Hagia Sophia

In the recently published first volume of memoirs, Istanbul: Memories and the City, Orhan Pamuk describes how a 1950’s child hood among Europe -yearning cosmopolitans in the crumbling ruins of the Ottoman Empire helped to shape him as a writer. The key, he said, is to understand the concept of huzun. This turkish word describes a kind of melancholy, he says, not so much a personal state as one shared by an entire society, a mood of resigned despair for the great past - a murky, black white…

Christianity first became an Asian religion, and prominent in Israel and Syria. Christianity then gradually progressed to become an African and European religion. There is no evident material culture of the Christian religion before 180 AD, and it was very common for early churches to be set in private dwellings, which included homes of the wealthy. The term Islam means “submission,” while followers of Islam are called Muslims which is translated to “one who has submitted.” Islam was very…

and grape products for grain. Since they were located on the coast, Greece had a strategic point for trade and cultural diffusion. Athens became a rich commercial center and Greeks had a money system. They had city-states with identities and cultures. They were considerably independent and were always competing with each other. Sparta was militaristic and agricultural while Athens was cultural, political, and commercial. In Sparta, women had more rights than in other areas. They had adult male…