Urban

 Urban

Urban first offered the cannons he had built to Constantinople. When he realized they wouldn't buy them, he approached Mehmed II instead—and succeeded in making a sale.

It’s a classic example of how merchants aren't driven by ideology or personal beliefs. Ultimately, they tend to side with whoever has the money—and by extension, the power—a cold, hard reality of history.

The cannons were apparently so incredibly powerful that they could only be fired once a day; yet, even so, they struck absolute terror into the heart of Constantinople.

So, Urban passed away? Did he not even get a chance to spend his massive reward?

Well, even if he didn't have the time to spend it, he was granted the highest honors an engineer could receive—and since his own creation was the cause of his end, I’d like to think he departed this world feeling satisfied.

Changing the subject—I’ve noticed that Turkey is frequently included in maps of Europe these days. Geographically, it sits in a position that almost mirrors Scandinavia in the north; it doesn’t really feel necessary to draw a hard line at the Dardanelles. Furthermore, Turkey uses the Latin alphabet, is a member of NATO, and the Aegean coast of Asia Minor was historically Greek. So, I wonder—are there people who consider Turkey to be a European country?

I recall seeing a YouTube video—or something similar—where someone posed a rather tricky question to young people hanging out in a café in Istanbul: "Is Turkey in Europe or Asia?" Almost everyone answered, "Both."

That’s the textbook answer, I suppose. From my perspective—living in a corner of the "Orient"—the term "Asia" is incredibly broad. It encompasses at least four distinct cultural spheres: the East Asian sphere (China, Korea, Japan, etc.), the Indian sphere, the Southeast Asian sphere, and the Middle Eastern sphere—all lumped together under the single label of "Asia."

While we may technically distinguish between North and South America, the Americas are, in a sense, just "America." Given that the West took center stage during the Age of Discovery, it’s perhaps inevitable that history is viewed through a Western lens—though, honestly, Asia is just so vast!

A single shot from Urban’s cannon effectively handed Constantinople over to the Ottoman Empire. With the route through Istanbul blocked, the world was forced to find a way around—sparking the Age of Discovery and leading to the widespread "Europeanization" of the globe. And just as that process began to settle, someone in a remote corner of Turkey—a young person—comes along and asks, "Hey, why don't we just consider Turkey part of Europe?"

As for Urban himself—who met his end thanks to the very cannon he created—I like to imagine him watching events unfold from heaven, wide-eyed in astonishment at the monumental impact that one single shot ultimately had.