Tag: Ottoman Empire

Lesley Blanch Archive | Istanbul, “the eye, the tongue, the light of the Orient”

Lesley Blanch (1904-2007), a Londoner by birth, spent the greater part of her life travelling about those remote areas her books record so vividly. She was an astute observer of places and people; their quirks, habits and passions. This article about Istanbul in Turkey, which she loved, was found among her papers. It was written some time in 1954-5.

Although so many conquerors have eyed Istanbul longingly, it has, oddly enough, never really attracted that more modest stratum of humanity, the tourist, until today. Now with that inexplicable urge which makes fashion, it has suddenly become the lodestar of the adventurous, “To the walls of Constantinople!” once the Crusaders’ cry, might now be theirs. Continue reading Lesley Blanch Archive | Istanbul, “the eye, the tongue, the light of the Orient”

Review | Aleppo: The Rise and Fall of Syria’s Great Merchant City, Philip Mansel | I. B. Tauris

After four years of war, Aleppo is a city in ruins, bombed by the Syrian air force, threatened by ISIL, its population decimated. Bread queues, electricity and water cuts, rationing and road-blocks are part of daily life. “Rubble and rubbish fill the streets. Looting, hunger and sleepless nights are normal. Medical services have collapsed.” One of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, a thousand years of civilization have been reduced to wreckage.

aleppo Philip Mansel writes in his introduction, “Aleppo was a city with a rhythm of its own, challenging categories and generalisations. Lying between the desert and the sea, the mountains of Anatolia and the banks of the Euphrates, it was Arab and Turkish; Kurdish and Armenian; Christian, Muslim and Jewish. An Arabic-speaking city with a Muslim majority, under the Ottoman Empire Aleppo also became a centre of French culture and Catholic missions. Like many other cities in the region, it mixed East and West, Islam and Christianity. Until 2012 Aleppo was distinguished by its peaceful character. For 500 years, whatever their origin, its inhabitants had lived together relatively harmoniously. The reasons for this harmony, and for the current cataclysm, are the subject of this book.” Continue reading Review | Aleppo: The Rise and Fall of Syria’s Great Merchant City, Philip Mansel | I. B. Tauris

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