Introduction

The scholarly study of Constantinople was intitiated 450 years ago by a Frenchman. He was called Pierre Gilles (Latinized to Gyllius) and was by avocation a zoologist in addition to being an excellent classicist. Scholarship often follows in the wake of politics, and so it was in this case: the mission of Gyllius to the Levant was made possible by the unholy alliance between the very Catholic king Francis I and the infidel Sultan Suleyman. Even under these favourable conditions, Gyllius had a hard time. He ran out of funds, was obliged to join the Turkish army, which was setting out on campaign against Persia, was rescued at Aleppo by the French ambassador and eventually shipped back to the West, barely escaping capture by pirates on his homeward journey. The mission of Gyllius contributed little to the cause of zoology except a 'new description' of the elephant and the hippopotamus,1 but produced another, unforeseen result. Having been allowed to explore systematically the Ottoman capital and its suburbs, Gyllius set down his antiquarian notes, which he proceeded to integrate with the evidence of ancient authorities. He was not, of course, the first westerner to have described Constantinople, but he was the first to have done so in the light of Renaissance scholarship, which is still our scholarship. His two monographs, entitled De Bosporo thracio and De topographia Constantinopoleos were published posthumously in 1561 and immediately acknowledged as classics.