The city of Constantinople is a walled city within what is known today as Faith, Istanbul, Turkey. Constantinople was founded as far back is 330 AD and is roughly 2,063 mi² in size with walls that were 15–20 m tall and 10–12 m wide. These walls not only served for aesthetic purposes, giving the city a medieval style, but the wall served as protection from bandits, armies invaders. The walls of Constantinople were not built during the founding of the city but rather, they were built during the 5th century. [1]
What made Constantinople one of the greatest economic cities in the world was its culture. Merchants from all over the world played a role in shaping the city and people from as far as west Asian and western Europe traveled to Constantinople for trading goods. As far as the local culture, Constantinople was home to Turks, Jews, Greeks, and variety of other ethnicities. Constantinople was also home to a variety of religions, including Islam, Christianity (a variety of its denominations), and Judaism. During the Silk Road era, Constantinople was also home to a variety of languages such as Khotanese, Sogdian, Chinese, Turkish, and even some English. [2]
Constantinople was one of the leading economic cities in the world because of the Silk Road. The city essentially served as the trade center of the world and included many goods from Silk, spices, tea, ivory, cotton, wool, precious metals, Ammonium chloride, glass, leather, and countless other goods. Most popular trading good of course, is silk. Silk was a commodity in the Chinese Military that served as not only a luxury fabric, but also currency. When the Chinese army did not have enough metal to mint coins, the Chinese military paid its soldiers in silk, which was then traded to local merchants, which was traded to other merchants, and eventually through trickle trade, made its way to the western world and Constantinople. [3]
Another reason why Constantinople was so successful during the silk road was its natural surroundings and climate. The city was essentially surrounded by rivers that empty out into the Black Sea, and The Sea of Marmara, which then empty into the Mediterranean Sea. The city was so well accessed by water that it led to easy sea travel for merchants and traders. This also allowed for the immigration of other ethnicities from surrounding countries around the Mediterranean area. Constantinople is also blessed with incredible climate: not to hot and not too cold with a decent amount of precipitation in the form of mostly rain. In Constantine, the climate is warm and temperate. The rain in Constantine falls mostly in the winter, with relatively little rain in the summer. The average annual temperature in Constantine is 60.1 °F. While agriculture was not directly grown in the city, surrounding villages gave rise to a variety of agriculture goods such as grains, vine fruits, vegetables, and a variety of livestock animals. The more food that cities must be able to feed its people, the more people will want to live in that city, which is why the city during the Silk Road era was around between 500,000 and 800,000 people.[3]
Hansen, Valerie. The Silk Road: A New History with Documents (Oxford, 2016).