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Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453-1924
Mansel's sweeping narrative of the last five centuries of Constantinople reinterprets the history of the Ottoman Empire and provides an enthralling biography of "the city of the world's desire". "This is a work for the general reader which will also earn the admiration of all academic specialists in Ottoman history".--Sunday Telegraph (London) 8 pp. of photos.
528 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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1651 people want to read
About the author
Philip Mansel
26 books67 followersPhilip Mansel is a historian of courts and cities, and of France and the Ottoman Empire. He was born in London in 1951 and educated at Eton College, where he was a King’s Scholar, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Modern History and Modern Languages. Following four years’ research into the French court of the period 1814-1830, he was awarded his doctorate at University College, London in 1978.
His first book, Louis XVIII, was published in 1981 and this - together with subsequent works such as The Court of France 1789-1830 (1989), Paris Between Empires 1814-1852 (2001) - established him as an authority on the later French monarchy. Six of his books have been translated into French.
Altogether Philip Mansel has published eleven books of history and biography, mainly relating either to France or the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East: Sultans in Splendour was published in 1988, Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire 1453-1924 in 1995 and Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean in 2010.
Over the past 30 years he has contributed reviews and articles to a wide range of newspapers and journals, including History Today, The English Historical Review, The International Herald Tribune, Books and Bookmen, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and Apollo. Currently he writes reviews for The Spectator, Cornucopia, The Art Newspaper and The Times Literary Supplement.
In 1995 Philip Mansel was a founder with David Starkey, Robert Oresko and Simon Thurley of the Society for Court Studies, designed to promote research in the field of court history, and he is the editor of the Society’s journal. The Society has a branch in Munich and is linked to similar societies in Versailles, Madrid, Ferrara and Turin.
He has travelled widely, lecturing in many countries - including the United States, France, Germany, Italy and Turkey - and has made a number of appearances on radio and television, including in the two-part Channel 4 documentary “Harem” and in two BBC2 documentaries on Versailles in 2012. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Literature, the Institute of Historical Research (University of London) and the Royal Asiatic Society, and is a member of the Conseil Scientifique of the Centre de Recherche du Chateau de Versailles. In 2010 Philip Mansel was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 2012 was the recipient of the annual London Library Life in Literature Award.
Philip Mansel wrote the introduction to the 2012 re-issue of Nancy Mitford’s The Sun King and is currently working on his own biography of Louis XIV. His short history of Aleppo: Rise and Fall of a World City is scheduled for publication in April 2016. His book on Napoleon and his court, The Eagle in Splendour, was republished by I. B. Tauris in June 2015.
In 1995 Philip Mansel started a campaign to save Clavell Tower, a ruined folly of 1831 which threatened to fall over the cliff above Kimmeridge Bay. This led, in 2007-8, to the Tower’s deconstruction, relocation, reconstruction, restoration and modernisation by the Landmark Trust. Clavell Tower is now the Trust’s most popular property.
Philip Mansel lives in London, travelling to Paris, Istanbul and elsewhere for research, conferences and lectures. He also runs the family estate at Smedmore, near Wareham in Dorset. For more information on this historic house, visit the web site and read the recent articles published in The World of Interiors and Country Life.
His first book, Louis XVIII, was published in 1981 and this - together with subsequent works such as The Court of France 1789-1830 (1989), Paris Between Empires 1814-1852 (2001) - established him as an authority on the later French monarchy. Six of his books have been translated into French.
Altogether Philip Mansel has published eleven books of history and biography, mainly relating either to France or the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East: Sultans in Splendour was published in 1988, Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire 1453-1924 in 1995 and Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean in 2010.
Over the past 30 years he has contributed reviews and articles to a wide range of newspapers and journals, including History Today, The English Historical Review, The International Herald Tribune, Books and Bookmen, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and Apollo. Currently he writes reviews for The Spectator, Cornucopia, The Art Newspaper and The Times Literary Supplement.
In 1995 Philip Mansel was a founder with David Starkey, Robert Oresko and Simon Thurley of the Society for Court Studies, designed to promote research in the field of court history, and he is the editor of the Society’s journal. The Society has a branch in Munich and is linked to similar societies in Versailles, Madrid, Ferrara and Turin.
He has travelled widely, lecturing in many countries - including the United States, France, Germany, Italy and Turkey - and has made a number of appearances on radio and television, including in the two-part Channel 4 documentary “Harem” and in two BBC2 documentaries on Versailles in 2012. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Literature, the Institute of Historical Research (University of London) and the Royal Asiatic Society, and is a member of the Conseil Scientifique of the Centre de Recherche du Chateau de Versailles. In 2010 Philip Mansel was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 2012 was the recipient of the annual London Library Life in Literature Award.
Philip Mansel wrote the introduction to the 2012 re-issue of Nancy Mitford’s The Sun King and is currently working on his own biography of Louis XIV. His short history of Aleppo: Rise and Fall of a World City is scheduled for publication in April 2016. His book on Napoleon and his court, The Eagle in Splendour, was republished by I. B. Tauris in June 2015.
In 1995 Philip Mansel started a campaign to save Clavell Tower, a ruined folly of 1831 which threatened to fall over the cliff above Kimmeridge Bay. This led, in 2007-8, to the Tower’s deconstruction, relocation, reconstruction, restoration and modernisation by the Landmark Trust. Clavell Tower is now the Trust’s most popular property.
Philip Mansel lives in London, travelling to Paris, Istanbul and elsewhere for research, conferences and lectures. He also runs the family estate at Smedmore, near Wareham in Dorset. For more information on this historic house, visit the web site and read the recent articles published in The World of Interiors and Country Life.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
August 11, 2016
A very long (400+ pages) and somewhat slow going, but quite a fascinating read. Difficult in that the first two-thirds of the book are structured thematically rather than chronologically: Mansel goes over and over the same four hundred years of history, gradually deepening one's understanding by shifting focus among various aspects of the cultural, political, and social history of the Osmanli dynasty, a dynasty that ruled a huge empire at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, an empire that stretched from the western shores of the Adriatic (Croatia, the Balkans etc), north up towards Vienna, and east and south across the Arabian peninsula and over to Egypt. All of this centered on Constantinople, queen of cities, "New Rome" under the Byzantine (i.e. Roman) emperors. It's quite impossible to list the ah-ha moments provided by Mansel; suffice it to say this reader gained perspective and understanding regarding why the Balkans and the Middle East are as they are today. The book also shifts one's mind around regarding such matters as religious tolerance, cultural diversity, and even slavery and autocracy as practiced by the Ottomans. The final third of the book runs chronologically, as the pace picks up to a thriller like gallop (almost) as the Ottoman Empire crumbles, partly due to internal problems, partly fomented by western European powers (i.e Britain, Germany, and Russia). Can't wait to go back to Constantinople, or as it's been called since the twenties--Istanbul (a name based on the Turkish phrase meaning "to the city"--"polis"). Long as this was, when I finished, I yearned for a volume 2--Mansel on the Turkish Republic.
February 14, 2016
في محاولة ناجحة لتأريخ واحدة من أهم المدن عبر التاريخ يحاول الكاتب أن يُؤرخ للقسطنطينية أو بيزنطة أو اسطنبول، فيقدم لنا الكتاب تاريخ مدينة صنعت سلالة حاكمة فاقترن تاريخها بها، فيقدم لنا تغطية حيّة عن كل شئ فيها، من عمارة وأحياء وتنوع ديني وقومي وثقافي إلى السلاطين والانكشارية والسفراء الأجانب والحريم والخصيان، إنه تاريخ مدينة حوّل آل عثمان من مجرد إمارة إلى امبراطورية مترامية الأطراف.
مدينة كانت من القوة والسيطرة أن نحّت في طريقها مدن أعرق منها وكانت ملئ السمع والبصر، فتولت هي السيطرة الكاملة وجعلت مدن مثل دمشق(التي يزفر منها رحيق الجنة) وبغداد(دار الخلاص)،والقاهرة(التي لا نظير لها)، جعلتهم مجرد مدن في ولايات تابعة بها.
كتاب تاريخ من الطراز الرفيع لم ينقل فقط جمال المدينة بل نقل روحها الجميلة بتصوير بديع والتحولات التي طرأت عليها وما فعله فيها آل عثمان وما فعلته هي بهم.
الكتاب صدر تبع عدد يوليو 2015 من أعداد عالم المعرفة في جزئين الأول منهما من عام 1453 إلى عام 1717 وبشئ من التجاوز قد نعتبر الجزء الأول عن مجد القسطنطينية والثانيعن انحدارها.
وفي الجزء الثاني يتجلى الكاتب كما ينبغي له التجلي، ويكز فيه عن عمارة المدينة ومبانيها ونشأتها وتطورها الفريد، كما يتناول بشر المدينة والمجتمع ساء كان المجتمع السلطاني أو العادي، وكيف كانت المدينة بحق مركز الكون وملتقى الثقافات وبرع أكثر ما برع في تصوير انحدار المدينة وتدهور البلاط السلطاني وتسجيله الفريد لخروج السلطان عبدالمجيد آخر خلفاء المسلمين.
في المجمل الكتاب ثري وخصب، وملئ بالتفاصيل المهمة، كتاب تاريخ بحق، تطرق لكل شئ ولكل طائفة سكنت المدينة واتخذتها موطن، وكيف كانت مأوى لمن لا مأوى له، وكيف لجأ يهود الاندلس ومسلميها على حد السواء إليها، وكيف كان تنوع المدينة الثقافي والطائفي أداة بناء ومعول هدم باختلاف فترات قوة وضعف البلاط السلطاني، وكيف كان للحريم السلطاني سلطة لا تضاهيها سلطة، وكيف تحاك المؤامرات وكيف تُقتل الجواري والمحظيات ، وكيف كان يقتل كل سلطان إخوته لضمان استمرار الاستقرار، وكيف كان الخنق هي الطريقة الرسمية المتبعة لقتل الفرد السلطاني لكيلا تُراق دماءه على الأرض..
March 26, 2015
Meticulously researched, this must be one of the best book written on Ottoman History by a foreign historian. Although the narrative of Mansel may seem a bit dry at times, the material is masterly organised and coherently presented, keeping the reader interested throughout. A must read for anyone interested in Turkish History, and the magnificent city of Istanbul.
December 22, 2025
As Philip Mansel writes in this vivid skip through 500 years of history, “multiple identity was the essence of Constantinople ... [Its] chief legacy to the world was its role and example as a great international capital, which ignored rigid boundaries, national, cultural, social and religious.” When that multicultural essence disappeared, the city itself changed fundamentally, along with its official name. The use of “Constantinople” for the title of this book was therefore a deliberate decision, the traditional name for the city evoking historical cosmopolitanism to a far greater extent than “Istanbul.”
Essentially a work of popular narrative history, the book doesn’t really seek to break any new intellectual ground. What is distinctive, however, is its emphasis on the dynastic nature of the Ottoman state, the crucial importance of which is often overlooked today. For Mansel, dynasticism – far more than Islamic religious supremacy - was the glue that was able to hold such a diverse empire together for so long. Indeed, faced with the reality of an empire of so many religions and languages living side by side, a fundamentally multinational and dynastic understanding was really the only realistic way that the Ottoman state could survive, “realpolitik” in Mansel’s words. He goes to some length to stress how this multinationalism infused the highest seats of imperial power, quoting the words of a horrified poet condemning the court of Constantinople’s conqueror Mehmed II: “If you wish to stand in high honor on the Sultan’s threshold / You must either be a Jew, a Persian, or a Frank.”
Related to this, the book’s description of the conflict between religious and dynastic power is particularly striking. Unlike other Muslim dynasties, the House of Osman could not claim long established right, or the blood of the Prophet Muhammad’s tribe. The solution to this “legitimacy deficit” was to try to multiply connections between Islam and the Ottoman dynasty in a variety of different ways. Nevertheless, Mansel maintains that “the imperial palace ... was governed by the requirements of the dynasty, not the law of Islam,” and a puritan religious constituency was always ready to criticize the authorities’ apparent interpretive flexibility, of which pragmatic multiculturalism was just one example.
With such an emphasis, Mansel perhaps inevitably succumbs to the temptation to over-ascribe events to the empire’s dynastic character. For example, we’re told that it came close to falling apart at the end of the 16th century simply because Selim II was “too busy enjoying life on the Bosphorus.” Not unrelated to this is the more general lack of historical background to events. We’re introduced to all the colorful figures plotting against the empire in its final years in the name of various nationalisms, but Mansel never really gives a deep impression of the underlying intellectual undercurrents that were leading to these phenomena.
The reigns of Abdulmecid I (1839-1861) and Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) represented two very different attempts to hold back that rising tide of Europe-inspired nationalism. Abdulmecid sought its suppression by initiating the “Tanzimat” modernizing reforms, “to create one people out of diverse races and religions: ‘in one word to nationalize all these fragments of nations who cover the soil of Turkey, by so much impartiality, gentleness, equality and tolerance … in a sort of monarchical confederation under the auspices of the Sultan.’” Abdulhamid was equally aware of the existential danger that nationalism posed, but his rule had a considerably darker hue, seeking to hold the empire together through arbitrary, autocratic rule, suppression of industrial development, and a self-conscious emphasis on the “Islamic” aspect of the Ottoman state.
Judged by the eventual fall of the empire in 1923, both reigns were ultimately unsuccessful. While the city was once a “heroic contrast to the strident nationalism which dominated … other European capitals,” in the end it succumbed to what were perhaps irresistible forces. In Mansel’s terms, “Constantinople” became “Istanbul” with the transformation of the old, imperial, multinational capital into a new, officially mono-cultural, provincial, republican city.
Essentially a work of popular narrative history, the book doesn’t really seek to break any new intellectual ground. What is distinctive, however, is its emphasis on the dynastic nature of the Ottoman state, the crucial importance of which is often overlooked today. For Mansel, dynasticism – far more than Islamic religious supremacy - was the glue that was able to hold such a diverse empire together for so long. Indeed, faced with the reality of an empire of so many religions and languages living side by side, a fundamentally multinational and dynastic understanding was really the only realistic way that the Ottoman state could survive, “realpolitik” in Mansel’s words. He goes to some length to stress how this multinationalism infused the highest seats of imperial power, quoting the words of a horrified poet condemning the court of Constantinople’s conqueror Mehmed II: “If you wish to stand in high honor on the Sultan’s threshold / You must either be a Jew, a Persian, or a Frank.”
Related to this, the book’s description of the conflict between religious and dynastic power is particularly striking. Unlike other Muslim dynasties, the House of Osman could not claim long established right, or the blood of the Prophet Muhammad’s tribe. The solution to this “legitimacy deficit” was to try to multiply connections between Islam and the Ottoman dynasty in a variety of different ways. Nevertheless, Mansel maintains that “the imperial palace ... was governed by the requirements of the dynasty, not the law of Islam,” and a puritan religious constituency was always ready to criticize the authorities’ apparent interpretive flexibility, of which pragmatic multiculturalism was just one example.
With such an emphasis, Mansel perhaps inevitably succumbs to the temptation to over-ascribe events to the empire’s dynastic character. For example, we’re told that it came close to falling apart at the end of the 16th century simply because Selim II was “too busy enjoying life on the Bosphorus.” Not unrelated to this is the more general lack of historical background to events. We’re introduced to all the colorful figures plotting against the empire in its final years in the name of various nationalisms, but Mansel never really gives a deep impression of the underlying intellectual undercurrents that were leading to these phenomena.
The reigns of Abdulmecid I (1839-1861) and Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) represented two very different attempts to hold back that rising tide of Europe-inspired nationalism. Abdulmecid sought its suppression by initiating the “Tanzimat” modernizing reforms, “to create one people out of diverse races and religions: ‘in one word to nationalize all these fragments of nations who cover the soil of Turkey, by so much impartiality, gentleness, equality and tolerance … in a sort of monarchical confederation under the auspices of the Sultan.’” Abdulhamid was equally aware of the existential danger that nationalism posed, but his rule had a considerably darker hue, seeking to hold the empire together through arbitrary, autocratic rule, suppression of industrial development, and a self-conscious emphasis on the “Islamic” aspect of the Ottoman state.
Judged by the eventual fall of the empire in 1923, both reigns were ultimately unsuccessful. While the city was once a “heroic contrast to the strident nationalism which dominated … other European capitals,” in the end it succumbed to what were perhaps irresistible forces. In Mansel’s terms, “Constantinople” became “Istanbul” with the transformation of the old, imperial, multinational capital into a new, officially mono-cultural, provincial, republican city.
January 9, 2012
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1823682...
a fascinating history of a fascinating city. After the first chapter, which describes the immediate aftermath of its conquest by the Ottomans in 1453, the first half of the book looks at various aspects of the city's life - religion, hammams, the role of the vizier and the dragoman - and then the second half is an entertainingly meandering narrative of events from 1700 to the twentieth century. I have worked a lot on various former fringes of the Ottoman empire, and of course am following the Byzantine era via Gibbon, but this was the first book I have read about the empire as a whole. While it lasted, it was a fascinating and diverse multilingual society; though probably doomed from the moment that nationalism became a political paradigm among its peoples, the Ottoman Empire still survived Allied occupation of its capital and outlasted the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires by several years.
Apparently one of the problems for a historian of the Ottoman Empire is that there is too much source material - all in Ottoman Turkish, which is written in the Arabic script abandoned almost a century ago and has many loan words from Persian no longer used by Turks. It's not awfully clear that Mansell used much of this primary material, but he has done a thorough job on other sources, including contemporary memoirs by foreign visitors and, for the later period, local colour from novels by the city's inhabitants. (Though he has much less to say about the rest of the empire, noticeably pulling his punches on the Armenian genocide.) It adds up to a compelling and informative read.
a fascinating history of a fascinating city. After the first chapter, which describes the immediate aftermath of its conquest by the Ottomans in 1453, the first half of the book looks at various aspects of the city's life - religion, hammams, the role of the vizier and the dragoman - and then the second half is an entertainingly meandering narrative of events from 1700 to the twentieth century. I have worked a lot on various former fringes of the Ottoman empire, and of course am following the Byzantine era via Gibbon, but this was the first book I have read about the empire as a whole. While it lasted, it was a fascinating and diverse multilingual society; though probably doomed from the moment that nationalism became a political paradigm among its peoples, the Ottoman Empire still survived Allied occupation of its capital and outlasted the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires by several years.
Apparently one of the problems for a historian of the Ottoman Empire is that there is too much source material - all in Ottoman Turkish, which is written in the Arabic script abandoned almost a century ago and has many loan words from Persian no longer used by Turks. It's not awfully clear that Mansell used much of this primary material, but he has done a thorough job on other sources, including contemporary memoirs by foreign visitors and, for the later period, local colour from novels by the city's inhabitants. (Though he has much less to say about the rest of the empire, noticeably pulling his punches on the Armenian genocide.) It adds up to a compelling and informative read.
May 12, 2018
If you've never been there (and if you haven't you should go), you've probably at least heard that annoying song that will be sung by any within earshot of mention of either of the city's name. IstCon is a wonderful place and certainly deserves its own history. Mansel does a fine job encapsulating as much of the city's richness as he could. Those familiar with Middle Eastern history might find some parts dull (the Tanzimat? Yawn!), others might find the structure unsettling (it starts thematically and jumps around a lot, then settles in for chrono around the Tanzimat...yawn!).
Overall, though, it's fun. IstCon (or ConIst) was once a city rich with cultures, religions and as cosmopolitan as fuck! In fact, it might have been the MOST cosmopolitan with everybody running around together, getting along, settled into an edgy political ideal that would set most Americans squirming in their plastic yard chairs as they eye the "browning" of their gated community in alarm.
Overall, though, it's fun. IstCon (or ConIst) was once a city rich with cultures, religions and as cosmopolitan as fuck! In fact, it might have been the MOST cosmopolitan with everybody running around together, getting along, settled into an edgy political ideal that would set most Americans squirming in their plastic yard chairs as they eye the "browning" of their gated community in alarm.
October 30, 2025
Great, incredibly detailed, vivid description of the history of Constantinople (which yes, was the name used during this time period) during the Ottoman rule of the city. Mansel expertly paints a picture of the city life, its diverse inhabitants, and its ruling dynasty and institutions, which at times made me feel like I was actually there. Honestly, a very well-written history book, even if sometimes a little too focused on minute details for my taste.
February 10, 2010
Comprehensive history of the city from its conquest by the Ottomans in 1453 until the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. The subject matter is fascinating; however, the writing is a bit dry. Also, the book was written 15 years ago, and there have been many changes since it was written. I made my first trip to Istanbul this past December, and found it to be a much more cosmopolitan (and also more Islamic) city than this author gives it credit for. I assume this is a reflection of changes that have occurred since the book was written.
October 22, 2016
I used to love Istanbul but after this book I'm loving this city more than everything else.
Specially that I moved there and I was seeing all the places in the book during my read Architecture, palaces, roads and even people were embracing me to a better world where History and the present are one.
Constantinople is a place where I would give everything to stay and live here until the end of times
Specially that I moved there and I was seeing all the places in the book during my read Architecture, palaces, roads and even people were embracing me to a better world where History and the present are one.
Constantinople is a place where I would give everything to stay and live here until the end of times
May 1, 2019
Very interesting book about a very interesting city, rich in history and culture. I really enjoyed reading this book, the Ottoman Empire is such a very interest part of history, this book would suit people interest in history. No editorial issues in the book, well written, really enjoyed it
January 10, 2020
Every Albanian city has imitated Istanbul. every Albanian in his spirit want to be a little sultan, vizier or pasha. Istanbul is engraved in our lives, it is the way to understand ourselves and of course how we see the world.
August 2, 2019
(The English review is placed beneath Russian one)
Одна из немногих книг, чья оценка или рейтинг постоянно колебалась у меня то в одну, то другую сторону до самого эпилога. К сожалению, эпилог и последние главы показали автора крайне предвзятым и однобоким в отношении османского правления и его отражения на Османскую империю в целом. Да, автор просто чудесно описывает жизнь города во время правления различных султанов и в особенности золотой век, в частности правление Сулеймана Великолепного. Всё настолько величественно, что невольно думаешь, а Рим ли является основой основ? Так описывает автор великолепие Константинополя. Всё подано в мельчайших деталях. Тут и детальное описание имперских процедур от посещения мечетей и праздников до приёма послов. Тут и жизнь придворных и обычных людей города, включая различных торговцев и посольств. Тут и многообразие культуры. В общем, весь шик и богатство города. Всё настолько блестит и ослепляет, что даже не замечаешь такие странности как 200 утопленных в Босфоре женщин из императорского гарема после смены одного султана на другого или традиция сваливать уши и носы врагов недалеко от дворца или очередная казнь какого-то высокопоставленного чиновника. Всё это подано в книге так легко, что читая, принимаешь это как должное, без ощущения чего-то необычного. Создаваемая картина представляет собой великолепный сад, раскинувшийся перед огромнейшим и величественным белым дворцом. Где-то играет музыка, впереди цветут тюльпаны и поют птицы, невдалеке играют женщины из гарема в лёгких и прозрачных одеждах, сквозь которые отчётливо проступают формы их бёдер. Рай. Всё благоухает на этой картине. И где-то в углу мы замечаем небольшую гору из трупов. Вот такое чувство у меня было по прошествии большей части книги. Автор описывает чуть ли не идеалистическую картину, но вопросы же есть, и они под конец повествования становятся всё громче и громче, да и от очевидных фактов, которые даже автору пришлось включить в книгу, никуда не денешься.
Тут даже не проблема в том, что автор уже доходит до того, что гарем, одно из самых желанных мест, в котором родители хотели видеть своих дочерей, но проблема в том, что ощущается сильный диссонанс. Ведь если всё было так идеально (даже все те трупы, что автору всё же пришлось внести в свой идеальны мир), то почему империя так быстро рухнула? Почему ей так часто манипулировали, и откуда тогда взялся этот «больной человек Европы»?
Автор пишет, что султаны уже начали проводить реформы, когда пришли младотурки и что их успех, это успех реформаторов из великих визирей и некоторых султанов, что взялись за реформирование страны. Но в это тяжело поверить. Если бы реформы действительно проводились как в Англии или Голландии, то и падения такого бы не было. Так что в это верится с трудом. А когда автор пишет о геноциде армян? Тут, разумеется, слово «геноцид» не упоминается. Да и вообще, я даже и не понял, что автор упомянул это событие. Это было настолько незаметно, что даже по прочтении всей книги, я задумываюсь: эти два предложения - это и всё, что хотел сказать автор об этом событии или эти две строчки относились к совсем другому событию? В общем, нежелание автора критиковать власть султанов видится настолько отчётливо, что начинаешь задумываться, насколько корректно изображение Османской империи получает читатель в целом?
Even after I got to the epilogue, I still couldn't decide what grade to give the book. Unfortunately, the epilogue and the last chapters showed the author to be extremely biased and one-sided with regard to Ottoman rule and its reflection on the Ottoman Empire as a whole. Yes, the author miraculously describes the life of the city during the reign of various sultans and especially the golden age, in particular, the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. Everything is so majestic that you can't help but think: is Rome the foundation of the basics? So the author describes magnificence of Constantinople. Everything is given in the smallest details. Here also the detailed description of imperial procedures from visiting mosques and holidays to reception of ambassadors is presented. Here is also the life of the courtiers and ordinary people of the city, including various merchants and embassies. Here and the diversity of culture. In general, all the chic and wealth of the city. Everything is so shining and blinding that you don't even notice such strange things as 200 drowned in the Bosporus women from the imperial harem after the change of one sultan to another or the tradition of knocking down the ears and noses of enemies near the palace or another execution of some high-ranking official. All this is presented in the book so easily that reading it you take it for granted, without the feeling of something unusual. The picture is a magnificent garden, stretched out in front of a huge and majestic white palace. Music is playing somewhere, tulips are blooming and birds are singing in front, women from harem are playing nearby in light and transparent clothes, through which the forms of their hips clearly appear. Paradise. Everything smells on this painting. And somewhere in the corner we notice a small mountain of corpses. That's the feeling I had after most of the book. The author describes an almost idealistic picture, but there are questions, and at the end of the story they become louder and louder, and the obvious facts, which even the author had to include in the book, will not go away.
It's not even a problem that the author is already getting to the point where harem is one of the most desirable places for parents to see their daughters, but the problem is that there is a strong dissonance. After all, if everything was so perfect (even all those corpses that the author still had to bring into his ideal world), then why did the empire collapse so quickly? Why was the empire so often manipulated, and where did this "sick man of Europe" come from?
The author writes that the sultans had already started to carry out reforms when the Young Turks came and that their success was the success of the reformers from the great viziers and some sultans who undertook the reform of the country. But this is hard to believe. If the reforms were really carried out like in England or the Netherlands, there wouldn't have been a decline. So it's hard to believe it. And when the author writes about the Armenian genocide? Here, of course, the word "genocide" is not mentioned. And in general, I did not even understand that the author mentioned this event. It was so imperceptible that even after reading the whole book, I think: these two sentences are all the author wanted to say about this event, or did these two lines refer to a completely different event? In general, the author's unwillingness to criticize the power of the sultans is so clear that you begin to think how correctly the image of the Ottoman Empire gets the reader as a whole?
Одна из немногих книг, чья оценка или рейтинг постоянно колебалась у меня то в одну, то другую сторону до самого эпилога. К сожалению, эпилог и последние главы показали автора крайне предвзятым и однобоким в отношении османского правления и его отражения на Османскую империю в целом. Да, автор просто чудесно описывает жизнь города во время правления различных султанов и в особенности золотой век, в частности правление Сулеймана Великолепного. Всё настолько величественно, что невольно думаешь, а Рим ли является основой основ? Так описывает автор великолепие Константинополя. Всё подано в мельчайших деталях. Тут и детальное описание имперских процедур от посещения мечетей и праздников до приёма послов. Тут и жизнь придворных и обычных людей города, включая различных торговцев и посольств. Тут и многообразие культуры. В общем, весь шик и богатство города. Всё настолько блестит и ослепляет, что даже не замечаешь такие странности как 200 утопленных в Босфоре женщин из императорского гарема после смены одного султана на другого или традиция сваливать уши и носы врагов недалеко от дворца или очередная казнь какого-то высокопоставленного чиновника. Всё это подано в книге так легко, что читая, принимаешь это как должное, без ощущения чего-то необычного. Создаваемая картина представляет собой великолепный сад, раскинувшийся перед огромнейшим и величественным белым дворцом. Где-то играет музыка, впереди цветут тюльпаны и поют птицы, невдалеке играют женщины из гарема в лёгких и прозрачных одеждах, сквозь которые отчётливо проступают формы их бёдер. Рай. Всё благоухает на этой картине. И где-то в углу мы замечаем небольшую гору из трупов. Вот такое чувство у меня было по прошествии большей части книги. Автор описывает чуть ли не идеалистическую картину, но вопросы же есть, и они под конец повествования становятся всё громче и громче, да и от очевидных фактов, которые даже автору пришлось включить в книгу, никуда не денешься.
Тут даже не проблема в том, что автор уже доходит до того, что гарем, одно из самых желанных мест, в котором родители хотели видеть своих дочерей, но проблема в том, что ощущается сильный диссонанс. Ведь если всё было так идеально (даже все те трупы, что автору всё же пришлось внести в свой идеальны мир), то почему империя так быстро рухнула? Почему ей так часто манипулировали, и откуда тогда взялся этот «больной человек Европы»?
Автор пишет, что султаны уже начали проводить реформы, когда пришли младотурки и что их успех, это успех реформаторов из великих визирей и некоторых султанов, что взялись за реформирование страны. Но в это тяжело поверить. Если бы реформы действительно проводились как в Англии или Голландии, то и падения такого бы не было. Так что в это верится с трудом. А когда автор пишет о геноциде армян? Тут, разумеется, слово «геноцид» не упоминается. Да и вообще, я даже и не понял, что автор упомянул это событие. Это было настолько незаметно, что даже по прочтении всей книги, я задумываюсь: эти два предложения - это и всё, что хотел сказать автор об этом событии или эти две строчки относились к совсем другому событию? В общем, нежелание автора критиковать власть султанов видится настолько отчётливо, что начинаешь задумываться, насколько корректно изображение Османской империи получает читатель в целом?
Even after I got to the epilogue, I still couldn't decide what grade to give the book. Unfortunately, the epilogue and the last chapters showed the author to be extremely biased and one-sided with regard to Ottoman rule and its reflection on the Ottoman Empire as a whole. Yes, the author miraculously describes the life of the city during the reign of various sultans and especially the golden age, in particular, the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. Everything is so majestic that you can't help but think: is Rome the foundation of the basics? So the author describes magnificence of Constantinople. Everything is given in the smallest details. Here also the detailed description of imperial procedures from visiting mosques and holidays to reception of ambassadors is presented. Here is also the life of the courtiers and ordinary people of the city, including various merchants and embassies. Here and the diversity of culture. In general, all the chic and wealth of the city. Everything is so shining and blinding that you don't even notice such strange things as 200 drowned in the Bosporus women from the imperial harem after the change of one sultan to another or the tradition of knocking down the ears and noses of enemies near the palace or another execution of some high-ranking official. All this is presented in the book so easily that reading it you take it for granted, without the feeling of something unusual. The picture is a magnificent garden, stretched out in front of a huge and majestic white palace. Music is playing somewhere, tulips are blooming and birds are singing in front, women from harem are playing nearby in light and transparent clothes, through which the forms of their hips clearly appear. Paradise. Everything smells on this painting. And somewhere in the corner we notice a small mountain of corpses. That's the feeling I had after most of the book. The author describes an almost idealistic picture, but there are questions, and at the end of the story they become louder and louder, and the obvious facts, which even the author had to include in the book, will not go away.
It's not even a problem that the author is already getting to the point where harem is one of the most desirable places for parents to see their daughters, but the problem is that there is a strong dissonance. After all, if everything was so perfect (even all those corpses that the author still had to bring into his ideal world), then why did the empire collapse so quickly? Why was the empire so often manipulated, and where did this "sick man of Europe" come from?
The author writes that the sultans had already started to carry out reforms when the Young Turks came and that their success was the success of the reformers from the great viziers and some sultans who undertook the reform of the country. But this is hard to believe. If the reforms were really carried out like in England or the Netherlands, there wouldn't have been a decline. So it's hard to believe it. And when the author writes about the Armenian genocide? Here, of course, the word "genocide" is not mentioned. And in general, I did not even understand that the author mentioned this event. It was so imperceptible that even after reading the whole book, I think: these two sentences are all the author wanted to say about this event, or did these two lines refer to a completely different event? In general, the author's unwillingness to criticize the power of the sultans is so clear that you begin to think how correctly the image of the Ottoman Empire gets the reader as a whole?
April 16, 2024
While the title isn't 100% inaccurate, this book is as much a history if the Ottoman Empire as it is the city of Constantinople. The author covers the period from the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople under Mehmed II through the deposition and exile of the last Ottoman Sultan/Caliph, Mehmet VI. While I generally enjoyed it (and it is well-researched), I'm not a fan of the way the author arranged things. The first half of the book covers the mid- to late-18th Century, but, instead if being a chronological account, each chapter deals with specific topics for the entire period: The Conqueror, City of God, The Palace, Harems and Hamams, City of Gold, Viziers and Dragomans, Cushions of Pleasure, and Ambassadors and Artists. This part felt really well done since this book was intended to be, primarily, the history of a city. Suddenly, about halfway through the book, the author switches to a chronological account of the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire. This part wasn't terrible, but it felt like another book. NOTE: I was surprised to notice that this book was published in 1995, as the author has a tendency to include untranslated phrases and brief passages in other languages, a habit that I associate more with books from the 19th (and early 20th) Centuries. 3.5 stars (I'd give it a strong 4 stars for the first half).
May 18, 2017
It is the story of a city and a dynasty. From the first moment of conquest in 1453 to the last moment of escape on the Orient Express in 1924.
Funny, that reminds me of a song... Istanbul, not Constantinople; so take me back to Constantinople; no, you can't go back to Constantinople; been a long time gone, Constantinople... :o)
"Like the city itself, he was a collection of contrasts: cruel and gentle, ruthless and tolerant, pious and pederast. He built schools and markets as enthusiastically as he ordered tortures and massacres. Regarding himself both as the supreme gazi, or warrior for Islam, and the new Alexander, he read or listened to Koran, expositions of the Gospels, Persian poets, chronicles of emperors, popes and the kings of France, Arrians's life of Alexander, Homer, Herodotus, Livy, and Xenophon."
Funny, that reminds me of a song... Istanbul, not Constantinople; so take me back to Constantinople; no, you can't go back to Constantinople; been a long time gone, Constantinople... :o)
"Like the city itself, he was a collection of contrasts: cruel and gentle, ruthless and tolerant, pious and pederast. He built schools and markets as enthusiastically as he ordered tortures and massacres. Regarding himself both as the supreme gazi, or warrior for Islam, and the new Alexander, he read or listened to Koran, expositions of the Gospels, Persian poets, chronicles of emperors, popes and the kings of France, Arrians's life of Alexander, Homer, Herodotus, Livy, and Xenophon."
January 24, 2023
Philip Mansel–Constantinople, City of the World’s Desire
The present book is a truly marvelous historical meditation on one of the world’s great cities. Philip Mansel is a British historian and freelance academic who specializes in the “court-history” of France and the Ottoman Empire. What this means, as he says in his preface, is that he is interested in understanding the unique politics of the royal dynasties that governed much of the early modern world in their full complexity and peculiarity.
Though we are little more than two and a half centuries removed from early modern royalism, to study these regimes in their own terms is to truly enter a different country from the perspective of the modern reader. As Toqueville understood well by the 1830s, our own age offers a stark contrast between politically inclusive liberal states with formally accountable government and obscene tyrannies unshackled by the constraints of tradition, custom, and religion. Entering the world of court societies, Mansel examinines an alternative way of life, a world where rituals, religious law and institutions, and formal relationships between the multiple layers of power perform many of the same functions that formal constitutional constraints impose on political leadership in our time, albeit with far more ambiguity.
A key character throughout the book, for this reason, is the Sublime Porte, the seat of the Ottoman government between 1453 and 1923 when the modern Turkish Republic was established with its capital in Ankara. The Porte is lavishly described in vivid terms, its gardens, fountains, cuisine, music, harems, beautiful windows and, of course, its secretive intrigue. Along the way, we observe the Porte from many luminous sources: the British and Venetian diplomatic correspondence, the private writings of Grand Viziers, and quotations from the sultans themselves.
What is shown in each of these vignettes is politics conducted in an entirely different register. No doubt, politics here retains the same perennial human features –competing interest groups, war and fear of war, material want, material plenty, and their painful juxtaposition in the same society–but all of these forces and the political demands they generate are channeled in the Ottoman world to the ceremonial heart of the court rather than towards elections or representative institutions. One of the strange realizations that Mansel constantly implies–and even makes explicit a few times–is that for all its occult features, the Ottoman Court was more capable of holding together a highly religiously and linguistically diverse society than its successor states (Modern Greece, Turkey, the Arab states, Israel, Serbia, and Bulgaria, among others) and, perhaps more provocatively, many liberal democracies in other more putatively stable parts of the world which have their own struggles with governing diverse populations.
From here, the book radiates out to broader descriptions of life in Constantinople. The book’s chapters are a fine blend of a chronological and thematic organization. Each chapter covers a distinct theme from “the Palace” to “The Janissaries’ Frown” to “The Road to Tsarigrad”--what the Russian Romanov dynasty hoped to rename Constantinople upon a conquest long hoped for and never achieved. Each chapter picks up its theme in the part of Ottoman history the author deems most appropriate to begin his discussion, and some chapters begin at an earlier point than where the prior chapter left off, but eventually the book advances chronologically.
One of the great pleasures of the book are the everyday Istabulites one encounters on the journey, gossiping women and their maidservants in the public baths, Genoese and Venetian merchants in their wing of the city, the sultan’s Jewish doctors and confidants, attendees of the public feasts and processions. In this manner, Mansel manages to write an aristocratic court history that is at the same time a social history of the ancient city that was the court’s environ and cultural lifeblood in a way that is natural and compelling. One leaves his work with an increased appreciation both how historians need not make a compromise between “traditional” histories of war, politics, and diplomacy and more bottom-up approaches tracking everyday people and long term social and economic trends. These two perspectives are complementary.
One cannot seriously read Mansel’s depiction of Constantinople’s four Ottoman centuries without being humbled by the magnificence of the diverse urban civilization it sustained. Mansel is far from a sentimentalist. He upbraids Selim I for outlawing the printing for books by Muslim authors in the name of religious reverence for caligraphy, a fatal decision that retarded scientific and intellectual progress in the empire’s Muslim population for centuries. He directs Gibbon-esque invective at the Ottoman Janissaries, the slave soldier corps who became an independent interest group capable of ending military campaigns through the threat of mutiny and fomenting palace coups to kill and overthrow sultans who wouldn’t increase their pay. He shows that the 1529 siege of Vienna, an arguably pivotal reversal for the Ottomans from which they never fully recovered, was abandoned because the Janissaries threatened to mutiny. Though the Ottomans tried once more to conquer the city despite trying once more in 1683, conditions were by no means as auspicious by this point. Selim III’s attempts to modernize the military and sideline the Janissaries are equally vividly documented, as is his catastrophic overthrow by defenders of the status quo.
Despite all this, Mansel gently demonstrates that the Ottomans, especially in Constantinople, sustained a greater openness to trade, religious diversity, and the migration of skilled and ambitious persons to its shore than most European capitals before the eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries. Ironically, as the later history of religious and ethnic conflict in Greece and Asia minor shows, it may have been the Ottoman autocracy’s ability to force its constituent religious groups into political coexistence that allowed them to cooperate so fruitfully in economic terms. With much of the Middle East today still controlled by protectionist regimes with socialist and extremist histories, resulting in most Muslim countries trading with Europe more than each other and the mass persecution of religious difference, one cannot help but admire this achievement.
No history of the Ottoman court would be complete without the harem. Mansel provides a vivid description of the harem system at work. Rather than marry a single woman, as in the European pattern, the Ottoman sultans, like their Chinese counterparts, controlled a harem upwards of a thousand women who were enslaved from the empire’s diverse population. Outside of the vicious and nakedly Darwinian logic of the harem, which allows the powerful to the hoard capacity to pass down his genes to an astonishing degree and for this reason can be found in different forms across a number of societies, the harem disallowed the sultan the kind of diplomatic marriages between dynasties that characterized European politics. This made the Porte a self-enclosed world unto itself. Mansel’s description of it gives a vivid sense of the way the Ottoman government produced a kind of extreme privatization of political rule–with government conducted from a private throne room from which most non-castrated men were excluded. Those who did enter had to kowtow (drag themselves across the floor) with great gusto. A greater contrast with the public forum in which politics was, at least ceremonially and officially, conducted in the ancient Roman and Greek republics could scarcely be imaginable. The Porte was a society that took the logic of politics as a privatized family affair to greater extremes than almost any other.
What is most startling in Mansel’s description of this world, of course, is his narration of Ottoman succession crises. Heirs to the throne were kept essentially as prisoners in the Porte, and when the sultan died–whether by natural or violent causes–a new sultan would be named from among these cloistered men. The new sultan’s brothers, sometimes all of them, sometimes a few, would be murdered in order to prevent competition for the throne. This brutal practice only ceased entirely with the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was, needless to say, a terrible recipe for producing robust and competent rulers. Heirs to the throne were kept imprisoned in the Porte or at least under close watch, unable to leave the palace. When a new sultan was finally chosen upon the death of his father, he assumed the throne with a total lack of worldly experience, military, diplomatic, or otherwise. Nevertheless, just as the most robust democracies are liable to select imbeciles to lead them quite frequently, so too did a selection process as irrational as violent as the Ottomans’ select men of profound abilities and robust constitutions on more than one occasion. The most famous of these, whom Mansel describes with great sympathy and literary flair, is Suleiman the Magnificent, who bucked tradition and took his lover Roxelana as his legal wife and took the empire to its furthest point of expansion into central Europe. Suleiman wrote moving poems to her which Mansel quotes gracefully.
Mansel’s account of the tragedy of World War I and with it the dissolution of the Ottoman empire is profound and impressive. The tragic process by which the Ottomans and eventually the Young Turk rulers who controlled them entered the war on the German side plays out terribly, but understandably, in response to the Franco-Russian alliance whose menace to Germany was also at the heart of the war. After the war is lost and the British and French begin their efforts to totally partition the carcass of the empire, one cannot help but admire the heroism of Mustafa Kemal–soon to be Attaturk–the founder of modern Turkey. He fights a successful war of independence to prevent the colonization of the predominantly Turkish part of his country and builds a modern state atop it. While Ataturk’s protectionist economic policies, his early cooperation with the Soviets, and his socialist modernization projects should be roundly rebuked, he cannot seriously be regarded as anything other than a hero. He is the savior of his country and the dignity of his countrymen. The value he leaves his people in terms of secularism, scientific culture, and indigenous tradition of liberal political theory people cannot be overestimated and still sustains a part of the secular opposition to the aspiring tyrant Ergogan to this day. Mansel’s portraiture of Ataturk, and all the other actors in the final stages of the Ottoman tragedy, is masterful and moving.
This book is an extraordinary achievement. It is written with great literary ability and mastery of its sources. It is full of fascinating and memorable details, rich in humanity and nuance.
The present book is a truly marvelous historical meditation on one of the world’s great cities. Philip Mansel is a British historian and freelance academic who specializes in the “court-history” of France and the Ottoman Empire. What this means, as he says in his preface, is that he is interested in understanding the unique politics of the royal dynasties that governed much of the early modern world in their full complexity and peculiarity.
Though we are little more than two and a half centuries removed from early modern royalism, to study these regimes in their own terms is to truly enter a different country from the perspective of the modern reader. As Toqueville understood well by the 1830s, our own age offers a stark contrast between politically inclusive liberal states with formally accountable government and obscene tyrannies unshackled by the constraints of tradition, custom, and religion. Entering the world of court societies, Mansel examinines an alternative way of life, a world where rituals, religious law and institutions, and formal relationships between the multiple layers of power perform many of the same functions that formal constitutional constraints impose on political leadership in our time, albeit with far more ambiguity.
A key character throughout the book, for this reason, is the Sublime Porte, the seat of the Ottoman government between 1453 and 1923 when the modern Turkish Republic was established with its capital in Ankara. The Porte is lavishly described in vivid terms, its gardens, fountains, cuisine, music, harems, beautiful windows and, of course, its secretive intrigue. Along the way, we observe the Porte from many luminous sources: the British and Venetian diplomatic correspondence, the private writings of Grand Viziers, and quotations from the sultans themselves.
What is shown in each of these vignettes is politics conducted in an entirely different register. No doubt, politics here retains the same perennial human features –competing interest groups, war and fear of war, material want, material plenty, and their painful juxtaposition in the same society–but all of these forces and the political demands they generate are channeled in the Ottoman world to the ceremonial heart of the court rather than towards elections or representative institutions. One of the strange realizations that Mansel constantly implies–and even makes explicit a few times–is that for all its occult features, the Ottoman Court was more capable of holding together a highly religiously and linguistically diverse society than its successor states (Modern Greece, Turkey, the Arab states, Israel, Serbia, and Bulgaria, among others) and, perhaps more provocatively, many liberal democracies in other more putatively stable parts of the world which have their own struggles with governing diverse populations.
From here, the book radiates out to broader descriptions of life in Constantinople. The book’s chapters are a fine blend of a chronological and thematic organization. Each chapter covers a distinct theme from “the Palace” to “The Janissaries’ Frown” to “The Road to Tsarigrad”--what the Russian Romanov dynasty hoped to rename Constantinople upon a conquest long hoped for and never achieved. Each chapter picks up its theme in the part of Ottoman history the author deems most appropriate to begin his discussion, and some chapters begin at an earlier point than where the prior chapter left off, but eventually the book advances chronologically.
One of the great pleasures of the book are the everyday Istabulites one encounters on the journey, gossiping women and their maidservants in the public baths, Genoese and Venetian merchants in their wing of the city, the sultan’s Jewish doctors and confidants, attendees of the public feasts and processions. In this manner, Mansel manages to write an aristocratic court history that is at the same time a social history of the ancient city that was the court’s environ and cultural lifeblood in a way that is natural and compelling. One leaves his work with an increased appreciation both how historians need not make a compromise between “traditional” histories of war, politics, and diplomacy and more bottom-up approaches tracking everyday people and long term social and economic trends. These two perspectives are complementary.
One cannot seriously read Mansel’s depiction of Constantinople’s four Ottoman centuries without being humbled by the magnificence of the diverse urban civilization it sustained. Mansel is far from a sentimentalist. He upbraids Selim I for outlawing the printing for books by Muslim authors in the name of religious reverence for caligraphy, a fatal decision that retarded scientific and intellectual progress in the empire’s Muslim population for centuries. He directs Gibbon-esque invective at the Ottoman Janissaries, the slave soldier corps who became an independent interest group capable of ending military campaigns through the threat of mutiny and fomenting palace coups to kill and overthrow sultans who wouldn’t increase their pay. He shows that the 1529 siege of Vienna, an arguably pivotal reversal for the Ottomans from which they never fully recovered, was abandoned because the Janissaries threatened to mutiny. Though the Ottomans tried once more to conquer the city despite trying once more in 1683, conditions were by no means as auspicious by this point. Selim III’s attempts to modernize the military and sideline the Janissaries are equally vividly documented, as is his catastrophic overthrow by defenders of the status quo.
Despite all this, Mansel gently demonstrates that the Ottomans, especially in Constantinople, sustained a greater openness to trade, religious diversity, and the migration of skilled and ambitious persons to its shore than most European capitals before the eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries. Ironically, as the later history of religious and ethnic conflict in Greece and Asia minor shows, it may have been the Ottoman autocracy’s ability to force its constituent religious groups into political coexistence that allowed them to cooperate so fruitfully in economic terms. With much of the Middle East today still controlled by protectionist regimes with socialist and extremist histories, resulting in most Muslim countries trading with Europe more than each other and the mass persecution of religious difference, one cannot help but admire this achievement.
No history of the Ottoman court would be complete without the harem. Mansel provides a vivid description of the harem system at work. Rather than marry a single woman, as in the European pattern, the Ottoman sultans, like their Chinese counterparts, controlled a harem upwards of a thousand women who were enslaved from the empire’s diverse population. Outside of the vicious and nakedly Darwinian logic of the harem, which allows the powerful to the hoard capacity to pass down his genes to an astonishing degree and for this reason can be found in different forms across a number of societies, the harem disallowed the sultan the kind of diplomatic marriages between dynasties that characterized European politics. This made the Porte a self-enclosed world unto itself. Mansel’s description of it gives a vivid sense of the way the Ottoman government produced a kind of extreme privatization of political rule–with government conducted from a private throne room from which most non-castrated men were excluded. Those who did enter had to kowtow (drag themselves across the floor) with great gusto. A greater contrast with the public forum in which politics was, at least ceremonially and officially, conducted in the ancient Roman and Greek republics could scarcely be imaginable. The Porte was a society that took the logic of politics as a privatized family affair to greater extremes than almost any other.
What is most startling in Mansel’s description of this world, of course, is his narration of Ottoman succession crises. Heirs to the throne were kept essentially as prisoners in the Porte, and when the sultan died–whether by natural or violent causes–a new sultan would be named from among these cloistered men. The new sultan’s brothers, sometimes all of them, sometimes a few, would be murdered in order to prevent competition for the throne. This brutal practice only ceased entirely with the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was, needless to say, a terrible recipe for producing robust and competent rulers. Heirs to the throne were kept imprisoned in the Porte or at least under close watch, unable to leave the palace. When a new sultan was finally chosen upon the death of his father, he assumed the throne with a total lack of worldly experience, military, diplomatic, or otherwise. Nevertheless, just as the most robust democracies are liable to select imbeciles to lead them quite frequently, so too did a selection process as irrational as violent as the Ottomans’ select men of profound abilities and robust constitutions on more than one occasion. The most famous of these, whom Mansel describes with great sympathy and literary flair, is Suleiman the Magnificent, who bucked tradition and took his lover Roxelana as his legal wife and took the empire to its furthest point of expansion into central Europe. Suleiman wrote moving poems to her which Mansel quotes gracefully.
Mansel’s account of the tragedy of World War I and with it the dissolution of the Ottoman empire is profound and impressive. The tragic process by which the Ottomans and eventually the Young Turk rulers who controlled them entered the war on the German side plays out terribly, but understandably, in response to the Franco-Russian alliance whose menace to Germany was also at the heart of the war. After the war is lost and the British and French begin their efforts to totally partition the carcass of the empire, one cannot help but admire the heroism of Mustafa Kemal–soon to be Attaturk–the founder of modern Turkey. He fights a successful war of independence to prevent the colonization of the predominantly Turkish part of his country and builds a modern state atop it. While Ataturk’s protectionist economic policies, his early cooperation with the Soviets, and his socialist modernization projects should be roundly rebuked, he cannot seriously be regarded as anything other than a hero. He is the savior of his country and the dignity of his countrymen. The value he leaves his people in terms of secularism, scientific culture, and indigenous tradition of liberal political theory people cannot be overestimated and still sustains a part of the secular opposition to the aspiring tyrant Ergogan to this day. Mansel’s portraiture of Ataturk, and all the other actors in the final stages of the Ottoman tragedy, is masterful and moving.
This book is an extraordinary achievement. It is written with great literary ability and mastery of its sources. It is full of fascinating and memorable details, rich in humanity and nuance.
January 1, 2018
Interesting stuff, but I never do well with non-fiction. I think I need to take a class instead if I ever hope to understand this fascinating historical region.
July 14, 2018
From the moment Mehmed the Conqueror rode into the fallen city on a white stallion in 1493 until the last Sultan fled the city on a midnight train in 1924, the Ottomans ruled their empire from Constantinople. Rather than a history of their reign, or even of the city itself, Mansel's book is a rich and colourful portrait of the world's first great cosmopolitan city.
While important historical moments are covered, particularly the rise and fall of Ottomon Constantinople, for the most part the book is organised not chronologically, but by themes describing different aspects of life in the Ottoman capital and palace: the uneasy cultural and religious plurality of the city, the inner life of the Sultan's harem, the violent and treacherous rituals of succession to the Ottoman throne... Interspersed among these scenes are individual tales of ambitious businessmen, conniving diplomats, treacherous Grand Viziers, and of course some of the more memorable Sultans themselves, such as Suleiman the Magnificent who, for love, took the scandalous decision to break with hundreds of years of tradition in order to marry a single woman.
This is a long dense book, one to be read slowly so as to savour all it has to offer.
While important historical moments are covered, particularly the rise and fall of Ottomon Constantinople, for the most part the book is organised not chronologically, but by themes describing different aspects of life in the Ottoman capital and palace: the uneasy cultural and religious plurality of the city, the inner life of the Sultan's harem, the violent and treacherous rituals of succession to the Ottoman throne... Interspersed among these scenes are individual tales of ambitious businessmen, conniving diplomats, treacherous Grand Viziers, and of course some of the more memorable Sultans themselves, such as Suleiman the Magnificent who, for love, took the scandalous decision to break with hundreds of years of tradition in order to marry a single woman.
This is a long dense book, one to be read slowly so as to savour all it has to offer.
Read
February 14, 2025Very erudite, pleasantly orientalist. Almost entirely useless
July 6, 2014
This was a very interesting and informative read. However, the writing style made it difficult to follow. In my opinion, the author skipped from one person, topic or idea too many times making the reading "choppy". Probably would have given this five stars if the writing had been different. I definitely learned quite a bit about Constantinople and any time I learn from my reading I try to give the book at least four stars.
April 9, 2014
What a slow book to wade through. Good books about history or travel make you want to go to these places and experience it (like Bill Bryson's books). After reading this I have absolutely no interest in going to Istanbul (this is purely a comment about the book, not the place which I'm sure is a great place to visit).
February 19, 2011
Anecdotal, sprawling, ultimately melancholy - like the great city itself.
March 7, 2022
The Ottoman Empire ruled modern-day Turkey for nearly five hundred years, with its base in Constantinople, now Istanbul. Before than it had been the Byzantine center of Eastern Orthodoxy stemming back to Constantine himself. But then came the Islamic invasion in 1543 that lasted up until the 20th Century. Over the centuries, sultans and pashidas governed along with their grand viziers and valides, along with the infamous harems filled with concubines and slave girls whose mission was to fulfill the role of companions, consorts, and producers of heirs, namely males.
This was a concise yet fact-packed history of the Ottomans, and sometimes detail after detail can produce tedium. But with the city as the constant that remained as dynasties came and went, I was anchored to the Golden Horn, the Grand Pera Avenue, Galata, Kadikoy, and of course old Constantinople where the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, the Grand Bizarre, and the underground cisterns are all found. The Ottomans were multiculturalists perhaps ahead of their time. Istanbul has long been a gathering place for Turks, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Italians, Bulgarians, and others. The Ottomans could be rather tolerant of different religions and ethnicities, although over time there was plenty of bloodshed for a variety of reasons.
In fact, what stood out to me was how many sultans, consorts, heirs, concubines, grand viziers, Jews, Christians, Greeks, Armenians, Russians, and the list goes one, met with premature deaths because of political intrigue, prejudice, war, and host of other motives. Although Constantinople drew numerous people from far and wide, it seemed to be a gamble since lives were lost with routine frequency, at least according to this telling.
The Ottomans began to modernize in the 1800s, but by the end of that century they had weakened to such an extent that following World War I when they had the misfortune of alignment with Germany the Allies divided the city and ruled for four years, spurring the nationalism of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who eventually saw the demise of the empire for good and spurred on modern day Turkey starting with moving the capital from Istanbul to Ankara.
This book is packed with vivid depictions of a city steeped in culture and traditions spanning the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world, and referencing the highlights of numerous lives of those who dwelled there for a tiny portion of its lengthy history. One can practically smell the spices, visualize the mosque domes and sunsets, hear the minarets with their calls to prayer and the waves of the Bosporus, and imagine the myriad of communities who called this metropolis home.
This was a concise yet fact-packed history of the Ottomans, and sometimes detail after detail can produce tedium. But with the city as the constant that remained as dynasties came and went, I was anchored to the Golden Horn, the Grand Pera Avenue, Galata, Kadikoy, and of course old Constantinople where the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, the Grand Bizarre, and the underground cisterns are all found. The Ottomans were multiculturalists perhaps ahead of their time. Istanbul has long been a gathering place for Turks, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Italians, Bulgarians, and others. The Ottomans could be rather tolerant of different religions and ethnicities, although over time there was plenty of bloodshed for a variety of reasons.
In fact, what stood out to me was how many sultans, consorts, heirs, concubines, grand viziers, Jews, Christians, Greeks, Armenians, Russians, and the list goes one, met with premature deaths because of political intrigue, prejudice, war, and host of other motives. Although Constantinople drew numerous people from far and wide, it seemed to be a gamble since lives were lost with routine frequency, at least according to this telling.
The Ottomans began to modernize in the 1800s, but by the end of that century they had weakened to such an extent that following World War I when they had the misfortune of alignment with Germany the Allies divided the city and ruled for four years, spurring the nationalism of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who eventually saw the demise of the empire for good and spurred on modern day Turkey starting with moving the capital from Istanbul to Ankara.
This book is packed with vivid depictions of a city steeped in culture and traditions spanning the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world, and referencing the highlights of numerous lives of those who dwelled there for a tiny portion of its lengthy history. One can practically smell the spices, visualize the mosque domes and sunsets, hear the minarets with their calls to prayer and the waves of the Bosporus, and imagine the myriad of communities who called this metropolis home.
October 11, 2018
What I liked
Very long and very detailed. Maybe I don't remember most of the details of what I've read, but the broad strokes and general themes are still there, due in large part to the way Mansel brings them to life with an abundance of details.
On a similar note: Tons of quotations from primary sources. It's fascinating hearing Constantinople of the past described in the words of people who were actually there. Mansel does a great job putting these quotes in context, so that the words speak clearly.
Thematic chapters. As mentioned in another Goodreads review, the first two thirds of the book is grouped by theme (e.g. religion, commerce, government, recreation) rather than chronology. Again, I think this makes it much easier to grasp the larger trends and make connections between the forces at play.
Focus. Somehow by focusing specifically on the city of Constantinople, this book tells a story about the entire Ottoman empire. Staying in a single city takes the book away from uninteresting abstract arguments and towards fascinating stories about actual people and deeds.
The Ottoman empire itself. What a fascinating swath of history. Constantinople lies at the intersection of Europe and Asia, and by reading its story, the reader will gain a lot of perspective about global interactions and conflicts of the past and the present: Islam and Christianity, World War I, Mediterranean trading empires, nationalism, and many others besides.
What I did not like
I wish Mansel used the Turkish alphabet instead of English transliterations (e.g. Beşiktaş instead of Beshiktash). The transliterations make it a bit unclear how the various names are actually supposed to be pronounced.
Very long and very detailed. Maybe I don't remember most of the details of what I've read, but the broad strokes and general themes are still there, due in large part to the way Mansel brings them to life with an abundance of details.
On a similar note: Tons of quotations from primary sources. It's fascinating hearing Constantinople of the past described in the words of people who were actually there. Mansel does a great job putting these quotes in context, so that the words speak clearly.
Thematic chapters. As mentioned in another Goodreads review, the first two thirds of the book is grouped by theme (e.g. religion, commerce, government, recreation) rather than chronology. Again, I think this makes it much easier to grasp the larger trends and make connections between the forces at play.
Focus. Somehow by focusing specifically on the city of Constantinople, this book tells a story about the entire Ottoman empire. Staying in a single city takes the book away from uninteresting abstract arguments and towards fascinating stories about actual people and deeds.
The Ottoman empire itself. What a fascinating swath of history. Constantinople lies at the intersection of Europe and Asia, and by reading its story, the reader will gain a lot of perspective about global interactions and conflicts of the past and the present: Islam and Christianity, World War I, Mediterranean trading empires, nationalism, and many others besides.
What I did not like
I wish Mansel used the Turkish alphabet instead of English transliterations (e.g. Beşiktaş instead of Beshiktash). The transliterations make it a bit unclear how the various names are actually supposed to be pronounced.
May 7, 2023
Since I’m a fan of history books, here is the next volume on this subject: Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453-1924 by Philip Mansel.
This work focuses on Constantinople as the capital of the Ottoman Empire, from the capture of the city by the Muslims in 1453 to the end of the monarchy in 1924.
Honestly, it’s a whole study, since almost 2/3 of the book, the author tells about the various cultural, social and religious features of Constantinople in all details through time, layer by layer. While educational, it sometimes felt overly exhaustive. So in that part, my reading pace was almost tortoise.
In the finale, Mansel moves to a chronological type of narration and strikingly describes the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Then you understand why you suffered at first.
Perhaps, if a foreigner had come to Istanbul at the end of the 19th century, armed with this book, he would have been aware of all aspects of the situation in the city and would have been there in their element.
I’ve understood a lot about the historical features of Constantinople. I respect the book for this, but it was boring at times.
This work focuses on Constantinople as the capital of the Ottoman Empire, from the capture of the city by the Muslims in 1453 to the end of the monarchy in 1924.
Honestly, it’s a whole study, since almost 2/3 of the book, the author tells about the various cultural, social and religious features of Constantinople in all details through time, layer by layer. While educational, it sometimes felt overly exhaustive. So in that part, my reading pace was almost tortoise.
In the finale, Mansel moves to a chronological type of narration and strikingly describes the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Then you understand why you suffered at first.
Perhaps, if a foreigner had come to Istanbul at the end of the 19th century, armed with this book, he would have been aware of all aspects of the situation in the city and would have been there in their element.
I’ve understood a lot about the historical features of Constantinople. I respect the book for this, but it was boring at times.
October 25, 2023
I found that reading one chapter at a time, taking a break, reading another chapter later helped get through this book. This is no judgement on the book or writing, but it might be the subject matter otherwise could not hold my attention. This is a rather long love letter to Constantinople with a lot of name dropping, or as the case is, extinct royalty name dropping. I still enjoyed it, just more slowly, because I'm a sucker for history. The author assumes we know why the name changed from Constantinople to Istanbul and when. While reading, we see it's coming, we learn the Young Turks don't like Constantinople, but the subject was dealt with lightly. What is at stake is the multiculturalism of Constantinople, which did not survive. There are certainly lessons to be learned here. I always heard of the Ottoman Empire as the "sick man of Europe." This book helped explain why and even debunked some of my uninformed impressions about the Sultan and how the Sultans ruled.
June 15, 2017
I wanted to like this book. It was interesting, and clearly well researched. But it was never particularly captivating in that way that makes you dread putting a book down. I learned a lot, but it was like pulling teeth to get through...and in the end it took me almost a year to slog through it. I've read another half-dozen books during this time. I'm very sorry to say so, but I'm glad to have this finally over with.
July 13, 2020
My sister brought me back this book when she visited Istanbul. After reading this book, I took a trip to Istanbul. Because of this reading my entire time in Istanbul was so much more profound.
Certain parts of the book are heavy and tough to get through but it’s in these details that you can stitch together a vision of what life must’ve been in Istanbul back on those days.
Good read overall.
Certain parts of the book are heavy and tough to get through but it’s in these details that you can stitch together a vision of what life must’ve been in Istanbul back on those days.
Good read overall.
July 24, 2021
A story of the Ottoman Constantonople is a fairly good read, although it has some shortcomings.
The main part of both sources and viewpoint are European, so most of what we see is through the eyes of European diplomats/visitors. (Also some of the French phrases are left untranslated, which is just annoying (even though can read them).
Also the city is the topic, which means that whatever goes on i the ottoman Empire isn't always clear.
The main part of both sources and viewpoint are European, so most of what we see is through the eyes of European diplomats/visitors. (Also some of the French phrases are left untranslated, which is just annoying (even though can read them).
Also the city is the topic, which means that whatever goes on i the ottoman Empire isn't always clear.
February 14, 2020
Mükemmel bir kitap. Tarih kitaplarında okuduğumuz bir çok bilgi ara ara yer almakla birlikte bir sürü yabancı kaynaktan da farklı bir açıdan desteklenmiş bilgiler yer alıyor. Konstantiniyye’nin 1453’teki fethinden İstanbul’un 2007’deki durumuna kadar ki yaşananlar öyle güzel özetlenmiş ki, okuyan kişi bir çırpıda tüm kitabı bitirebilmek için can atıyor.
January 7, 2021
It is beautifully written and researched until the part of Turkish revolution: kayıks no longer existed, or the Mustafa Kemal wanted this nation to consist of only Turks, or he didnt like İstanbul are not true at all. But it is a nice read in general until as every British his fear of Kemalism creeps in
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