Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Theodosius died in 450 and was succeeded by a string of emperors, including the most
famous of all Byzantine emperors, Justinian the Great. A former soldier, he and his great
general Belisarius reconquered Anatolia, the Balkans, Egypt, Italy and North Africa. They
also successfully put down the Nika riots of 532, killing 30,000 of the rioters in the Hip-
podrome in the process.
Three years before taking the throne, Justinian had married Theodora, a strong-willed
former courtesan who is credited with having great influence over her husband. Together,
they further embellished Constantinople with great buildings, including SS Sergius and
Bacchus, now known as Küçük (Little) Aya Sofya, Hagia Eirene (Aya İrini) and Hagia
Sophia (Aya Sofya), which was completed in 537.
From 565 to 1025, a succession of warrior emperors kept invaders such as the Persians
and the Avars at bay. Though the foreign armies often managed to get as far as Chalcedon
(the present-day suburb of Kadıköy), none were able to breach Theodosius' land walls.
The Arab armies of the nascent Islamic empire tried in 669, 674, 678 and 717-18, each
time in vain.
In 1071 Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes (r 1068-1071) led his army to eastern Anatolia
to do battle with the Seljuk Turks, who had been forced out of Central Asia by the en-
croaching Mongols. However, at Manzikert (Malazgirt) the Byzantines were disastrously
defeated, the emperor captured and imprisoned, and the former Byzantine heartland of
Anatolia thus thrown open to Turkish invasion and settlement. Soon the Seljuks had built
a thriving empire of their own in central Anatolia, with their capital first at Nicaea and
later at Konya.
As Turkish power was consolidated to the east of Constantinople, the power of Venice
- always a maritime and commercial rival to Constantinople - grew in the West. This co-
incided with the launch of the First Crusade and the arrival in Constantinople of the first
of the Crusaders in 1096. Soldiers of the Second Crusade passed through the city in 1146
during the reign of Manuel I, son of John Comnenus II 'the Good' and his empress,
Eirene, both of whose mosaic portraits can be seen in the gallery at Aya Sofya.
In 1204, soldiers of the Fourth Crusade led by Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice, at-
tacked and ransacked the city. They then ruled it with an ally, Count Baldwin of Flanders,
until 1261, when soldiers under Michael VIII Palaeologus, a Byzantine aristocrat in exile
who had risen to become co-emperor of Nicaea, successfully re-captured it. The Byzanti-
ne Empire was restored.
