Well now, its not everyone who can claim that they have blown Darkstorm's mind. :lol: Seriously though Darkstorm, I am not sure whether the problem here is that you are misinterpreting me or whether, in fact, I am misrepresenting myself.
I am not suggesting that REH did not derive the name of his city of Zamboula from Istanbul. I think, like yourself, that this is highly probable. Therefore on that level it is clear that he connected the two names. It is the fact that you seem to be asserting that REH regarded Zamboula as his fictional manifestation of a Hyborian Constantinople that I do not concur with.
You compare Zamboula as the easternmost major city of the Stygian empire with Byzantium as the easternmost city of the Roman empire and associate its capture by the Turanians as comparable to the latter's capture by the Turks.
I would argue that,before its fall in 1453, Constantinople had been the capital city of its own Byzantine empire for a thousand years or more. At its fall, Constantinople was regarded as probably the largest city in the known world with a population of up to half a million persons. Rome's population, by comparison numbered in the tens of thousands during the same period.
Constantinople would in a very short space of time have its name changed to Istanbul and become the capital of the Ottoman empire.
Zamboula, in comparison, appears to be no more than a far flung outpost of the failing Stygian empire and there is nothing to suggest that it is likely to become the Turanian capital.
I therefore submit that Aghapur, as the crossroads of the world,capital of the empire and a port into the bargain has a better case to represent Constantinople than Zamboula has(naming rituals aside).
I have also been thinking,given my previous post on the possibility of Zamorian's filling the role of Byzantines, that Shadizar(which we seem to know very little about) may also have a case.
I have also been thinking that if Shadizar might be an earlier Byzantium/Constantinople then Aghapur might be construed as Brusa/Bursa.Do you not think that Samarkand is already represented by the existence of Secunderam?
I am not sure how much of this that you will agree with,if any of it. I do hope however that it explains my thinking and that it goes some way to repairing any damage done to your mind. :wink:
