Byzantine Cresent.

OK I have just come across some muslim websites that say that the cresent and star was originally the symbol of Constantinople and it was only adopted as an Islamic symbol after the fall of this city. It made me want to write a timeline about the Byzantine empire there and then but I was wondering if is true (wikapedia seems to confirm it) and if so how did it become so universally used among Muslime. Does anyone else have any other facts that are similar?
 
From what I have googled and read when we were in Turkey 18 months ago,it was the symbol of Byzantium but the lineage is fairly confused. The Ottomans adopted the trappings of the Caliphate, and other Muslim and causes adopted the crescent. Crescents were also symbolic with the Ottomans and other Turkic peoples. When it is on a red background, it is apparently secular and against a green background, it is religious.
 
Yes, I've come across a number of historical sources (I can't remember off the top of my head now) which suggest that the crescent was the symbol of the ancient colony of Byzantium, even before it was made into the "New Rome".
 
The crescent, with or without a star, seems to have been a popular symbol in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East for a long time. It was associated with the city of Byzantium but also with Persia, the Pontic Kingdom, the pre-Islamic Turks, and some Christian iconography (especially involving the Virgin Mary). There is a popular belief that the Ottomans took it from the Byzantines after they conquered Constantinople, but they actually seem to have used it well before then. It became specifically associated with Islam only relatively recently - in the 19th and 20th centuries - probably because of the prominence of the Ottoman Empire.
 
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OK I have just come across some muslim websites that say that the cresent and star was originally the symbol of Constantinople and it was only adopted as an Islamic symbol after the fall of this city. It made me want to write a timeline about the Byzantine empire there and then but I was wondering if is true (wikapedia seems to confirm it) and if so how did it become so universally used among Muslime. Does anyone else have any other facts that are similar?

There is no definite proof that Islam came from Byzantium since the Crescent symbol was predominant in the middle east long before Islam or Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantion City ever existed.
 
There is no definite proof that Islam came from Byzantium since the Crescent symbol was predominant in the middle east long before Islam or Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantion City ever existed.

ehh ... are you reading the same question as everyone else does?
 
I always thought that the Cresent and Wolf were old Turkic symbols that became popular in the middle east/islam after the turkic migrations.
 
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