Gayrimüslimlerin Konstantinopolis kuşatmaları = The non-Muslim sieges of Constantinople (çev. A. Aydoğan)

As a flourishing, much-envied city, throughout its more than thousand years of history, Byzantine Constantinople has often been the object of siege warfare. Depending on what one considers to be an actual siege (are mere blockades or vain intentions to seize a city also sieges?), the immense stronghold at the Bosphorus may have been the purpose of up to twenty siege campaigns. Here, we will limit ourselves to the non-Muslim sieges of Byzantine Constantinople, thus excluding the most famous, Ottoman siege by Sultan Mehmed II and his troops in 1453, but also the two Arab sieges (674-678, 717-718) and the Byzantine retaking of the then Latin capital (since 1204) in 1261. The attempts by Bulgarian and so-called Nicaean forces (1235, 1260) to recapture the capital from the Latins will not be discussed either, while the siege(s) at the end of the Fourth Crusade are already treated in detail elsewhere in this History. Among the remaining sieges are several Slavic (Bulgarian and Russian) attempts to seize the respectable and very influential city and a few efforts of some of Byzantium’s own military men during what could be regarded as Byzantine coups.