X-Nico

10 unusual facts about Byzantium


Beasant

Beasant or Besant is an English language surname derived from a coin called the byzantius which is named after the city of Byzantium where they were first minted.

Berovo

A large porch dominates the monastery yard and in the dimness of its interior oil lamps lighten images of saints, painted in a characteristic style that is antonymic to Byzantine canons.

Byzantium

To this day it remains the largest and most populous city in Turkey (the successor to the Ottoman Empire), although Ankara is now the national capital.

Dengizich

Priscus is clearer, saying that in 463 AD a mixed Saragur, Urog and Unogur embassy asked Byzantium for an alliance, having been dislodged by the Avars' drive towards the west.

Ghazar Parpetsi

After returning from Amida in 493, Vahan Mamikonian asked his friend to write a new history of Armenia, starting from where historian Faustus of Byzantium left off; that is, with the reign of king Arsaces II (Arshak II).

Accusing him of heresy, he was forced out of the monastery in 490, taking up residence in the city of Amida in Byzantium.

Gusli

The term was eventually associated with the trapezoidal Gusli-psaltyry (which may have originated in Byzantium).

Johann Jakob Griesbach

In weighing these probabilities he proceeded upon a particular theory which in its leading features he had derived from J. A. Bengel and J. S. Semler, dividing all the manuscripts into three main groups – the Alexandrian, the Western and the Byzantine.

Niška Banja

It was first mentioned centuries ago, in 448, and with the remains and traces of antique (thermae - public baths ll cent.) and early Byzantium period it has been keeping its tradition and uniqueness.

Surma ratsanikud

The novel presents a fictionalised account of the adventures of Roger de Flor's mercenary Catalan Company in 14th-century Byzantium and elsewhere, as told by the fictional protagonist Pedro Casarmana.


4th of August Regime

The regime promoted the perceived Spartan ideals of self-discipline, militarism and collective sacrifice, while Byzantium provided an emphasis on a centralized state and devotion to the monarchy and Greek Orthodox Church.

A. H. M. Jones

Jones's best-known work, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602 (1964), is considered the definitive narrative history of late Rome and early Byzantium, beginning with the reign of the Roman tetrarch Diocletian and ending with that of the Byzantine emperor Maurice.

Adrian and Natalia of Nicomedia

Later, Christians took Adrian's body and buried him on the outskirts of Byzantium, at Argyropolis.

Akhtala Monastery

The murals are one of the best representations of Byzantine art art outside the traditional borders of Byzantium.

Anaxibius

Soon after this the Greeks left the town under the command of the adventurer Coeratades, and Anaxibius issued a proclamation, subsequently acted on by the harmost Aristarchus, that all of Cyrus's soldiers found in Byzantium should be sold as slaves.

Anna Diogenissa

It most likely took place during Uroš' captivity in Byzantium, where he had been sent as a hostage by his uncle Vukan following the capture of Lipljan in 1094 by the troops of Alexios I Komnenos.

Azov

In the 5th century, the area was populated by Karadach's Akatziroi who came under the rule of Dengizich the Hun before Byzantium gave the land to the Hunugurs in the 460s to become known as Patria Onoguria under his brother Ernakh the Hun.

Cleander of Sparta

Cleander was succeeded as harmost of Byzantium by Aristarchus.

Giray dynasty

According to some scholars, the Girays were regarded as the second family of the Ottoman Empire after the House of Ottoman: "If Rome and Byzantium represented two of the three international traditions of imperial legitimacy, the blood of Genghis Khan was the third... If ever the Ottomans became extinct, it was understood that the Genghisid Girays would succeed them" (Sebag Montefiore. Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin. London, 2000).

John Kinnamos

Paul Magdalino, 'Aspects of twelfth century Byzantine Kaiserkritik', Speculum 58 (1983), 326-46 and reprinted in Paul Magdalino, Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Byzantium (Ashgate publishing, 1991), No.

Kingdom of Aksum

The Aksumite Empire is portrayed as the main ally of Byzantium in the Belisarius series by David Drake and Eric Flint published by Baen Books.

Laonikos Chalkokondyles

Speros Vryonis, ‘Laonikos Chalkokondyles and the Ottoman budget’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 7 (1976), 423-32, and reprinted in Vryonis, Studies on Byzantium, Seljuks and Ottomans, No.

Maometto II

Byzantium has just fallen to the Turks, and the troops of Maometto II (Sultan Mehmed II) are laying siege at the Venetian city of Negroponte (Chalkis).

Mystras

Runciman, Sir Steven (1980), Mistra: Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese (2009 reprint: The Lost Capital of Byzantium: The History of Mistra and the Peloponnese; New foreword by John Freely.)

Onogurs

Patria Onoguria, referred to as such by Agathius, Priscus Rhetor, Zacharias Rhetor, and Pseudo-Zecharias Rhetor, was a Hunno-Bulgar state around the Sea of Azov granted by Byzantium to the Onogurs in the 460s AD when, led by Attila's sons Dengizich and Ernakh, they overran Karadach's Akatziroi already settled in the region within the larger context of the Great Migrations and the Turkic expansion.

Ostikan

After the prophet Mohammed and his testator heir and successor Abu Bakr (+634) established the theocratic rule of Islam on the mostly of the sparsely populated Arabian peninsula, the armies of the next caliphs victoriously planted the green banner of the new religion in the vast territories conquered from the neighboring giaur (infidel) empires of Persia and Byzantium.

Paul Magdalino

Magdalino is a member of several editorial boards and research committees: 'The Medieval Mediterranean' at Brill monograph series; 'Oxford Studies in Byzantium' at Oxford University Press; Committee for the British Academy project on the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire; Senior Fellows Committee at Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies; La Pomme d’or Publishing; Byzantinische Zeitschrift journal.

His research interests include Byzantine history: the society, culture and economy of the Byzantine world from 6th to 13th centuries; the city of Constantinople; prophecy, scientific thought, the formation of Byzantine religious Orthodoxy.

Pierre Demargne

In 1951, he initiated a series of archaeological excavations (financed by the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs) at the ancient capital of Lycia, Xanthos, which was occupied from the 7th century B.C.E. by the Lycians, Greeks, Romans and Byzantines for more than a thousand years.

Pozantı

Pozantı has successively passed though the hands of Hittites, Persians, Alexander the Great, Rome and Byzantium.

Samian Sibyl

Interesting is the reference of Symeon Metaphrastes (the largest of the Byzantine historians), which says that Samian Sibyl existed when the city of Byzantium was built, the famous ancient colony of the Megarians, which was converted by Constantine the Great into the capital of the empire, after having rebuilt, and was called Constantinople.

Science in the Middle Ages

In early Byzantium (5th to 7th century) the architects and mathematicians Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles used complex mathematical formulas to construct the great “Hagia Sophia” temple, a magnificent technological breakthrough for its time and for centuries afterwards due to its striking geometry, bold design and height.

Siegfried Frederick Nadel

During a brief fieldbreak in Al-Ubayyid Nadel wrote Black Byzantium on the Nupe (which would not be published until 1942) and The Nuba: An Anthropological Study of the Hill Tribes in Kordofan (which would not appear in print until 1947).

Silivri

Until the second half of the 2nd century BC, the city could preserve its autonomy, but its neighbours Byzantium and Perinthos became more powerful,and the city was under their control during the next centuries.

Stracimir Zavidović

Stracimir was given the oblasts of West Morava (a province of Rascia region) to rule as a Župan (prince, the second highest title) following Byzantium's division of the Serb lands by Manuel I.

Timar

Elements of the Timar system however can be seen to have their origins in Pre-Islamic antiquity (Ancient Middle Eastern Empires, Rome, Byzantium, and Pre-Islamic Iran).

Tondrakians

The movement quickly spread to Shirak, Turuberan and the Armenian regions of Taron, Hark and Mananali that were subject to Byzantium, after acquiring the nature of people's liberation struggle against the Byzantine expansion to their overall ideology.

Vasily Vasilievsky

He was the first to publish many medieval Greek sources relating to Russian history (Byzantium and the Pechenegs, 1872).

Via Pontica

Via Pontica was an ancient Roman road in Thrace along the Black Sea, starting from Byzantium and passing through Konstantinople, Deultum (today Debelt), Aquae Calidae (today Burgas), Apollonia, Mesambria, Odessos, Byzone, Kaliakra (today in Bulgaria), Kallatis, Tomis and Istros (today in Romania).

Vyzas

Byzas or Vyzas (Greek Βύζας, Βύζαντας), was the eponymous founder of Byzantium