Hello, I’m Serhat Engul, the narrator and creator behind Byzantine Stories. As a licensed tour guide, historian, and writer based in Istanbul, I’ve spent over two decades exploring the layers of a vanished civilization still shimmering beneath the city’s surface.

In the following lines, you’ll read about my professional journey, my enduring passion for Byzantine history, and how that passion found new form in the dream world of Stavros. I invite you to join me — not only to discover Byzantium’s monuments, but to feel its soul.

Byzantine Stories: Where History Dreams Again

For over two decades, I have walked the streets of Istanbul as a licensed tour guide and historian, leading travelers through the mosaics, domes, and memories of Byzantium. From the depths of the Basilica Cistern to the golden light of Hagia Sophia’s galleries, I have told the story of an empire that once saw the world from these very stones.

Yet no matter how many tours I led, how many facts I shared, I always felt something was missing — the inner pulse of Byzantium, the heartbeat beneath the marble.
History can inform, but rarely does it breathe.

And so, from that quiet longing, Byzantine Stories was born — a literary experiment that blends historical authenticity, introspection, and creative technology.

The Guide Behind the Vision

My name is Serhat Engul, a professional guide and writer based in Istanbul.
I have spent over twenty years interpreting the city’s layered history for visitors from around the world, through platforms like IstanbulClues.com and IstanbulTravelBlog.com.
Over time, my passion narrowed toward the Byzantine era — not only as a chapter of history, but as a mirror of human consciousness: ambition, faith, fear, transcendence.

But while I mastered the facts and narratives, I still searched for a way to make people feel Byzantium — to see it not as ruins, but as a living echo within themselves.

That search brought me here.

The Birth of Stavros

Enter Stavros, the fictional soul of this project.
He lives in Astoria, New York, among the fading murals and incense of an old Greek community. By day he is a quiet modern man — a designer, perhaps, or a teacher — but by night, when sleep takes him, he crosses the threshold between time and dream.

Through a mysterious link between his mind and the Byzantine objects in his room — an icon painted by his mother, a book left half-open on Byzantium’s apogee — Stavros learns to navigate his dreams. He doesn’t just witness history; he inhabits it.

One night he finds himself among the imperial legions at the Battle of Pliska, feeling the heat of armor and the terror of collapse. Another night, he wakes in the candlelit corridors of a monastery, hearing the chants of monks debating the nature of the divine.

Each dream is not fantasy but remembrance — a message from the deep subconscious of civilization itself.

Between Two Worlds

Stavros is, in many ways, an extension of myself.
His mind and emotions are mine — drawn from my years of walking through Istanbul’s ruins, speaking of emperors and saints, wondering how those long-gone souls once felt.
His voice, however, is shaped in collaboration with AI, an evolving intelligence trained to assist in narrative composition and historical atmosphere.

Together, we form what I call Byzantine Introspective Realism — a genre where history and human psychology merge.
In this partnership, the ideas, tone, and philosophical core come from me, while the linguistic refinement and artistic depth are sculpted by AI.
Stavros’s soul is human; his body is crafted by the machine.

This synthesis allows me to create what no textbook or guided tour ever could — a living dialogue between past and present, between knowledge and emotion.

From Tours to Tales

The idea for this project first took shape during my Byzantine niche tours — when travelers asked questions that went beyond architecture or emperors.
They wanted to know what it felt like to live in Constantinople, to walk beneath its mosaics, to hear the whispers of Hagia Sophia at dawn.

Those moments planted a seed: maybe Byzantium could be told from the inside.

Years later, with the rise of AI and my long dialogues with it, that seed found its form.
I realized that technology could finally give voice to what I had only sensed — that history could speak back.

Byzantine Introspective Realism

Every episode of Byzantine Stories is written as a dream journey where psychology, memory, and historical reality intertwine.
It is not time travel — it is soul travel.

Through Stavros’s dreams, the forgotten streets of Constantinople breathe again.
And through my guiding experience, every detail — the glint of a mosaic, the scent of incense, the echo of a distant hymn — remains historically grounded.

This is not just storytelling. It is a bridge between eras.

A Note from the Author

In my professional life, I continue to guide travelers through Istanbul’s Byzantine heritage — both in person and online.
If these stories awaken your curiosity, you can explore the real locations behind them through my Byzantine History Tours.
The stones you’ll touch are the same ones that echo through these pages.

But here, in Byzantine Stories, we go beyond the stones —
into the dream, into the soul of Byzantium itself.

Epilogue

All stories on this site are co-written through human–AI collaboration under my creative direction.

Byzantine Stories stands as part of the emerging movement of AI–Human Collaborative Art, where technology amplifies the human quest for meaning, not replaces it.

Hoping our paths cross one day in Istanbul,

Serhat Engul

Discover all my storytelling projects through the trilogy above.