The Wealth And Commerce Of Constantinople Analysis

“The Wealth and Commerce of Constantinople” was written between 1165 and 1173 C.E. Constantinople was founded by Constantine the Great in 324 C.E. and was the capital city of the Roman Empire. Constantinople is described in the Source from the Past “The Wealth and Commerce of Constantinople” and also in Jonathan Harris’ book Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium. The document, “The Wealth and Commerce of Constantinople” is important because it reflects on the growth of Constantinople as a wealthy city that thrived on trade and its location. From reading the primary source, “The Wealth and Commerce of Constantinople” and the scholarly source, Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium there are more similarities found in both such as trade, location,
Harris states, “…it was a trade that was carried on by others.” In the source from the past, Spanish rabbi Benjamin also agreed that trade was carried on by others, for example, the merchants that traveled to Constantinople to sell their goods. They were amazed at the large quantity of the items at Constantinople. Harris’ says, “Foreigners were astonished by the opulence that they saw around them in Constantinople, especially the abundance of precious metals, jewels, and silk.” Both sources also agree Constantinople’s geographical location gave it a benefit in the importing and exporting of goods. Another similarity between the scholarly source and the Source from the Past is both sources agree that meat, wine, and bread were plentiful commodities to everyone in Constantinople before the city began to increase in population and after aqueducts were created. In both sources, it was understood that Constantinople was the wealthiest city in the world. The wealth, trade, food, people, and clothing were important to Constantinople because they all helped to keep the city flourishing and
The difference is the size of the city. From reading the Source from the Past, it describes Constantinople as a small city because it reveals, “The circumference of the city of Constantinople is eighteen miles…” However, Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium says, “By medieval standards it was a huge city, with something around three hundred seventy-five thousand inhabitants…” In Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium, Harris describes Constantinople as a bigger city with a huge population and because of this they had problems feeding and supplying fresh water to the people as the city’s population grew. Fortunately, Constantinople had the wealth and knowledge to fix the problems they faced by “creating a network of aqueducts to carry water in from the streams and rivers…” The difference in size of Constantinople between the Source from the Past and the scholarly source is important because it is significant to know the size and the city’s ability to maintain and use the resources they have. The document on “The Wealth and Commerce of Constantinople” is still important but has a different size of the city. This is most likely because Spanish rabbi Benjamin was a traveler during a time in history in which he did not have the ability to give the accurate size of Constantinople or a way to tell how big the population actually was at that