Jewish merchants from the Pera quarter, on the other side of the Golden Horn. They were not allowed to live in the city itself which they had to reach by water, and they were often oppressed and persecuted; but they were rich, benevolent, and pious. Unwashed, but shaven Bulgarians, who wore an iron chain for a belt. Wild, half-Mongol Patzinaks, and somewhat more civilized Khazars from the Ukraine and the Caucasus. Dark-eyed Asiatics with pointed beards and black hair, and usually wearing turbans, who had come by camel caravan from Syria or even Baghdad. Iranians. Spaniards. Copts from ancient Egypt. Ethiopians from fabled Axum. Franks and Lombards. In the old days, there might also have been Indians and men from China, but no longer. Bankers and sea captains from Amalfi, Pisa, and Genoa. The latter in particular looked about them nervously. They could not help wondering what their fate would be now that their archenemy and rival, Venice, had taken over. Finally, there were the Byzantines themselves. Proud and haughty noblemen with strange titles you could hardly pronounce. These noblemen moved through the streets arrogantly and did not seem to know that their great days were over. Sometimes a slave walked beside them, carrying a bright-colored umbrella or parasol. Lovely ladies, beautifully dressed, jeweled and painted, and probably with a smile for the tall, fair-haired northerners. Byzantine families, the wife on a donkey, the husband and children on foot. Fierce-eyed monks, of whom there were more than 30,000, and priests who swarmed everywhere, led by their hegumens and archimandrites. And, of course, the famous Byzantine peddlers with their purposely ragged clothes, gesticulating hands, and whining cries. The place was still a happy hunting ground for hucksters. “The city guarded by God”—the name given by the Byzantines to Constantinople—was big enough to hold all of them and splendid enough to make them glad that it could. A medieval traveler said that the circumference of its walls was eighteen miles, and although he was probably just as good at telling tall stories as present-day travelers are, he may have been right. At least if you included such flourishing suburbs as Galata (once called Sycae, or Figtrees) and Scutari (formerly Chrysopolis, or Gold City). Galata (like Pera) and Scutari were separated from Constantinople by the Golden Horn and the Bosporus, respectively, which were narrow bodies of water, not as wide as the Hudson River or the East River at New York City. Constantinople itself was large enough. Like old Rome, New Rome (for that was its official name; Constantinople, or Constantine’s City, was only a nickname which had stuck) sprawled over seven rolling hills and down to every body of water it could find. [Illustration: THE GREAT PALACE IN CONSTANTINOPLE]