Caliph Harun Al Rashid and Constantinople

Starting from the era of Constantine, there was a christian doctrine of suppressing heretical forms of christianity. Among those were Arian christians - their form of christianity was similar to Judaism and generally they were friendly to jews - and a gnostic form of christianity called marcionism generally hostile to jews and judaism.  Jews themselves, would have been in very big trouble if their faith had been declared as an herecy like the other two but fortunately judaism had been acknowledged in the empire as a separate religion. The policy of the empire in the next 1500 years was to permit Jews to survive hence the concentration of fairly large masses of jews in specific cities of the empire. But also to surround jews with - from time to time -persecutions. Byzantine emperors passed many anti-jewish laws and prohibited christians from converting to Judaism. Many of the anti-jewish laws were not observed in practice except brief periods of persecutions.

Originally posted by Spartakus As i have said and as Romios pointed out,it was not a paradise but the Byzantines were far more tolerant than the Latins .

Definitely true...Byzantines were far more tolerant and civilized comparing to Latins.It is told about the 1453 siege that the folk and leading people in Byzantine society had told the emperor that they would prefer the Ottomans to the Latins, due to the bitter times after 1204 and Latin intolerance compared to Ottoman tolerance.

i dont think its canon thing, how did the crusaders got into it?

and about the siege, i have a question since Sultan Mehmet the First and Constantinople was in the Middle of the Ottoman lands, why didnt the Ottoman just Isolate the City for a couple of years until they surrender?

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Harun reached Constantinople when he was a General at his father time, and made that treaty with the Empress, and didnt reach that close when he became Caliph since the byzantinums kept paying as per the agreement and the Caliph kept his word till later as per the sotry in the first post here.

 

 

yup isolation should be effective and could be a good success in the long run.,

i also want to point out that it was not the "aim" of islamic empires since the Abbasides to conquer Constantinople, they wanted it but since the byzantinums always propose a peace treaty and pay sometype of payment to spare their city the city stayed free.

IF the ottomans wanted constantinople without caring about any treaties and with only one goal that is to take the city. a seige and isolation of the city, no one go in or out, no business and nothing then in the long run they will have to surrender.

the fall of Constantinople was a decision made by Sultan Mehmet Fatih and he achieved it.

 

Originally posted by azimuth i dont think its canon thing, how did the crusaders got into it? and about the siege, i have a question since Sultan Mehmet the First and Constantinople was in the Middle of the Ottoman lands, why didnt the Ottoman just Isolate the City for a couple of years until they surrender? ------ Harun reached Constantinople when he was a General at his father time, and made that treaty with the Empress, and didnt reach that close when he became Caliph since the byzantinums kept paying as per the agreement and the Caliph kept his word till later as per the sotry in the first post here.

Crusaders didn't get Constantinople with siege..

Actually, Byzantines were allied with the Crusaders, because their enemies were the same.Byzantine Empire was providing logistical support to the Crusade armies.So,they were letting the armies into their cities,too.

This had been the way before either,but in the Fourth Crusade, Latins decided to make a tragic change in their aims.After getting into the city, they decided to invade Constantinople instead of marching to Anatolia.

About the question regarding the isolation of city, isolation of Constantinople could just have been by laying siege upon the city, or controlling the sea or land ways leading to Constantinople

Laying siege for years is an expensive stuff, no state would have such power to do that. And controlling the sea or land ways for long time, even harder..Even though the Ottomans were controlling Thrace, in the Aegean Sea and Gallipoli Straits, Genoese and Venetian presence were showing its naval power, and Ottomans didn't have such a huge naval power till the middle of 16th century to get into such a naval competition with those Italian city-states.