De L’Europe. Figure LXVIII. 157

Title

De L’Europe. Figure LXVIII. 157

Description

Upper image shows the "Porte ou Serau" in Istanbul. Below, partly Istanbul with the Sea of Marmara and sailing ships offshore.

ca. 1730

Artist

Mallet (1630-1706)

Alain Manesson Mallet (1630- 1706 ) was a French cartographer and engineer. He started his career as a soldier in the army of Louis XIV, became a Sergeant-Major in the artillery and an Inspector of Fortifications. He also served under the King of Portugal, before returning to France, and his appointment to the court of Louis XIV. His military engineering and mathematical background led to his position teaching mathematics at court. His major publications were Description de L'Univers (1683) in 5 volumes, and Les Travaux de Mars ou l'Art de la Guerre (1684) in 3 volumes. His Description de L'Universe contains a wide variety of information, including star maps, maps of the ancient and modern world, and a synopsis of the customs, religion and government of the many nations included in his text. It has been suggested that his background as a teacher led to his being concerned with entertaining his readers. This concern manifested itself in the charming harbor scenes and rural landscapes that he included beneath his description of astronomical concepts and diagrams. Mallet himself drew most of the figures that were engraved for this book.

Historical Description

Constantinople was the capital city of the Roman and Byzantine (330 –1204 and 1261–1453), the Latin (1204–1261), and the Ottoman (1453–1922) empires. It was reinaugurated in 324 AD at ancient Byzantium, as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great, after whom it was named, and dedicated on 11 May 330.In the 12th century, the city was the largest and wealthiest European city and it was instrumental in the advancement of Christianity during Roman and Byzantine times. After the loss of its territory, the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire was reduced to just its capital city and its environs, eventually falling to the Ottomans in 1453. Following the Muslim conquest, the former bastion of Christianity in the east, Constantinople, was turned into the Islamic capital of the Ottoman Empire, under which it prospered and flourished again. After the founding of the modern Republic of Turkey the successor state of the Ottoman Empire the city was renamed Istanbul in 1923. Istanbul is probably the Turkish modification of the ancient Greek. This interpretation seems conclusive, because those who spoke colloquially "the city" in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages in the Eastern Roman Empire generally meant Constantinople, which, with its five hundred thousand inhabitants and its mighty walls, could not be compared to any other city in a wide area .