Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-4923787-20131005001125/@comment-32656-20131016082056

Not impossible for it to do so.

There are cities of a similar size, area-wise, in North America. They're quite rural, but they do exist. About the equivalent of NYC being over a larger geographic area.

You have the city, and then it annexes rural areas around it. Happens everywhere.

"Istanbul" in your TL would probably be even larger.

"Byzantine" is a term that came into being in the 1800s. Not something that would remotely be in use.

Europeans of the time had no problems referring to it as the Roman Empire. That's what it would be called, despite your dislike of it.

The Sultanate, yes - but they were in power there before that.