Change and Decay September 3rd AM - Sultanahmet, Istanbul I want this journal to be a hymn to the life poetical of Asia Minor, rather than to decline, and so I had better address the decline first. Istanbul is a carcass. She is like some great whale beached on the shores of the Bosphorus, startling in her beauty - the echoing caverns of light, the great vaults of the ribs, the priceless troves of ambergris - yet a carcass nonetheless. She can give testament to the long, slow withdrawing roar of Rome, of Byzantium, of the Umayyad Arabs (who were here twice, first in 739), of the horrific Fourth Crusade, of Tamerlane, and, finally and most painfully, of the Ottomans. Scholars will disagree with me, but I feel that the Ottoman Empire entered its decline with
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