Turkey

Attila the Hun

Michael Grant tells how, some 1000 years ago, the “Scourge of God” died on his wedding night.

A Yorkshireman in Istanbul, 1593

Soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, a young Yorkshireman named Edward Barton was despatched to the Sultan’s court to promote the interests of the Levant Company.

Gordon and the Slave Trade

Charles Chenevix Trench finds that, as Governor of Equatoria and then Governor-General of the Sudan from 1874-1880, one of C. G. Gordon’s chief concerns was suppressing the slave-trade.

‘In Greece, and for Greece’

Lord Byron’s death there in April 1824 created an enduring legend. But the real story of the poet’s mission to help Greece in its revolution against Ottoman Turkish rule is one of hard-headed politics, which goes straight to the heart of the country’s present-day crisis, says Roderick Beaton.

Turkey’s Momentous Moment

The entry of Turkey into the First World War may have extended the conflict by as much as two years. It certainly changed the country forever. Yet the advent of war was marked by confusion, uncertainty and shifting alliances, says Ian F.W. Beckett.

Paul and Thekla

Seton Lloyd describes how modern research into the early Christian history of what is now Turkey has promoted an Apocryphal story from myth to reality.

The Fall of Constantinople

Five hundred years ago Constantinople—long a bastion of the Western world—fell to the armies of the Grand Turk. G.R. Potter gives his account of how the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire finally disappeared.

Crusades: The View from the East

The popular image of crusading is derived almost entirely from western accounts of the victorious First Crusade. Yet when historians examine Byzantine sources about the campaign a very different picture emerges, argues Peter Frankopan.

Evliya Çelebi: Traveller's Tales

To mark the 400th anniversary of his birth, UNESCO has declared Evliya Çelebi a ‘man of the year’. His Seyahatname, or Book of Travels, is one of the world’s great works of literature. Caroline Finkel celebrates a figure little known in the West.

Asceticism in the Middle Ages: Eats Roots and Leaves

The quest for spiritual virtue through personal austerity drove many Eastern Christians to lead solitary lives as hermits surviving in the wilderness. Andrew Jotischky describes how indifference to food became an integral part of the monastic ideal in the Byzantine era, one revived in the West in the 11th and 12th centuries.