BYZANTINE HISTORY SUBTITLES•Byzantion Land (Constantinople)•Byzantine People and History Time-lines•Crusades•Empires influenced by Byzantine

•Latin Empire •Nicaea Empire•Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia•Trebizond Kingdom

•Turks on Byzantine Land.•Fall of Constantinople (Multivision show)

THE FIRST CIVILIZATION ON BYZANTINE LAND‘OPPOSITE THE BLIND’The origins of Byzantium are shrouded in legend. The traditional legend has it that Byzas from Megara (a town near Athens), founded Byzantium in 667 BC, when he sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea. Byzas had consulted the Oracle at Delphi to ask where to make his new city. The Oracle told him to found it "opposite the blind." At the time, he did not know what this meant. But when he came upon the Bosporus he realized what it meant: on the east shore was a Greek city, Chalcedon. However, according to legend, they had not noticed the land that lay a half-mile away.

Byzas founded his city here on the European coast and named it Byzantion after himself. It was mainly a trading city due to its strategic location at the Black Sea's only entrance. Byzantion later conquered Chalcedon, across the Bosporus on the Asiatic side.

On the other hand reality is different that ,in 2008, during the construction works of the Yenikapı subway station and the Marmaray tunnel at the historic peninsula on the European side, a previously unknown Neolithic settlement dating from circa 6500 BC was discovered. The first human settlement on the Anatolian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500–3500 BC

If the Earth were a single state, Constantinople would be its capital.—Napoleon Bonaparte

The location of Byzantium attracted Constantine I in 324 after a prophetic dream was said to have identified the location of the city; but the true reason behind this prophecy was probably Constantine's final victory over Licinius at the Battle of Chrysopolis (Üsküdar) on the Bosporus, on 18 September, 324, which ended the civil war between the Roman Co-Emperors, and brought an end to the final vestiges of the Tetrarch system, during which Nicomedia (present-day İzmit, 100 km (62 mi) east of Istanbul) was the most senior Roman capital city. Byzantium (now renamed as Nova Roma which eventually became Constantinopolis, i.e. "The City of Constantine") was officially proclaimed the new capital of the Roman Empire six years later

The name Byzantine Empire is a modern term and would have been alien to its contemporaries. The Empire's native Greek name was Basileía Romaíon, a direct translation of the Latin name of the Roman Empire, Imperium Romanorum. The term Byzantine Empire was invented in 1557, about a century after the fall of Constantinople by German historian Hieronymus Wolf, who introduced a system of Byzantine historiography in his work Corpus Historiae Byzantinae in order to distinguish ancient Roman from medieval Greek history without drawing attention to their ancient predecessors. Then in 17th century, French authors such as Montesquieu began to popularize it. So this was the real story of Byzantine…

THE IDENTITY OF BYZANTINE

•In the centuries following the Arab and Lombard conquests in the 7th century, its multi-ethnic (not multi-national) nature remained even though its constituent parts in the Balkans and Asia Minor contained an overwhelmingly Greek population. Ethnic minorities and sizeable communities of religious heretics often lived on or near the borderlands. The Armenians were the only sizeable one.

•Byzantines identified themselves as Romaioi (Romans) which had already become a synonym for a Hellene (Greek), and more than ever before were developing a national consciousness, as residents of Romania, as the Byzantine state and its world were called. This nationalist awareness is reflected in literature, particularly in the arctic songs, where frontiersmen are praised for defending their country against invaders, of which most famous is the heroic or epic poem Digenis Akritas.

THE IDENTITY OF BYZANTINE

People of Byzantine EmpireSaint Basileus, Caesarea 329-379

St John Chrysostomus, Antiochea 347-407

Theodora, Constantinople 497-548

Theodore Studites, Constantinople 759-826

Leo the Philosopher, Thessaly 790-869

Saint Photius, Constantinople 820-891

Cyrilus, Thessalonika 827-869 . Methodius, Thessalonika 826-884

Anna Comnena, Constantinople 1083-1148

George Pachymeres, Nicaea 13th c.

Theodore Metochites, Nicaea 1261-1332

Gregorius Palamas, -------- 1296-?

Demetrius Cydones, Thessalonica 1324-1398

Manuel Chrysoloras, Constantinople 1353-1415

George Gemistos or Plethon, Constantinople 1360-1452

BYZANTINE TIMELINE : Early Byzantine Period

Early fourth century

The Armenians adopt Christianity as their state religion; they develop their own alphabet in the fifth century.

330 The pro-Christian Roman emperor Constantine I dedicates the city of Constantinople (in Greek "the city of Constantine"), established on the site of the Greek city Byzantium, as the NEW CAPITAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

337 Saint Nina converts the Georgians to Orthodox Christianity.

395 The empire is divided into EASTERN and WESTERN portions under Arkadios and Honorius, the sons of Emperor Theodosius I.

410 Rome is sacked by the Visigoths.

476 Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman emperor, is deposed by the German Odoacer.

527 Justinian becomes Eastern Roman emperor. Constantinople covers eight square miles with at least 500,000 inhabitants.

532- 37 JUSTINIAN builds the church of HAGİA SOPHIA in Constantinople.

548 -65 Justinian builds a monastery dedicated to the Virgin on Mount Sinai; in the ninth century it is renamed for Saint Catherine.

639 Muslim armies conquer the southern territories of the Byzantine Empire (Syria, the Holy Land, Egypt, and Jordan). Crusades started to get back the holy Land.

726 Byzantine Emperor Leo III orders all icons in the Byzantine Empire destroyed.

800 Charlemagne, king of the Franks, is crowned "Emperor of the West" by Pope Leo III in Rome.

Ninth century Saint Constantine the Philosopher and Saint Methodios create a writing system for the Slavs; the Cyrillic alphabet will follow.

BYZANTINE TIMELINE : MIDDLE BYZANTINE PERIOD GOLDEN AGE

843 Icons are restored to Orthodox worship; this is a triumph of the Byzantine church over the emperor.

864 Khan Boris of the Bulgarians is baptized as an Orthodox Christian; the Bulgarians adopt Christianity from Constantinople.

867 Basil I becomes the Byzantine emperor and establishes the Macedonian dynasty; until 1025, Byzantine emperors are at least part Armenian.

Late ninth century

Caliphs and the powerful elite of the Islamic 'Abbasid court in Baghdad begin commissioning translations of a major portion of ancient Greek texts into Arabic.

945- 59 Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, a guiding spirit of the so-called Macedonian Renaissance, encourages the creation of encyclopedic works and the compilation of historical writings.

976 Basil II (d. 1025), the last great ruler in the Macedonian dynasty, ascends the throne and later conquers Bulgaria, earning the title of the Boulgaroktomos (Bulgar-slayer).

988 Grand Prince Volodymyr adopts Byzantine Christianity as the official state religion of Kievan Rus' (located in modern-day Ukraine, Belarus', and the Russian Federation).

ca. 1000 Beowulf and the Song of Roland are recorded in writing in Europe.

1018 Bulgaria becomes part of the Byzantine Empire, obtaining its independence in 1188.

1054 The patriarch of Constantinople and the pope in Rome excommunicate one another, causing the Great Schism between the Byzantine and Latin churches.

1071 Battle between Muslim Seljuk Turks under Alp Arslan and the Byzantine army under Romanus IV Diogenes at Mantzikert (near Lake Van in modern Turkey); Seljuks win and in time take most of Asia Minor, including Armenia, from the Byzantines.

1081 Alexius I Komnenos becomes emperor, establishing the Komnenos dynasty; the following year, to gain the support of the Venetian navy against the Normans in South Italy, he grants Venice legal, political, and economic concessions, eventually leading to Venetian commercial and economic domination in much of the Byzantine Empire.

1081 The empire repulses the new Norman kingdom of South Italy, which has launched a devastating invasion of the Byzantine Empire from the west; the Norman goal was to destroy Byzantium and make Constantinople the capital of the Norman state.

1088 Christodoulos of Patmos, supported by Emperor Alexius I Komnenos, founds the monastery of Saint John the Theologian on Patmos.

1099 The FIRST CRUSADE (1095-99) captures JERUSALEM; the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem begins.

1143- 51 Workshops of Byzantine mosaicists from Constantinople are invited to decorate churches in the Norman kingdom of Sicily (Palace Chapel and the church of Saint Mary of the Admiral in Palermo; the cathedral in Cefal).

1187 Saladin's defeat of crusaders at the Horn of Hittin and his capture of Jerusalem, followed by the Islamic conquest of most of the Crusader states.

1204 The Fourth Crusade leads to a Latin occupation of Constantinople, with the Byzantine Empire reduced to several contending states in outlying regions of its territories; as a result, for much of the next fifty years, vast amounts of artistic booty are sent to western Europe from the city and the lands of Frankish Greece.

1215 King John of England and rebelling English nobles sign the Magna Carta.

1221 58 The Mongols ravage Persia, conquer the Chin empire in China, conquer the Armenians and Georgians, capture Moscow and Kiev, are victorious at Liegnitz (Silesia) and Mohl (Hungary), conquer Nan-Chao and eastern Tibet in the Far East, and capture Baghdad in the Middle East, ending the 'Abbasid caliphate.

1260 Mamluk sultanate in Egypt and Syria defeats the Mongols.

BYZANTINE TIMELINE : Middle Byzantine Period

Late Byzantine Period

1261 Constantinople is recaptured by the Byzantine emperor Michael Palaeologus.

1271 92 Travels of Marco Polo.

Fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries

Byzantine defenses in Asia and Europe gradually collapse as the Ottoman Turks advance. Constantinople, now essentially all that remains of the empire, continues to stand against them.

1453 The Ottoman Turks capture Constantinople and the last of the imperial lands; in 1930, Constantinople is renamed Istanbul (in Turkish, "the city").

CRUSADESThis Holy Land was conquered by Islam in the A.D. 600s, and would remain in their control for many centuries to come. In A.D. 1095 Pope Leo III called for volunteers to travel to Jerusalem and fight to take it back from the Muslims. He called their mission a crusade. The word “crusade” comes from the word Crux, which means “cross” in Latin. Those who volunteered for the crusade would be called crusaders, meaning that they took the cross of Jesus upon them.                                                  This crusade would be the first of nine total crusades, that Christians would carry out as they attempted to control Israel territory. These crusaders were promised that they would receive eternal life if they died while fighting non-Christians. As a result of the rhetoric these Christians killed thousands of non-Christians, including Jews, and Muslims, as they traveled to Jerusalem. In some cases the slaughtered entire Jewish communities. After two years of traveling in the desert, the crusaders finally reached Jerusalem. They laid siege upon the city, surrounding it for two months. Finally the city fell, and the crusaders entered, killing almost all of the non-Christians who inhabited the city, men, women, and children. Europeans would control many parts of Israel and the surrounding regions for a little over 200 years. During this time, Muslims made slow but steady efforts to regain control over Jerusalem. Eight more crusades would follow, in an effort to keep control over the city in the hands of the Europeans. In A.D. 1291 the Muslims capture the last European stronghold in the area. European leaders lost interest in the area, and the crusades came to an end.

Pope Leo III

The Goals of CrusadesCauses:•        To ensure safety of pilgrims•        To save Byzantium from threat of Turks•        To get squabbling lords to focus aggression outward•        Idea of actually freeing the Holy Land seems to be an afterthought

Empires influenced by Byzantine1- Latin Empire

" Empire of Romania" is the name given by historians to The feudal Crusader state founded by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade on lands captured from the Byzantine Empire. It was established after the capture of Constantinople in 1204 and lasted until 1261. The Latin Empire was intended to supplant the Byzantine Empire as titular successor to the Roman Empire in the east, with a Western Catholic emperor enthroned in place of the Orthodox Byzantine emperors.

• The Latin Empire failed to attain political or economic dominance over the other Latin powers that had been established in former Byzantine territories in the wake of the Fourth Crusade • Weakened by constant warfare with the Bulgarians and the Greek successor states, it eventually fell to the Empire of Nicaea under Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos in 1261

Capture of Constantinople

during the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

Baldwin II (1217-1273) was the last Latin emperor of Constantinople.

2- Empire of Nicaea

The Empire of Nicaea was the largest of the three Byzantine Greek states founded by the aristocracy of the Byzantine Empire that fled after Constantinople was conquered during the Fourth Crusade. Founded by the Lascaris family, it lasted from 1204 to 1261.

Coin issued by Michael VIII Palaeologus to celebrate the liberation of Constantinople from the Latin army, and the restoration of the Byzantine Empire.

MilitaryThe Nicaean Empire consisted of Byzantium's most highly populated Greek region. As such, the Empire was able to raise a reasonably numerous military force of around 20,000 soldiers at its height - numbers recorded as participating in its numerous wars against the Crusader states. The Nicaeans continued some aspects of the Komnenian army, but without the resources available to the Komnenian emperors the Nicaean Byzantines could not match the numbers, nor the quality, of the armies that the emperor Manuel and his predecessors had fielded. Western Asia Minor had access to the sea, making it wealthier than most of the splinter states around and in time became the most powerful state in the region, if only for a short duration.

Empire of Nicaea

MASS ARMENIAN MIGRATION TO CILICIA UNDER THE BYZANTINES

Cilicia was reconquered from the Arabs by the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas around 965. He expelled the Muslims living there, and Christians from Syria and Armenia were encouraged to settle in the region. Emperor Basil II (976-1025) attempted to expand into Armenian Vaspurakan in the East and Arab-held Syria towards the south. As a result of the Byzantine military campaigns, the Armenians spread into Cappadocia and eastward from Cilicia into the mountainous areas of northern Syria and Mesopotamia

The Armenians came to serve the Byzantines as military officers and governors; they were given control of important cities on the Byzantine Empire's eastern frontier. When Imperial power in the region weakened in the chaotic years after the Battle of Manzikert, some of them seized the opportunity to set themselves up as sovereign Lords, while others remained, at least in name, loyal to the Empire.

Foundation of Armenian power in Cilicia3- Armenian Kingdom

4- THE EMPIRE OF TREBIZOND (Trapezous – Euxenus Pontus)

The Empire of Trebizond was a successor state of the Byzantine Empire founded in 1204 immediately before the fall of Constantinople. Queen Tamar of Georgia provided troops to Alexius I for the conquest of Trabzon, Sinope and Paphlagonia

A grandson of Byzantine emperor Andronicus I Comnenus and a descendant of King David the Builder of Georgia through his great grandmother Katay (daughter of David the Builder), made Trebizond his capital and asserted a claim to be the legitimate successor of the Byzantine Empire.

Empire of Trebizond, Silver Asper. St.

Eugenius facing / emperor holding standard.

SUMELA MONASTERY (built in 5th century)

THE KEY OF ANATOLIA FOR TURKSTHE BATTLE OF MANZİKERT (1071)

In 1064 the Seljuk Turks, under their sultan Alp Arslan, invade Armenia - for many centuries a disputed frontier region between the Byzantine empire and neighbours to the east. Alp Arslan follows his success here with an attack on Georgia, in 1068. These acts of aggression prompt a response from the Byzantine emperor, Romanus IV Diogenes. The armies meet in 1071 at Manzikert, near Lake Van. The battle, a resounding victory for the Seljuks, is a turning point in the story of the Byzantine empire. Within a few years there are Turkish tribes in many parts of Anatolia. Some of them are bitter enemies of the Seljuks, but the Seljuks are now the main power in this borderland between Islam and Christianity.

Byzantines and Turks: AD 1064-1071Under the Byzantine rule, Anatolia was the scene of continuous wars and eleven crusades. The Empire succeeded in driving back the Arab attacks in the 7th cell. and the Pecheneks in the 11th, but could not resist the Latin invasion of the 13th cell.. The defeat of Emperor Romallus Diogenes by the Seldjuk Turks in the battle of Manzikert (1071) marks the beginning of decline that lasted till the conquest of Constantinople in 1453; thus, the end of the Byzantine Empire.

•1071 ManzikertSeljuks break Byzantine line of defense in Eastern Anatolia; Turkish-speaking Muslims raid and settle in area now known as ”Turkey”; much of the Greek/ Christian veneer of indigenous Anatolian population gradually replaced by a Turkish/Muslim veneer

•1204 , Byzantium fatally weakened by 4th. Crusade and Latin occupation

•1200 , high point of Seljuks of Rum; by absorption of smaller Turkish principalities

(beyliks),

•1324-1360 , orhan ı ghazi. Crosses into Balkans in 1345 as ally of byzantine emperor, john cantacuzenus, against Serbs

•Sultan Murat moves Ottoman capital to Edirne in 1366; origins of Janissary Corps and the devshirme probably date to Murat’s reign

•Expansion of Ottoman rule eastward over Anatolian principalities through combination of diplomacy, dynastic marriages, and military expeditions brings Ottomans into conflict with Timur Leak (Tamerlane) who invades Anatolia and challenges Bayezit at battle of Ankara in 1402.

•1403-1413, dynastic struggle; civil war among Bayezit’s sons; Suleiman and Musa eventually killed; Mehmet emerges as victor; Christians fail to take advantage of this opportunity to throw off Ottoman rule.

•1413-1421, Mehmet I, the Restorer. Devotes his energy to reunification of Ottoman lands and reconsolidation of sultan’s authority

THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE -- MEHMET II THE CONQUEROR

SAHI: THE FIRST AND BIGGEST HOWITZER CANNON OF THE WORLDURBAN (Hungarian Emperor) suggested it to Byzantine Empire but the emperorrefused and thought to rent some more soldiers instead of spending money for it. But this prepared Byzantines’ end because Mehmet II accepted the offer and conquered Constantinople with the help of this cannon

THE WORLD’S INITIALS BY THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

•AGES ENDED AND STARTED (MIDDLE AGE – NEW AGE)

•ROMAN EMPIRE LOST THE MOST IMPORTANT REGION AFTER 1100 YEARS

•FOR THE FIRST TIME A NAVY TRANSPORTED ON THE LAND.

•THE BIGGEST HOWITZER CANNON OF THE WORLD (SAHI) WAS USED

•WORLD LEARNED RELIGIOUS TOLERATION (THE EMPEROR LET THEM EXIST MORE EASILY THAN BEFORE)

•Mehmet II, Fatih (The Conqueror). Fall of Constantinople in 1453 only the beginning of an aggressive policy of conquest; capital moved from Edirne to Istanbul; shift of political power from provincial notables and feudal lords to the sultan’s slaves (kapikullari); the Palace School and the organization of religious education through the madrasa system; elaborate court and expanded bureaucracy; the imperial tradition is firmly established and the classical age of the Ottoman Empire has begun. Mehmed II, the Conqueror

BYZANTINE INFLUENCE ON OTTOMAN EMPIRE•‘The Ottoman Empire was an Islamized version of the Byzantine Empire.’ historians in Europe had argued that the entire institutional culture of the Ottoman Empire, from military offices to palace banquets to methods of public humiliation, was carried over directly from the Byzantine Empire.• Court ceremonial and central administrative practices were effected by Byzantine patterns.•Beginning in Seljuk times and continuing into the 14th century Byzantine and other Christian women were taken into the harems of Seljuk, Turkoman and early Ottoman Rulers•Portions of conquered territories were cut into mukata’s to which the name ‘timar’ was given. The existing tax structure as well as feudal practices developed under Byzantine rule were retained with little change.•Byzantine scribal traditions were influential at first but later these and other areas of government and life were submerged by the legacy of the old Islamic Empire•Finally there was Byzantine tradition in Ottoman Empire. By assimilating a living Byzantine society in Anatolia and Europe the Ottomans inevitably inherited Byzantine ways of doing things.

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PREPARED BY: DIDEM AKGUNDILAN OGUZHILAL KARABIBERSHEYDA OZDEN