LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT THIS MAP. LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT THIS MAP.

Take a step into the TARDI- Errr, time machine.
We’ve been nearing the Renaissance , but we’re going to go a lot farther back.
PAUL.
Paul.
You know Paul, th-



...
no.
Paul the missionary. He went from city to city spreading the gospel. Ok. He went to Europe and Asia and Greece and all that good stuffz. Told about Jesus. What happened as a result of that?
Between his missionary journeys, he got in jail a lot. He wrote a lot of letters while he was in jail, though. SEVEN of the New Testament books are written by Paul and named after the cities he visited. He wrote more, but seven are named after the cities. Six of the seven cities are located in what later become known as the Ottoman empire.
During this time, The known world was, for the most part, the Roman Empire. Not the Holy Roman Empire, but the Roman Empire. Things were getting wack and crazy all up in there, and Christians were being persecuted, and a buncha bad stuff was going on. And then the roman empire was divided. Constantine come to the throne of the Western Roman Empire, and the capital was moved. And Constantine got all greedy and decided he’d go attack the Eastern Roman Empire. So he did and he got it. lulz.
Where’d he move the Capital? To Byzantium, which was known as Constantinople, which is now Istanbul. I don’t know why they changed it three times, but they did.
So after about a hundred years, everything went kuh-ploink and Rome fell. Inflation, taxation, Obam-BARBARIANS, and moving eventually made the entire country fall. But not in a day. I know it wasn’t built in a day, but it didn’t fall in a day either ._. This was around 476.
So almost A THOUSAND YEARS LATER is where we currently are. The Ottoman empire was pretty sweet, but they were mainly Islamic. So how did these six cities in the Ottoman empire fare? I’LL TELL YOU LATER.

So way back, Constantine made it a law that you couldn’t persecute Christians in the Edict of Milan. They were under HORRIBLE persecution, and Constantine was not too fond of that. Constantine wanted his empire to be strongly Christian.
So we’re going back again. We got Justinian and Theodora. They made Constantinople what it is/was/whatever. It was like a golden age.
AND THEN GENGHIS KHAN CAME.
And here we are at the Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman Turks used to be a little band of fugitives, led by a man named Ossman. He and his followers, the Ottomen, were on the run from our good buddy Genghis Khan. They were freakin’ smooth out and were running. Their place of refuge was with the among the... the... I don’t know how to spell it or say it. I’m not even going to try. BUT THERE WERE SOME TURKS. AND THEY WERE NEAR THE BLACK SEA. Which is over near Constantinople.
Ossman was not just gonna live with the Turks. He was going to CONQUER them. So he did.
FOR TEH LULZ.
And he did a good job. He declared himself Sultan of the Turks and he ruled over them. So Ossman moved the Turks over to the Europe side of the Black Sea. Check out your friendly neighborhood globe and you’ll see what I mean. Then they took over the Balkans. I have NO idea who these guys are. They were a group of countries that were named after the mountain range around Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.
LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT THIS MAP. LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT THIS MAP. THIS MAP IS THE MAP YOUR MAP HAS, BUT A LOT MORE DETAILED.

GREECE. IT’S ON THE MAP. ALBANIA. YOU SEE IT. BULGARIA. IT’S RIGHT THERE. TURKEY. LOOKS NOTHING LIKE ONE. MOST OF YUGOSLAVIA. AND SOME OF ROMANIA. THEY’RE IN OUR BALKAN PARTY. YUGOSLAVIA IS NOT A COUNTRY ANYMORE. THEY ARE UNINVITED TO OUR PARTY. IT IS NOT A NICE REGION TO BE IN. LOTSA WAR. LOTSA LOTSA WAR.
Back to the Ottomans, though. The Ottomans crossed into Europe and fought the Balkans. They found the Bulgarians and the Serbs. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where the Bulgarians are from, and the Serbs were from Yugoslavia. The Turks were all “HEEEY, THESE GUYS AREN’T THAT MUCH DIFFERENT FROM USSS.” Well, except they had different religions. The Turks were Islamic and the Serbs and their Bulgarian buddies were Christian. And they had... Problems. The Ottomans brought their Islamic faith, and FORCED people to become Islamic or be heavily taxed. Christian cities fell because of this. Except for one city.
Except for CONSTANTINOPLE.
It had not been taken yet. Only one one sultan ever rose to the task, whose name was Mohammed. The second. Mo (not to be confused with Mohammed the First.) was an earth shaker. He had 150,000 soldiers to help him attack Constantinople, KNOWING that it was about 10 times the size of his opponents. For the lulz.
He had a big ship. It could not get through, because of a chain. So he just got a buncha little boats. And they pushed them across the land with logs and made like a conveyor belt. He had 70 bitty warships that they had positioned. Constantine the... Eleventh? Yeah. Constantine the Eleventh was pleading for help, but nobody came.
Awh.
So for about 54 days they fought back. Then it fell, and Constantine did too.
The Ottoman Turks renamed Constantinople. It is now called Istanbul.
And you see, when the Ottomans took over, the scientists, great thinkers, artists, and poets, fled. They were what made Constantinople great. But they caused the spread of genius throughout Europe, known as... -dramatic voice- THE RENNISANCE.
And as for the Ottomans, they kept at it and did well until, get this, 1918.
Wow.
And now, we part, and I leave you with something to help you remember, that it is, in fact, Istanbul and not Constantinople.