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| An 1803 map from Cedid Atlas refers to Istanbul as Islambol (though the Bosphorus is called the Istanbul Strait on the map) |
By John Sanidopoulos
Last month President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey made remarks and answered questions on current issues in a joint interview with Kanal 7, TVNET and Ülke TV in Istanbul. Among the things he commented on was the name of the city of Istanbul, and whether or not it would be called Constantinople again. He said: "Istanbul will never be Constantinople." He further said: "This is Islambol. We do not have any Constantinople on our minds or in our dreams. We will not allow something like this to happen."
Islambol is a Turkish folk-etymological adaptation of Istanbul created after the Ottoman conquest of 1453 to express the city's new role as the capital of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. It is first attested shortly after the conquest, and its invention was ascribed by some contemporary writers to Sultan Mehmed II himself. Some Ottoman sources of the 17th century, most notably Evliya Çelebi, describe it as the common Turkish name of the time. Between the late 17th and late 18th centuries, it was also in official use. The first use of the word "Islambol" on coinage took place in 1703 during the reign of Sultan Ahmed III. The term Kostantiniyye (Costantinopolis) still appeared, however, into the 20th century.
