
The Istanbul Derby - lermontov
https://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2014/4/28/5644378/the-istanbul-derby
======
Jun8
* "Viking graffiti in its Muslim mosque which was once a Catholic church built for an emperor." \- Catholic? It's called _Hagia Sophia_. The irony of this error is that a commonly cited reason for why the expected help from Europe did not arrive during the last siege of Constantinople was the attitude of "I would rather see a Turkish turban in the midst of the City than the Latin mitre" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loukas_Notaras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loukas_Notaras)).

* "It's [Golden Horn] really called that, by the way, because everything in Turkish sounds dramatic" \- Name is from Ancient Greek. Nobody really uses that name anymore, except tourism brochures and people who do want to be dramatic, I guess. (BTW, did you know that the Golden Gate bridge is named after the Golden Horn?)

* "The statue celebrating the Greeks' victory over the Persians is just sitting in the middle of the Hippodrome" \- Not a statute, really, but the Serpent Column ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_Column](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_Column))

etc. etc. I understand this is not an investigative piece about Istanbul's
history but an On The Road-like breathless impressive essay. Still errors that
can be avoided with simple Wikipedia lookup bother me. (And let's not even go
into the Turkish word for dentist being "teethmaster"!)

~~~
gkya
It was all Catholic before the schism. And the rest is just silly minor
errors. The translations of the players' names are very wrong. So what. What's
important is as a stambouliote I've felt my huge hate and my huge love for my
city reading this.

~~~
Jun8
In a narrow technical sense you _are_ right, the original Hagia Sophia was
built ~500 years before the East-West Schism
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism))
that split the Church.

However, in the usual sense that Catholic is used, calling Hagia Sophia, which
was the seat of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, a Catholic church is ridiculous.

~~~
jessriedel
But in the sentence being criticized, "Catholic church" is primarily being
used to distinguish from "Muslim mosque". And of course, the official name of
the Eastern Orthodox Church is the Eastern Orthodox _Catholic_ Church, because
both churches consider themselves catholic, as did the unified church that
existed before the Schism.

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toyg
I'm a simple man: I see a decent read on Istanbul, I upvote. But it could do
with [2014] in the title, I was a bit startled when Didier Drogba was
mentioned.

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chiaro
With that introduction, I was surprised that no reference was made to the Nika
Riots, since they happened in the same place (in 532) and make footy
hooliganism look like high tea.

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-
roc...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-rocking-the-
byzantine-empire-113325928/)

