ARMENIAN - Erevangala500

Krikor Amira Balyan built the charming Nusretye Camii (1835).
The portal of Dolmabahcae Palace, built by the Ottoman-Arme-
nian architect, Garabed Amira Balyan, showing the "tughra", the
supreme imperial signature of Sultan Abdul Abdulmecid
The conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed Fatih in
1453 and the subsequent promotion o f the Armenian Orthodox
archbishop o f Bursa to patriarch of Constantinople marked the
beginning o f a golden age for the Armenians of the Ottoman
Empire - often in the literal sense o f the word. Armenians took
over the minting o f coins in the Ottoman Empire, and the
accounting in the main treasury office in Istanbul was conducted
in the Armenian language.
Armenian architects were responsible for an unbroken chain of
major projects commissioned by their Ottoman lords. The image
of the "loyal Armenian community", serving its Sultan with complete
devotion, became proverbial in the Ottoman Empire.
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