Review: Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Empire by Çiğdem Kafescioğlu

Abstract

Cigdem Kafescioglu Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Empire . Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies series, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009, 346 pp., 5 maps, 8 color and 152 b/w illus. $100 (cloth), ISBN 9780271027760 Cigdem Kafescioglu's Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital focuses on a distinguished period in the city's history, marked by its transformation from the capital of the Byzantine Empire to that of the Ottoman Empire after 1453 during the reign of Mehmed II. Based on her highly regarded doctoral dissertation, the book is remarkable for the depth of its research, the comprehensiveness of its content, and the potency of its historiographical approach. Without falling into the trap of an ideologically charged historical narrative revolving around either “the fall” or “the conquest” of the city, this approach emphasizes continuity amid change, and it reveals itself starting with the suggestive title, Constantinopolis/Istanbul . As outlined in the introduction, the book's main argument develops along four intersecting lines of inquiry: how the construction/reconstruction of the city as the capital of the Ottoman Empire was intertwined with the construction of the empire—or the reconstruction of the Ottoman polity as an empire; how through this construction/reconstruction project the city became a site of conflict between imperial and ghazi (Islamic frontier- warrior) ideologies and saw the eventual marginalization of the latter; how the city's Byzantine imperial heritage was appropriated selectively, adapted, or rejected in this project; and how this heritage was interpreted together with Ottoman and also Italian Renaissance architectural and urban practices in a cultural setting characterized by “hybridity,” “fluidity,” “dynamic eclecticism,” and/or “inclusivism.” Throughout the …