Early modern Ottoman Istanbul as a religious center

The Ottoman capture of Istanbul in 1453 paved the way for the city to become the Ottoman imperial center. It also prepared the ground for the city to become a Muslim center. Distinctly Muslim institutions, such as mosques, madrasas, and dervish lodges, began to appear and gradually dominated the city’s skyline, Islamic ideas increasingly defined official ideology and discourse, and Muslim scholars steadily rose to significant positions in the government bureaucracy. But Ottoman Istanbul was never a religious center for Muslims alone. Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Armenian, Catholic, and later Protestant communities all had a rich presence in the city. Christians and Jews had their own officially recognized autonomous communal organizations and religious institutions, practiced their own rituals, and developed their own religious lives in the city, making it just as much of a center for them as it was for Muslims. This chapter explores Istanbul’s centrality for the people of the Ottoman empire’s many different faiths, the ways developments pertaining to religious communities in the city affected other members of those communities elsewhere in the empire, and how Istanbul’s position and significance evolved in particular cases over the course of the early modern period.