.

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00:17:19,280 --> 00:17:25,280
All the great relics of Christianity
are here. All of the churches are
older than anywhere else in Europe.

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00:17:25,280 --> 00:17:28,840
So this is what real Christianity
looks and feels like.

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00:17:28,840 --> 00:17:33,920
That is a source
of great admiration on the one hand,
but also enormous envy on the other.

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00:17:33,920 --> 00:17:40,600
How did the relationship go
from amazement and a bit of envy
to wild hatred?

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00:17:40,600 --> 00:17:46,400
I think what happens is that
the Crusaders and the Latin West
get their claws into the Holy Land

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00:17:46,400 --> 00:17:52,160
and that requires a narrative that
explains that they are the true heirs
and defenders of Christianity.

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00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:57,360
At that point, all the animosities
start to rise against the Greeks

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00:17:57,360 --> 00:18:01,880
and against the Orthodox clergy
and against the Orthodox theology.

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00:18:01,880 --> 00:18:06,800
Small, little problems are suddenly
blown up into major sticking points

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00:18:06,800 --> 00:18:12,120
and that poison starts
to drip through into the west and
it drips through very effectively,

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00:18:12,120 --> 00:18:16,120
so that the word "Byzantine" still
today has very negative connotations.

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00:18:16,120 --> 00:18:20,360
Politicians are Byzantine, taxes and
things that are bad are Byzantine,

200
00:18:20,360 --> 00:18:25,960
so the Crusaders start
as being Byzantium's allies
at the moment of great weakness

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00:18:25,960 --> 00:18:28,960
and become their rivals
and their nemesis.

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00:18:32,600 --> 00:18:36,200
History was taking
an unexpected turn.

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00:18:36,200 --> 00:18:42,480
The fate of this city
would finally be determined
not by the battle with the Turks,

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00:18:42,480 --> 00:18:45,960
but by the battle
with its own Christian allies.

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00:18:47,640 --> 00:18:50,600
Over the coming centuries,

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00:18:50,600 --> 00:18:56,480
wave after wave of crusading Latins
stampeded through here

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00:18:56,480 --> 00:18:59,560
on their way to the Holy Land.

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00:19:01,160 --> 00:19:06,040
And more ominously still,
others were coming to stay.

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00:19:16,360 --> 00:19:21,120
Parts of Constantinople were turning
into a city within a city.

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00:19:23,240 --> 00:19:27,240
This area is called Galata
and by the mid-12th century,

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00:19:27,240 --> 00:19:29,640
it was filled with new arrivals.

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00:19:29,640 --> 00:19:34,720
Not Crusaders, but merchants
from Amalfi, Genoa and Venice.

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00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:41,840
It still has
a distinctly Italian feel.

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00:19:43,560 --> 00:19:46,200
People here looked different.

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00:19:46,200 --> 00:19:50,480
They spoke different.
They went to different churches.

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00:19:50,480 --> 00:19:55,240
The Latins were the new force
in Constantinople.

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00:19:58,040 --> 00:20:04,640
But for the Byzantines,
this was their world
being turned upside down.

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00:20:07,720 --> 00:20:11,360
The Latins had once just been
hairy axemen.

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00:20:11,360 --> 00:20:14,400
Now they were taking Byzantine jobs

220
00:20:14,400 --> 00:20:19,520
and worming their way
into its highest echelons -

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00:20:19,520 --> 00:20:22,680
the army, the government,
the imperial family.

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00:20:25,320 --> 00:20:28,840
Something, they said,
simply had to be done.

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00:20:35,360 --> 00:20:39,280
The people longed to be rid
of the hated Latins

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00:20:39,280 --> 00:20:43,520
and for that, they needed
a real Byzantine prince.

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00:20:43,520 --> 00:20:46,240
His name was Andronikos Komnenos.

226
00:20:49,440 --> 00:20:55,800
And he was well known as the most
glamorous and best-looking man
in the entire Empire.

227
00:20:58,800 --> 00:21:00,920
He was now 65,

228
00:21:00,920 --> 00:21:06,760
but this silver fox had the looks,
the energies and the appetites
of a much younger man.

229
00:21:06,760 --> 00:21:11,640
He was delighted to be crowned
Emperor of Byzantium.

230
00:21:17,600 --> 00:21:21,640
Xenophobic feeling was boiling
against the Latins.

231
00:21:24,200 --> 00:21:30,320
And in Andronikos, they had found
just the kind of unscrupulous
demagogue ready to use it

232
00:21:30,320 --> 00:21:32,280
to his own advantage.

233
00:21:36,120 --> 00:21:40,120
Andronikos unleashed the mob
against the Latins

234
00:21:40,120 --> 00:21:43,720
who were massacred to a man,
their churches burned

235
00:21:43,720 --> 00:21:48,640
and the Emperor's popularity surged
on a tide of Latin blood.

236
00:21:57,120 --> 00:21:59,920
As so often in history,

237
00:21:59,920 --> 00:22:05,400
sectarian tensions had brought
to power a self-serving autocrat

238
00:22:05,400 --> 00:22:07,600
and ended in terrible violence.

239
00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:17,080
Unfortunately for the Byzantines,
they couldn't control the dark force
they had unleashed.

240
00:22:18,760 --> 00:22:22,320
Andronikos wasn't as charming
as he looked.

241
00:22:22,320 --> 00:22:27,800
The old swinger turned out
to be a sadistic monster
who launched a reign of terror.

242
00:22:27,800 --> 00:22:30,760
He murdered
his 13-year-old Co-Emperor

243
00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:33,800
and then married
his 12-year-old widow.

244
00:22:33,800 --> 00:22:36,480
Even the Byzantines were appalled.

245
00:22:36,480 --> 00:22:39,600
When the mob turned against him,
he tried to run,

246
00:22:39,600 --> 00:22:44,080
but he was captured and subjected
to the most appalling torments.

247
00:22:44,080 --> 00:22:47,080
First, his teeth were pulled out
one by one,

248
00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:51,720
then his hands were cut off and then
he was skinned with boiling water.

249
00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:55,080
Now they jeered,
"You've really lost your looks."

250
00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:04,560
The rise and fall of the tyrant
Andronikos had scarred for ever

251
00:23:04,560 --> 00:23:07,080
the holy streets of Byzantium.

252
00:23:08,240 --> 00:23:13,720
Now murder and bloodshed was how
this city solved its problems.

253
00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:19,680
The ingredients for disaster
were all coming together.

254
00:23:19,680 --> 00:23:24,960
Byzantium was embroiled in
an endless, internal power struggle.

255
00:23:28,040 --> 00:23:32,400
The Latins and the Greeks were
locked in a pitiless blood feud.

256
00:23:34,600 --> 00:23:39,120
And the west had got a taste
for the wealth of Constantinople.

257
00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:47,360
It was a matter of time before
all this resulted in cataclysm.

258
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:53,360
And that is the story
of the Fourth Crusade.

259
00:23:59,200 --> 00:24:02,520
It all had an unlikely start.

260
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:16,120
The Crusade's leader was one of
the most extraordinary and sinister
characters in this entire story.

261
00:24:16,120 --> 00:24:19,560
He was the Doge of Venice,
Enrico Dandolo,

262
00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:24,400
and he was as forceful and ruthless
as he was wily and avaricious.

263
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:29,080
Bald as a billiard ball
and as blind as a bat,

264
00:24:29,080 --> 00:24:31,800
he was already 80 years old,

265
00:24:31,800 --> 00:24:35,040
yet still as sharp and predatory
as an eagle.

266
00:24:35,040 --> 00:24:39,520
And he had hated Constantinople
for a very long time.

267
00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:46,920
His hatred dated back to 1172.

268
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:50,080
The Byzantines took
the side of Genoa

269
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:52,280
in its vendetta with Venice

270
00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:57,080
and arrested every Venetian trader
in the Empire.

271
00:24:57,080 --> 00:25:00,560
Enrico Dandolo never forgave them.

272
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:04,720
The Crusading Army gathered
in Venice.

273
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:10,960
They had the knights, but they
needed ships to get to the Holy Land
and only Dandolo had a fleet.

274
00:25:10,960 --> 00:25:13,400
For that, he had a price

275
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:17,000
and the price was Constantinople.

276
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:24,080
The final ingredient
was Alexius Angelus,

277
00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:26,160
a Byzantine Pretender,

278
00:25:26,160 --> 00:25:29,960
who offered the Crusaders
the riches of Constantinople

279
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:33,440
in return for restoring him
to his rightful throne.

280
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:40,960
In July 1203,

281
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:46,040
210 ships arrived
outside Constantinople.

282
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:51,960
The Venetian fleet broke
into the Golden Horn

283
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:57,000
and their sailors clambered up beams
attached to the masts
and on to the walls.

284
00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:02,640
Dandolo directed operations
from the prow of his ship,
waving a banner,

285
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:07,120
and the blind, octogenarian Doge
was one of the first ashore.

286
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:14,200
It was a moment of triumph
for Dandolo,

287
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:19,400
but the beginning of the greatest
disaster to befall Constantinople.

288
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:33,400
Behind these gates was once
one of Byzantium's oldest
and most venerated monasteries.

289
00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:38,560
But I've had to get special
permission to venture inside,

290
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:42,480
such is its dangerously
dilapidated condition.

291
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:54,360
This is all that remains
of St John Stoudios,

292
00:26:54,360 --> 00:26:58,600
a monastery that was one of
the holiest sites in Constantinople.

293
00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:04,040
Its philosophers, its artists,
its scholars were some
of the greatest in Christendom

294
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:07,960
and it had a peerless collection
of icons and manuscripts.

295
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:11,560
But by the end of 1204,

296
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:15,280
all of this was rubble and ashes.

297
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:29,000
The desecration
of Byzantine Christianity
took two years to unfold.

298
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:36,560
Golden, sacred icons, mosaics
and candlesticks were ripped
from their moorings,

299
00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:40,320
first by the new Emperor's
own agents,

300
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:46,320
and then when
the Byzantines revolted,
by the Crusaders themselves

301
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:48,520
in an all-out sack.

302
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:54,600
800 years of prayer
by thousands of monks

303
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:59,720
was not enough to prevent
sacrilege, murder and exile.

304
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:02,760
It was, some felt,
as if God had abandoned them.

305
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:13,120
It's not only grand buildings
that tell the story of this city.

306
00:28:13,120 --> 00:28:16,800
This place is indelibly marked
by that moment.

307
00:28:18,600 --> 00:28:21,800
But nowhere escaped the rampage.

308
00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:27,680
The Crusaders burst
into the Church of San Sophia,

309
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:31,000
killing everybody they encountered,
except the women.

310
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:34,600
These, they raped, especially
the young virgins and the nuns.

311
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:39,960
They brought packhorses
into the church and loaded them
with treasures.

312
00:28:39,960 --> 00:28:44,800
When the animals fell
and broke their legs
on the slippery human blood,

313
00:28:44,800 --> 00:28:49,120
they disembowelled them right there
and then, just for the hell of it.

314
00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:54,880
Then the drunken knights held
a homicidal orgy,
inviting all the whores at the camp.

315
00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:59,000
They crowned one lascivious
strumpet on the Patriarch's throne

316
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:01,960
and there she danced half-naked

317
00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:03,920
and sang bawdy songs.

318
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:12,720
These men had joined up to save
Christendom from the Muslims.

319
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:20,760
Instead, they spent 50 years
dividing up the spoils
of Christianity's greatest city.

320
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:29,960
Like the pirates they were,
the Crusaders took what they could
from the city

321
00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:32,120
and then began to look elsewhere.

322
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:38,240
They were away on a raiding party
when Michael,
the Greek Emperor in exile,

323
00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:40,640
snuck back into the city.

324
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:48,480
The Crusaders didn't bother to fight
over the ruin they had left behind.

325
00:29:50,280 --> 00:29:55,920
Constantinople was once again
the capital of the Roman Empire,

326
00:29:55,920 --> 00:30:01,800
but that fatally wounded Empire
was now little more
than the battered city itself.

327
00:30:09,920 --> 00:30:14,360
Constantinople
in the 14th century AD,

328
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:18,320
a great world empire only in name,

329
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:23,320
its eastern territories
in the hands of the Turks

330
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:26,000
and its lands in the west

331
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:28,520
overrun by the Latins,

332
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:34,200
and even its own port now
outsourced to Italians from Genoa

333
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:37,400
who now overlooked Constantinople

334
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,040
from their tower in Galata.

335
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:47,120
Byzantium, once a city
of half a million people,

336
00:30:47,120 --> 00:30:50,520
was now a community
of less than 50,000.

337
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:55,520
But still,
they set about rebuilding the city

338
00:30:55,520 --> 00:31:01,960
and against all odds,
produced one last,
extraordinary cultural flowering.

339
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:07,600
In the back streets
of the Christian district Phanar,

340
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:12,240
one lonely church contains
the last poignant remnants

341
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:15,200
of that defiant renaissance.

342
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:26,360
It's really exciting to be here.

343
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:29,120
These mosaics are simply awesome.

344
00:31:31,280 --> 00:31:35,560
This is really like coming to the
Sistine Chapel of Constantinople.

345
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:42,120
For 400 years,
this was the Kariye Mosque

346
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:47,520
until, in the 1950s, they removed
the whitewash and found this.

347
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:52,280
The Byzantine Church

348
00:31:52,280 --> 00:31:55,000
of Saint Saviour in Chora.

349
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:04,880
These mosaics are part of its
glorious 14th century restoration.

350
00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:13,680
Here, for a moment,

351
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:17,280
God seemed to have returned
to Byzantium.

352
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:27,360
What really strikes you about
this masterpiece of Byzantine art

353
00:32:27,360 --> 00:32:30,240
is the sheer beauty of the images.

354
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:33,760
The faces are
very delicate, exquisite.

355
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:38,960
The reds, the blues, the greens
are all still absolutely vivid

356
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:43,000
and, of course,
the glory is the Byzantine gold.

357
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:52,000
This is often called
the Byzantine Renaissance

358
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:56,920
because the Renaissance
was just beginning to blossom
in Italy at this time,

359
00:32:56,920 --> 00:32:59,680
but actually,
they're very different.

360
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:02,760
The Italian Renaissance
was all about realism,

361
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:07,240
the celebration of the beautiful
sensuality of the human body

362
00:33:07,240 --> 00:33:09,680
that expressed God's perfection.

363
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:12,720
But the Byzantines
didn't like that at all.

364
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:15,840
They regarded all that nudity
as pornographic,

365
00:33:15,840 --> 00:33:17,880
vulgar, disgusting.

366
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:22,280
For them, and you can see that when
you look at these amazing images,

367
00:33:22,280 --> 00:33:26,520
it was all about the celestial
symbolism and the inner meaning,

368
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:29,680
the inner truth of their sanctity.

369
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:35,960
Each one of these pictures tells
a story on a series of levels -

370
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:40,240
Biblical scenes laced
with symbols of barely penetrable,

371
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:44,520
philosophical, mystical
and political significance.

372
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:48,840
And in true Byzantine fashion,

373
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:54,120
the man behind all this reserved
pride of place for himself.

374
00:33:55,160 --> 00:33:59,560
This is one of the most famous
images in Byzantine art

375
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:03,480
and it shows the founder
of this church, Theodore Metochites,

376
00:34:03,480 --> 00:34:05,880
presenting it to Jesus Christ.

377
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:11,560
Theodore was the Grand Logothete,
the Imperial Prime Minister,

378
00:34:11,560 --> 00:34:15,800
and the richest man in the Empire
after the Emperor himself,

379
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:17,960
but he had a lot to live down.

380
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:22,320
His father had been a notorious
collaborator with the Latins

381
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:25,200
and so,
when he started on this project,

382
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:31,920
Theodore was saying,
"Look at me, I'm not my father.
I'm a real, true Byzantine."

383
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:36,560
And this is the quintessential
Byzantine church.

384
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:46,320
All that mattered to Theodore
was to be seen in the light
of great Byzantines before him,

385
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:51,600
even though greatness
now resided elsewhere.

386
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:58,480
This church stands testament to the
Indian summer of a glorious culture,

387
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:02,400
turning its back
on the changing world outside,

388
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:09,120
talking to itself
in its own language
of arcane and mystical symbols.

389
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:15,600
Even as the state was reduced
to just the city itself,

390
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:20,080
even as enemy forces closed in
from east and west,

391
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:25,040
Byzantium remained stubbornly
and defiantly obsessed

392
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:27,800
with its own glorious past,

393
00:35:27,800 --> 00:35:32,080
a doomed empire
lost in introspection.

394
00:35:42,600 --> 00:35:48,440
Constantinople was writing the last
tragic chapter of its history.

395
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:54,960
The story that had begun
a thousand years before
with Constantine the Great,

396
00:35:54,960 --> 00:35:58,840
the dream
of a great Christian empire

397
00:35:58,840 --> 00:36:03,400
and a great Christian city
spanning Asia and Europe

398
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:05,800
was now at an end.

399
00:36:08,040 --> 00:36:11,480
But the story of Istanbul
was just beginning.

400
00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:14,000
This is, after all,

401
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:16,560
a tale of THREE cities.

402
00:36:30,680 --> 00:36:34,600
The history of this place
looks completely different

403
00:36:34,600 --> 00:36:37,440
from the Muslim perspective.

404
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:49,360
This is the heart
of Muslim Istanbul,

405
00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:54,000
the oldest mosque in the city,
Eyup Sultan Camii.

406
00:36:55,520 --> 00:37:00,160
It's named after one of
the companions of Muhammad himself,

407
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:02,280
Ayyub al-Ansari,

408
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:04,760
who died and was buried here

409
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:09,080
when the first Muslims tried
to conquer Constantinople

410
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:11,720
way back in the 7th century AD.

411
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:16,280
CHANTING OF PRAYER

412
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:21,440
This place isn't very well known
in the west,

413
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:24,640
but here, it's enormously important

414
00:37:24,640 --> 00:37:29,760
because it's the link
between Islamic Istanbul
and the prophet Muhammad himself.

415
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:32,640
The mosque is built
around the tomb of Ayyub

416
00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:37,560
and Ayyub was
the prophet's companion in arms
and standard-bearer.

417
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:43,320
And he died here in one
of the first Arab Islamic sieges
of Constantinople.

418
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:53,280
Twice, the followers of Muhammad
besieged this city,
for four years each time,

419
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:56,240
and for one reason above all.

420
00:37:58,640 --> 00:38:03,920
The prophet himself had always
predicted the Islamic conquest
of Constantinople.

421
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:09,520
He said it would be a beautiful
conquest by beautiful armies,
by a beautiful conqueror.

422
00:38:11,240 --> 00:38:15,280
And so this mosque has
one central message to Muslims

423
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:19,440
that this city was always destined
to fall to Islam.

424
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:28,760
But they would have to wait
700 years for that beautiful army
and that beautiful conqueror.

425
00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:36,120
They came in the end
from a completely unexpected place

426
00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:41,600
and that's the foundation myth
of Turkish history.

427
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:46,200
IN TURKISH:

428
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:59,520
Yusuf Duru is one of the last meddah
in Turkey,

429
00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:06,400
storytellers who have passed on
history, folklore and morality tales
for generations.

430
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:25,960
Since the 1500s, men in this city
have gathered during Ramadan

431
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:29,160
to hear about the great journey
of their ancestors

432
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:31,680
into the lands we now call Turkey.

433
00:39:51,240 --> 00:39:57,680
The foundation myth of
modern Turkey rests on the shoulders
of one man above all.

434
00:40:11,840 --> 00:40:16,520
This is one of the great epic poems
of Turkish history.

435
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:22,360
It tells the story
of a 13th century Turkish chieftain
named Osman

436
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:25,320
who ruled just a little bit
of Anatolia.

437
00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:36,280
Osman goes to see a holy man
named Edebali

438
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:40,200
to ask for his daughter's hand
in marriage.

439
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:46,320
Edebali says "no",
but at this very moment, the moon
emanates from Edebali's chest

440
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:49,560
and merges into Osman's chest.

441
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:53,200
And out of this fusion

442
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:55,360
grows a giant tree

443
00:40:55,360 --> 00:41:01,360
whose branches overshadowed the
great mountain ranges of the world,
the Caucasus and the Balkans,

444
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:05,720
the great rivers, the Tigris,
the Euphrates, the Danube, the Nile,

445
00:41:05,720 --> 00:41:10,680
and these branches overshadow
one great city -

446
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:12,720
Constantinople.

447
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:30,200
Osman and Edebali's daughter spawned
a dynasty that ruled this city
until 1922, the Ottomans.

448
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:42,160
Out of a small
Anatolian principality,

449
00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:46,440
Osman created
an expansionist, warrior dynasty

450
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:50,480
and under his sons, grandsons
and great-grandsons,

451
00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:53,760
his domain grew into an empire.

452
00:42:00,720 --> 00:42:03,240
By the mid-15th century,

453
00:42:03,240 --> 00:42:07,960
the transcontinental Ottoman Empire
dwarfed the Byzantine.

454
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:14,120
And it was closing in on Byzantium
from every direction.

455
00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:30,280
This is Anadoluhisari,
the Anatolian Castle.

456
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:34,800
The Ottomans already possessed
all of this - Anatolia

457
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:38,880
and far to the west in Europe,
they had conquered the Balkans,

458
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:45,040
but this castle right here
on the Bosphorus was as close
as they'd got to Constantinople

459
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:48,800
when the throne was inherited
by Sultan Mehmed II.

460
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:55,920
But he was just 19 years old
and even his own ministers thought
he wasn't up to the job.

461
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:05,400
But that teenager was none other
than the man they call today
Fatih the Conqueror,

462
00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:09,960
the man who would put an end
to Constantinople.

463
00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:14,200
Mehmed was no mere callow teenager.

464
00:43:14,200 --> 00:43:16,240
He was a supreme manipulator,

465
00:43:16,240 --> 00:43:21,960
schooled in the cut-throat world
of the Ottoman court
and a brilliant military strategist.

466
00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:27,000
He was also a sophisticated
and cosmopolitan aesthete

467
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:30,520
who could read philosophy
in Greek, Latin and Hebrew

468
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:35,640
and write passionate love poems
to his concubine mistresses
in courtly Persian.

469
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:38,480
When he was painted
by the Italian Bellini,

470
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:42,280
the portrait shows
his ferocious, delicate intelligence

471
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:44,400
and his boundless ambition.

472
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:47,480
He wanted to be
the new Alexander the Great.

473
00:43:48,560 --> 00:43:52,560
For Mehmed, there could only be
one empire, the Ottoman,

474
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:54,800
one religion, Islam,

475
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:57,040
one emperor, himself,

476
00:43:57,040 --> 00:44:00,120
and one capital, Constantinople.

477
00:44:04,120 --> 00:44:08,720
Mehmed II was a greater figure
than anyone suspected

478
00:44:08,720 --> 00:44:13,560
and he set about the conquest
of the world's greatest city

479
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:16,200
not with the recklessness of youth,

480
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:20,400
but with devastating
and ruthless efficiency.

481
00:44:24,520 --> 00:44:27,960
The Bosphorus is only
700 yards across here

482
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:35,040
and Mehmed's first bold move
was to build a castle
right on Byzantine territory.

483
00:44:35,040 --> 00:44:40,280
And there it is - Rumelihisari,
the castle on the Roman side.

484
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:45,480
But Mehmed had another name for it.
The Throat Cutter.

485
00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:47,840
It soon lived up to its name.

486
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:55,960
When an Italian Venetian ship,
commanded by a Captain Rizzo,
sailed along here,

487
00:44:55,960 --> 00:44:58,600
Mehmed's castle told him to stop.

488
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:05,120
He defied it and ignored
the warning.

489
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:09,400
They were blasted out of the water
by Mehmed's cannons.

490
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:14,240
The entire crew were beheaded,
except for poor Captain Rizzo,

491
00:45:14,240 --> 00:45:18,400
who was impaled
with a stake up his rectum

492
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:26,120
and left out here
as a human scarecrow to warn Europe
Mehmed II meant business.

493
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:37,840
The great confrontation
that had been brewing for 400 years
was finally at hand.

494
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:43,920
And the odds were stacked heavily
in the Ottomans' favour.

495
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:51,480
Their ancestors had once been a gnat
on the side of the Byzantine
elephant.

496
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:56,280
Now Constantinople was just an
enclave within the Ottoman Empire.

497
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:02,920
The last Byzantine emperor
was named, fittingly,

498
00:46:02,920 --> 00:46:04,920
Constantine.

499
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:13,000
As Mehmed II approached,
Constantine asked for a summary
of the city's defences.

500
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:17,480
When he heard the answer,
he is said to have wept.

501
00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:22,680
The Theodosian walls
were still formidable,

502
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:29,640
but there weren't enough defenders
to man them. They were a motley
crew - adventurers, mavericks,

503
00:46:29,640 --> 00:46:36,720
monks with crossbows,
Venetian sailors, quixotic knights
and an eccentric, John the German,

504
00:46:36,720 --> 00:46:43,000
who was really from Scotland.
The sort of desperadoes
who fight in desperate wars.

505
00:46:43,000 --> 00:46:49,480
There were only 5,000 of them
against 200,000 Turks
and the biggest cannons in Europe.

506
00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:58,320
The Byzantines had no choice
but to put their trust in the city's
ancient physical defences,

507
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:02,280
which had seen off
so many invaders before.

508
00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:07,840
Constantinople's chief protection
had always been the sea

509
00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:14,240
and its most formidable
maritime barrier still survives
in the naval museum.

510
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:26,680
It's really amazing to actually see
this famous piece of
Constantinople's defence right here.

511
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:28,760
I'm quite excited.

512
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:33,800
When the city was in danger,
this huge chain was winched up

513
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:38,080
from two towers on either side
of the Golden Horn.

514
00:47:38,080 --> 00:47:44,080
While it was up, no one could break
through and besiege Constantinople
on all four sides.

515
00:47:44,080 --> 00:47:50,720
Now, in 1453,
Mehmed II had to get past this
in order to take the city

516
00:47:50,720 --> 00:47:54,720
and he came up with
a rather amazing solution.

517
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:07,880
What happened
is the stuff of Istanbul legend.

518
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:14,920
A ghost that still haunts
the contemporary city.

519
00:48:16,120 --> 00:48:20,520
The site where Mehmed executed
his most daring manoeuvre

520
00:48:20,520 --> 00:48:24,480
is now the bustling heart
of Istanbul.

521
00:48:34,720 --> 00:48:41,040
This penthouse restaurant
in Taksim Square is the best place
to see what really happened

522
00:48:41,040 --> 00:48:44,760
in the great Turkish siege of 1453.

523
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:49,880
Now if you look out here, you can
see the city of Constantinople.

524
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:54,480
Mehmed had brought up his huge
Turkish army to besiege the city,

525
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:58,600
but he could only besiege it
from the land side.

526
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:04,640
Then he brought up his fleet,
but he couldn't use it to enter
that little channel over there.

527
00:49:04,640 --> 00:49:10,480
That's the Golden Horn. He couldn't
get in because the Byzantines
had put the huge chain

528
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:13,920
right across
this narrow channel there.

529
00:49:13,920 --> 00:49:18,920
Mehmed was infuriated.
He launched constant attacks.
All of them failed.

530
00:49:18,920 --> 00:49:22,760
He was so angry, he rode his horse
into the sea in frustration

531
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:26,360
and threatened to execute
his own admiral.

532
00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:30,880
But then he came up with a great
idea. He waited for nightfall

533
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:37,240
and when it came
they laid rollers right across
this piece of land here.

534
00:49:37,240 --> 00:49:41,880
And thousands of slave and oxen,
in an amazing feat of engineering,

535
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:46,240
moved his entire fleet
from the Bosphorus there

536
00:49:46,240 --> 00:49:50,920
all the way over here
to the Golden Horn over there.

537
00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:54,960
When the Byzantines awoke
the next morning,

538
00:49:54,960 --> 00:49:58,640
their most terrible nightmare
had come true.

539
00:49:58,640 --> 00:50:05,760
The entire Ottoman fleet
was in the Golden Horn and they were
surrounded on every side.

540
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:11,600
The last nights of Constantinople
saw fervent prayer

541
00:50:11,600 --> 00:50:13,840
and terrible omens.

542
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:18,840
God, they feared,
was finally leaving His city.

543
00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:23,600
The Ottoman guns pulverised
the city for over a month.

544
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:29,840
And yet still the tenacious defence
of the walls continued.

545
00:50:29,840 --> 00:50:34,000
By dawn on the 29th of May, 1453,

546
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:41,400
the city walls had been under
sustained bombardment by the Ottoman
cannons for over a month.

547
00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:47,600
Whenever they smashed a hole,
the people of Constantinople worked
night and day to repair the damage,

548
00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:54,240
but now the Ottoman war cries
of the huge army outside the walls
told them one thing -

549
00:50:54,240 --> 00:50:56,800
the final storm was coming.

550
00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:03,640
The dying moments
of the Byzantine city played out
just near where I am standing.

551
00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:11,200
One of Mehmed's big cannons
finally brought down
an entire section of wall.

552
00:51:11,200 --> 00:51:16,560
He sent in assault after assault,
first his irregulars,
then his Bashi-Bazouks,

553
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:19,160
and, finally, the elite Janissaries.

554
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:25,560
After more than a millennium,
the great walls of Byzantium
had finally come tumbling down.

555
00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:31,440
Without the protection of the walls,
the outcome of the battle
was a foregone conclusion.

556
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:36,560
The last bastion
of classical antiquity had fallen.

557
00:51:36,560 --> 00:51:41,840
Constantine XI,
the namesake of the city's founder,

558
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:47,960
turned to his companions and said,
"Come, men, let us fight
the barbarians."

559
00:51:47,960 --> 00:51:52,080
Then he threw himself into
where the fighting was thickest.

560
00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:56,440
The last of the Roman emperors
was never seen again.

561
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:09,240
In this one place,
on this one day,

562
00:52:09,240 --> 00:52:14,920
the grinding tectonic plates
of history seemed suddenly
to shift.

563
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:21,000
The descendants of nomadic Steppe
horsemen were now in possession

564
00:52:21,000 --> 00:52:24,960
of the ancient capital
of civilisation.

565
00:52:28,920 --> 00:52:33,840
For Greeks, this is still the
defining tragedy of their history.

566
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:40,120
Greek legend says that
as the Turkish troops burst in
to the church of San Sophia,

567
00:52:40,120 --> 00:52:44,640
swords drawn, the priests
conducting the last service

568
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:49,120
calmly turned and disappeared
into the walls.

569
00:52:49,120 --> 00:52:55,600
They will return when Constantinople
is Christian again
to continue the service.

570
00:53:01,600 --> 00:53:07,560
The rest of the congregation
were marched away
to death or slavery.

571
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:11,800
But this was not to be the end
for Hagia Sophia.

572
00:53:14,520 --> 00:53:18,400
When Mehmed arrived to inspect
the church of San Sophia,

573
00:53:18,400 --> 00:53:22,760
he found one of his Turkish soldiers
trying to prise marble
off the floor.

574
00:53:22,760 --> 00:53:27,800
He hit him with his sword, saying,
"I gave you the treasure
and the people,

575
00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:33,720
"but the buildings are mine.
From now on, the church of
San Sophia will be the Great Mosque

576
00:53:33,720 --> 00:53:36,120
"of Aya Sofya."

577
00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:44,440
The 800-year-old prophecy
of Muhammad had come true.

578
00:53:45,520 --> 00:53:49,240
"Verily, you shall conquer
Constantinople.

579
00:53:49,240 --> 00:53:53,160
"What a beautiful leader
will that leader be."

580
00:53:55,240 --> 00:53:59,600
Mehmed II was now
that promised leader.

581
00:54:00,920 --> 00:54:04,760
The Crusaders had come here
to pillage and destroy.

582
00:54:04,760 --> 00:54:11,440
The Ottomans were here
to fulfil the destiny
of God's capital city.

583
00:54:12,440 --> 00:54:16,320
To make it the capital of Islam.

584
00:54:16,320 --> 00:54:18,280
CALL TO PRAYER

585
00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:34,040
A new city was about to be born
out of the ashes of Constantinople,

586
00:54:39,560 --> 00:54:45,440
with the skyline and the soundtrack
for which it is famed
throughout the world.

587
00:54:48,760 --> 00:54:54,280
The Ottomans brought with them
the minarets that define
Islamic architecture.

588
00:54:56,120 --> 00:55:00,840
But the great domes were inspired
by Hagia Sophia.

589
00:55:03,520 --> 00:55:07,560
Because this is what the Muslims had
come here for,

590
00:55:07,560 --> 00:55:10,960
the thing that
all this architecture stood for,

591
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:17,320
the Byzantine vision
of a universal empire,
blessed by God.

592
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:24,440
But their approach to Holy Empire
was subtly different.

593
00:55:24,440 --> 00:55:29,120
They replaced
Byzantium's stifling orthodoxy

594
00:55:29,120 --> 00:55:33,560
with a bewildering diversity
of religious belief.

595
00:55:35,120 --> 00:55:38,720
Ottoman Islam
was infused with mysticism,

596
00:55:38,720 --> 00:55:41,760
poetry, ancient spirituality.

597
00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:47,200
This was the religion
of the whirling dervish,

598
00:55:47,200 --> 00:55:54,760
followers of the great poet of love,
Rumi, who danced themselves
into a trance of divine love.

599
00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:03,840
Mehmed II was so open
to un-Islamic ideas

600
00:56:03,840 --> 00:56:07,680
that he sometimes shocked
his own adherents.

601
00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:11,560
He was seen once or twice
in Istanbul's churches,

602
00:56:11,560 --> 00:56:16,320
prompting outlandish rumours
that he was about to convert
to Christianity.

603
00:56:23,520 --> 00:56:27,560
Mehmed II learned
from the fate of Byzantium.

604
00:56:27,560 --> 00:56:32,240
His empire would not shut itself
off from outside influences.

605
00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:43,120
He set about rebuilding this city
on lines that were international
and surprisingly inclusive.

606
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:49,160
After two centuries of war,

607
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:52,560
blockade and depopulation,

608
00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:56,600
Istanbul's markets
were once again thriving.

609
00:56:56,600 --> 00:57:00,480
Sultan Mehmed followed
a deliberate policy

610
00:57:00,480 --> 00:57:06,600
of attracting to Istanbul
and settling here
peoples from all over the world,

611
00:57:06,600 --> 00:57:10,840
regardless of their creed
or nationality.

612
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:15,080
So from the east
he attracted Christian Armenians,

613
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:17,920
Muslim Arabs, Kurds,

614
00:57:17,920 --> 00:57:22,520
and from Western Europe
he attracted Jews and Arabs

615
00:57:22,520 --> 00:57:26,560
fleeing from the repressions
of the intolerant Christians.

616
00:57:26,560 --> 00:57:31,560
Not only that, but from the Balkans,
Albanians, Greeks, Serbs, Bosnians.

617
00:57:31,560 --> 00:57:38,960
And he succeeded, he and
his successors, in making Istanbul
the refuge of the world.

618
00:57:43,120 --> 00:57:47,680
It's the culmination
of a story heavy with irony.

619
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:53,240
The Emperor Constantine's great
Christian capital had been brought
to its knees

620
00:57:53,240 --> 00:57:55,920
by the actions of Christians

621
00:57:55,920 --> 00:58:00,040
and brought back to life
by the vision of Muslims.

622
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:04,880
Thousands upon thousands had
given their lives in the struggle,

623
00:58:04,880 --> 00:58:10,160
but one character had emerged
gloriously intact.

624
00:58:10,160 --> 00:58:17,320
The city had suffered two centuries
of disasters, culminating
in total cataclysm.

625
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:23,600
But it wasn't the end.
True, the Byzantine civilisation
was all but destroyed,

626
00:58:23,600 --> 00:58:27,880
but the city managed to beguile
its new conquerors.

627
00:58:27,880 --> 00:58:32,880
And their embellishments restored it
to what it was always meant
to have been -

628
00:58:32,880 --> 00:58:38,720
the sacred, imperial capital
of a faith and an empire.

629
00:58:38,720 --> 00:58:41,600
The city of the world's desire.

630
00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:47,560
Next time, I'm going to explore
that Ottoman capital,

631
00:58:47,560 --> 00:58:50,200
the creation of a legendary city,

632
00:58:50,200 --> 00:58:55,240
from which larger-than-life
emperors ruled as caliphs of Islam

633
00:58:55,240 --> 00:58:59,080
until the end
of the First World War.

634
00:59:20,040 --> 00:59:22,680
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