Eyüpsultan or Eyüp () is a municipality and district of Istanbul Province, Turkey. Its area is 228 km2, and its population is 422,913 (2022). The district extends from the Golden Horn all the way to the shore of the Black Sea. Eyüp is also the name of a prominent neighborhood and former village in the district, located at the confluence of the Kâğıthane and Alibey streams at the head of the Golden Horn. The Eyüp neighborhood is a historically important area, especially for Turkish Muslims, due to the presence of the tomb of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, the prominent Medinan companion (Ansar) and standard-bearer of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
It became a district centre in 1936, after some parts of Fatih, Çatalca and Sarıyer were joined; later it also included Gaziosmanpaşa and Bayrampaşa districts. Its present boundaries were established after the borough of Yayla was given to Sultangazi in 2009. Its neighbours are Sarıyer in the east, Kâğıthane and Beyoğlu in the southeast, Gaziosmanpaşa, Bayrampaşa, Fatih and Sultangazi in the south, Başakşehir in the southwest and Arnavutköy in the west. The municipality was named after Abu Ayyub al-Ansari by the Ottoman Turks.
History
Modern Eyüp was the site of a settlement already in the Byzantine period, best known as Kosmidion (). Its name derives from the local monastery of the Anargyroi (Saints Cosmas and Damian), which was established in the fifth century. According to a later legend, it was founded by the magister Paulinus, who was executed by Theodosius II (r. 408–450) when the latter suspected him—erroneously—of having an affair with empress Aelia Eudocia. In reality, however, the monastery was probably founded ca. 480 by Paulina, the mother of the general and failed usurper Leontius. From her, the quarter was initially known as ta Paoulines (τα Παυλίνης, "Paulina's [quarter]"). The monastery was of some importance in the sixth century: its abbots participated in synods of 518 and 536, a collection of miracles associated with its patron saints appeared, and the monastery received a major renovation as part of the building programme of Justinian I (r. 527–565). In 623 and again in 626, the site was besieged and looted by the Avars.
By the early tenth century, the quarter that grew around the monastery had become known as Kosmidion; alternatively, but less likely, Kosmidion and ta Paoulines may have been neighbouring but separate localities. In 924, Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos (r. 920–944) met with the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon at a pier in Kosmidion during the Byzantine–Bulgarian war of 913–927. Theophylact Lekapenos, Romanos' son and Patriarch of Constantinople in 933–956, had his stables there.
Emperor Michael IV (r. 1034–41) renovated the monastery complex anew, and retired there following his abdication. He died there as a monk soon after. Due to its proximity to Constantinople, the site played a role in the civil wars of the period: it was the headquarters of the rebel Leo Tornikios (although other sources place his headquarters at Thermopolis) during his failed siege of the imperial capital in 1047, it was a base of John Bryennios, brother of the rebel general Nikephoros Bryennios the Elder, in 1077, and four years later, it was one of the first localities taken over by the Komnenoi in their successful coup against Nikephoros III Botaneiates (r. 1078–81). In 1096, the newly arrived First Crusade was allowed to encamp between Kosmidion and Hagios Phokas.
During the Fourth Crusade, Kosmidion was the site of one of the first skirmishes between the Crusaders and the Byzantines in July 1203, from which the Crusaders emerged victorious. In April 1204, shortly before the fall of the city to the Crusaders, the Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo met with the newly crowned emperor Alexios V Mourtzouphlos for negotiations there.
Under Latin rule, the monastery seems not to have suffered too much; certainly it was fit to lodge Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (r. 1259–82) on the night of 14 August 1261, before his triumphal entry into recently recovered Constantinople the next day. In the next decades, the monastery was used as a place of exile for two disgraced patriarchs, Joseph I in 1280–82 and John XI Bekkos in 1285, while awaiting trial by the synod, and Athanasius I for the period before his abdication in 1293. A collection of miracles attributed to the monastery's patron saints since 1261 was compiled in ca. 1300 by a certain deacon Maximos.