Hippodrome of Constantinople Hippodrome of Constantinople The Hippodrome of Constantinople () was a circus that was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today it is a square named "Sultanahmet Meydanı" ("Sultan Ahmet Square") in the Turkish city of Istanbul, with a few fragments of the original structure surviving. The word "hippodrome" comes from the Greek "hippos" (), horse, and "dromos" (δρόμος), path or way. For this reason, it is sometimes also called "Atmeydanı" ("Horse Square") in Turkish. Horse racing and chariot racing were popular pastimes in the ancient world and hippodromes were common features of Greek cities
Transmission of the Greek Classics of scholarship in the Mediterranean region, many were translated into Syriac, Arabic, and Persian during the Middle Ages and the original Greek versions were often lost. As the Arab caliphates absorbed Greek/Roman knowledge, the medieval Islamic world gradually became the dominant intellectual center in the Mediterranean region. Subsequent efforts at Latin translations of Arab scholarship, including the Greek classics, began what would later be known as the "Renaissance" in the West. With increasing Western presence in the East due to the Crusades, and the gradual collapse of the Byzantine Empire during the later Middle Ages, many Byzantine Greek scholars fled