Roman Italy
Italia was the homeland of the Romans and metropole of Rome's empire in classical antiquity. According to Roman mythology, Italy was the new home promised by Jupiter to Aeneas of Troy and his descendants, ancestors of the founders of Rome. Aside from the legendary accounts, Rome was an Italian city-state that changed its form of government from Kingdom to Republic and grew within the context of a peninsula dominated by the Etruscans in the centre, the Greeks in the south, the Celts in the North; the consolidation of Italy into a single entity occurred during the Roman expansion in the peninsula, when Rome formed a permanent association with most of the local tribes and cities. The strength of the Italian alliance was a crucial factor in the rise of Rome, starting with the Punic and Macedonian wars between the 3rd and 2nd century BC; as provinces were being established throughout the Mediterranean, Italy maintained a special status which made it "not a province, but the Domina of the provinces".
Such a status meant that Roman magistrates exercised the Imperium domi within Italy, rather than the Imperium militiae used abroad. Italy's inhabitants had Latin Rights as well as financial privileges; the period between the end of the 2nd century BC and the 1st century BC was turbulent, beginning with the Servile Wars, continuing with the opposition of aristocratic élite to reformers and leading to a Social War in the middle of Italy. However, Roman citizenship was recognized to the rest of the Italics by the end of the conflict and extended to Cisalpine Gaul when Julius Caesar became Roman Dictator. In the context of the transition from Republic to Principate, Italy swore allegiance to Octavian Augustus and was organized in eleven regions from the Alps to the Ionian Sea. More than two centuries of stability followed, during which Italy was referred to as the rectrix mundi and omnium terrarum parens. Several emperors made notable accomplishments in this period: Claudius incorporated Britain into the Roman Empire, Vespasian subjugated the Great Revolt of Judea and reformed the financial system, Trajan conquered Dacia and defeated Parthia, Marcus Aurelius epitomized the ideal of the philosopher king.
The crisis of the third century hit Italy hard and left the eastern half of the Empire more prosperous. In 286 AD the Roman Emperor Diocletian moved the capital of the Western Roman Empire from Rome to Mediolanum; the islands of Corsica, Sardinia and Malta were added to Italy by Diocletian in 292 AD, Italian cities such as Mediolanum and Ravenna continued to serve as capitals for the West. The Bishop of Rome gained importance during Constantine's reign and was given religious primacy with the Edict of Thessalonica under Theodosius I. Italy was invaded several times by the barbarians and fell under the control of Odoacer, when Romulus Augustus was deposed in 476 AD. In the sixth century, Italy's territory was divided between the Byzantine Empire and the Germanic peoples. After that, Italy remained divided until 1861, when it was reunited in the Kingdom of Italy, which became the present-day Italian Republic in 1946. Following the end of the Social War in 88 BC, Rome had allowed its Italian allies full rights in Roman society and granted Roman citizenship to all the Italic peoples.
After having been for centuries the heart of the Roman Empire, from the 3rd century the government and the cultural center began to move eastward: first the Edict of Caracalla in 212 AD extended Roman citizenship to all free men within the imperial boundaries. Christianity became the dominant religion during Constantine's reign, raising the power of other Eastern political centres. Although not founded as a capital city in 330, Constantinople grew in importance, it gained the rank of eastern capital when given an urban prefect in 359 and the senators who were clari became senators of the lowest rank as clarissimi. As a result, Italy began to decline in favour of the provinces, which resulted in the division of the Empire into two administrative units in 395: the Western Roman Empire, with its capital at Mediolanum, the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople. In 402, the capital was moved to Ravenna from Milan; the name Italia covered an area. According to Strabo's Geographica, before the expansion of the Roman Republic, the name was used by Greeks to indicate the land between the strait of Messina and the line connecting the gulf of Salerno and gulf of Taranto.
In 49 BC, with the Lex Roscia, Julius Caesar gave Roman citizenship to the people of the Cisalpine Gaul. Under Augustus, the peoples of today's Aosta Valley and of the western and northern Alps were subjugated, the Italian eastern border was brought to the Arsia in Istria. In the late 3rd century, Italy came to include the islands of Corsica and Sardinia and Sicily, as well as Raetia and part of Pannonia to the north; the city of Emona was the easternmost town of Italy. At the beginning of the Roman imperial era, Italy was a collection of territories with different political statuses; some cities, called munic
Tunisia
Tunisia is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa, covering 163,610 square kilometres. Its northernmost point, Cape Angela, is the northernmost point on the African continent, it is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia's population was 11.435 million in 2017. Tunisia's name is derived from its capital city, located on its northeast coast. Geographically, Tunisia contains the eastern end of the Atlas Mountains, the northern reaches of the Sahara desert. Much of the rest of the country's land is fertile soil, its 1,300 kilometres of coastline include the African conjunction of the western and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Basin and, by means of the Sicilian Strait and Sardinian Channel, feature the African mainland's second and third nearest points to Europe after Gibraltar. Tunisia is a unitary semi-presidential representative democratic republic, it is considered to be the only democratic sovereign state in the Arab world.
It has a high human development index. It has an association agreement with the European Union. In addition, Tunisia is a member state of the United Nations and a state party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Close relations with Europe – in particular with France and with Italy – have been forged through economic cooperation and industrial modernization. In ancient times, Tunisia was inhabited by Berbers. Phoenician immigration began in the 12th century BC. A major mercantile power and a military rival of the Roman Republic, Carthage was defeated by the Romans in 146 BC; the Romans, who would occupy Tunisia for most of the next eight hundred years, introduced Christianity and left architectural legacies like the El Djem amphitheater. After several attempts starting in 647, the Muslims conquered the whole of Tunisia by 697, followed by the Ottoman Empire between 1534 and 1574; the Ottomans held sway for over three hundred years. The French colonization of Tunisia occurred in 1881.
Tunisia gained independence with Habib Bourguiba and declared the Tunisian Republic in 1957. In 2011, the Tunisian Revolution resulted in the overthrow of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, followed by parliamentary elections; the country voted for parliament again on 26 October 2014, for President on 23 November 2014. The word Tunisia is derived from Tunis; the present form of the name, with its Latinate suffix -ia, evolved from French Tunisie. in turn associated with the Berber root ⵜⵏⵙ, transcribed tns, which means "to lay down" or "encampment". It is sometimes associated with the Punic goddess Tanith, ancient city of Tynes; the French derivative Tunisie was adopted in some European languages with slight modifications, introducing a distinctive name to designate the country. Other languages remained untouched, such as Spanish Túnez. In this case, the same name is used for both country and city, as with the Arabic تونس, only by context can one tell the difference. Before Tunisia, the territory's name was Ifriqiya or Africa, which gave the present-day name of the continent Africa.
Farming methods reached the Nile Valley from the Fertile Crescent region about 5000 BC, spread to the Maghreb by about 4000 BC. Agricultural communities in the humid coastal plains of central Tunisia were ancestors of today's Berber tribes, it was believed in ancient times that Africa was populated by Gaetulians and Libyans, both nomadic peoples. According to the Roman historian Sallust, the demigod Hercules died in Spain and his polyglot eastern army was left to settle the land, with some migrating to Africa. Persians became the Numidians; the Medes settled and were known as Mauri Moors. The Numidians and Moors belonged to the race from; the translated meaning of Numidian is Nomad and indeed the people were semi-nomadic until the reign of Masinissa of the Massyli tribe. At the beginning of recorded history, Tunisia was inhabited by Berber tribes, its coast was settled by Phoenicians starting as early as the 12th century BC. The city of Carthage was founded in the 9th century BC by Phoenicians. Legend says that Dido from Tyre, now in modern-day Lebanon, founded the city in 814 BC, as retold by the Greek writer Timaeus of Tauromenium.
The settlers of Carthage brought their culture and religion from Phoenicia, now present-day Lebanon and adjacent areas. After the series of wars with Greek city-states of Sicily in the 5th century BC, Carthage rose to power and became the dominant civilization in the Western Mediterranean; the people of Carthage worshipped a pantheon of Middle Eastern gods including Tanit. Tanit's symbol, a simple female figure with extended arms and long dress, is a popular icon found in ancient sites; the founders of Carthage established a Tophet, altered in Roman times. A Carthaginian invasion of Italy led by Hannibal during the Second Punic War, one of a series of wars with Rome, nearly crippled the rise of Roman power. From the conclusion of the Second Punic War in 202 BC, Carthage functioned as a client state of the Roman Republic for another 50 years. F
Gallienus
Gallienus known as Gallien, was Roman Emperor with his father Valerian from 22 October 253 to spring 260 and alone from spring 260 to September 268. He ruled during the Crisis of the Third Century. While he won a number of military victories, he was unable to prevent the secession of important provinces, his 15-year reign was the longest since the 19-year rule of Caracalla. Born into a wealthy and traditional senatorial family, Gallienus was the son of Valerian and Mariniana. Valerian became Emperor on 22 October 253 and had the Roman senate elevate Gallienus to the ranks of Caesar and Augustus. Valerian divided the empire between him and his son, with Valerian ruling the east and his son the west. Gallienus defeated the usurper Ingenuus in 258 and destroyed an Alemanni army at Mediolanum in 259; the defeat and capture of Valerian at Edessa in 260 by the Sasanian Empire threw the Roman Empire into the chaos of civil war. Control of the whole empire passed to Gallienus, he defeated the eastern usurpers Macrianus Major Mussius Aemilianus in 261–262 but failed to stop the formation of the breakaway Gallic Empire under general Postumus.
Aureolus, another usurper, proclaimed himself emperor in Mediolanum in 268 but was defeated outside the city by Gallienus and besieged inside. While the siege was ongoing, Gallienus was stabbed to death by the officer Cecropius as part of a conspiracy; the exact birth date of Gallienus is unknown. The 6th-century Greek chronicler John Malalas and the Epitome de Caesaribus report that he was about 50 years old at the time of his death, meaning he was born around 218, he was the son of emperor Valerian and Mariniana, who may have been of senatorial rank the daughter of Egnatius Victor Marinianus, his brother was Valerianus Minor. Inscriptions on coins connect him with Falerii in Etruria. Gallienus married Cornelia Salonina about ten years before his accession to the throne, she was the mother of three princes: Valerian II, who died in 258. When Valerian was proclaimed Emperor on 22 October 253, he asked the Senate to ratify the elevation of Gallienus to Caesar and Augustus, he was designated Consul Ordinarius for 254.
As Marcus Aurelius and his adopted brother Lucius Verus had done a century earlier and his father divided the Empire. Valerian left for the East to stem the Persian threat, Gallienus remained in Italy to repel the Germanic tribes on the Rhine and Danube. Division of the empire had become necessary due to its sheer size and the numerous threats it faced, it facilitated negotiations with enemies who demanded to communicate directly with the emperor. Gallienus spent most of his time in the provinces of the Rhine area, though he certainly visited the Danube area and Illyricum in the years from 253 to 258. According to Eutropius and Aurelius Victor, he was energetic and successful in preventing invaders from attacking the German provinces and Gaul, despite the weakness caused by Valerian's march on Italy against Aemilianus in 253. According to numismatic evidence, he seems to have won many victories there, a victory in Roman Dacia might be dated to that period; the hostile Latin tradition attributes success to him at this time.
In 255 or 257, Gallienus was made Consul again, suggesting that he visited Rome on those occasions, although no record survives. During his Danube sojourn, he proclaimed his elder son Valerian II Caesar and thus official heir to himself and Valerian I. Sometime between 258 and 260, while Valerian was distracted with the ongoing invasion of Shapur I in the East, Gallienus was preoccupied with his problems in the West, governor of at least one of the Pannonian provinces, took advantage and declared himself emperor. Valerian II had died on the Danube, most in 258. Ingenuus may have been responsible for that calamity. Alternatively, the defeat and capture of Valerian at the battle of Edessa may have been the trigger for the subsequent revolts of Ingenuus and Postumus. In any case, Gallienus reacted with great speed, he left his son Saloninus as Caesar at Cologne, under the supervision of Albanus and the military leadership of Postumus. He hastily crossed the Balkans, taking with him the new cavalry corps under the command of Aureolus and defeated Ingenuus at Mursa or Sirmium.
The victory must be attributed to the cavalry and its brilliant commander. Ingenuus was killed by his own guards or committed suicide by drowning himself after the fall of his capital, Sirmium. A major invasion by the Alemanni and other Germanic tribes occurred between 258 and 260 due to the vacuum left by the withdrawal of troops supporting Gallienus in the campaign against Ingenuus. Franks broke through the lower Rhine, invading Gaul, some reaching as far as southern Spain, sacking Tarraco; the Alemanni invaded through Agri Decumates followed by the Juthungi. After devastating Germania Superior and Raetia (parts
Roman emperor
The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman Empire during the imperial period. The emperors used a variety of different titles throughout history; when a given Roman is described as becoming "emperor" in English, it reflects his taking of the title Augustus or Caesar. Another title used was imperator a military honorific. Early Emperors used the title princeps. Emperors amassed republican titles, notably princeps senatus and pontifex maximus; the legitimacy of an emperor's rule depended on his control of the army and recognition by the Senate. The first emperors reigned alone; the Romans considered the office of emperor to be distinct from that of a king. The first emperor, resolutely refused recognition as a monarch. Although Augustus could claim that his power was authentically republican, his successor, could not convincingly make the same claim. Nonetheless, for the first three hundred years of Roman emperors, from Augustus until Diocletian, efforts were made to portray the emperors as leaders of a republic.
From Diocletian, whose tetrarchic reforms divided the position into one emperor in the West and one in the East, until the end of the Empire, emperors ruled in an monarchic style and did not preserve the nominal principle of a republic, but the contrast with "kings" was maintained: although the imperial succession was hereditary, it was only hereditary if there was a suitable candidate acceptable to the army and the bureaucracy, so the principle of automatic inheritance was not adopted. Elements of the republican institutional framework were preserved after the end of the Western Empire; the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late 5th century after multiple invasions of imperial territory by Germanic barbarian tribes. Romulus Augustulus is considered to be the last emperor of the West after his forced abdication in 476, although Julius Nepos maintained a claim recognized by the Eastern Empire to the title until his death in 480. Following Nepos' death, the Eastern Emperor Zeno abolished the division of the position and proclaimed himself as the sole Emperor of a reunited Roman Empire.
The Eastern imperial lineage continued to rule from Constantinople. Constantine XI Palaiologos was the last Roman emperor in Constantinople, dying in the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453; the "Byzantine" emperors from Heraclius in 629 and onwards adopted the title of basileus, which had meant king in Greek but became a title reserved for the Roman emperor and the ruler of the Sasanian Empire. Other kings were referred to as rēgas. In addition to their pontifical office, some emperors were given divine status after death. With the eventual hegemony of Christianity, the emperor came to be seen as God's chosen ruler, as well as a special protector and leader of the Christian Church on Earth, although in practice an emperor's authority on Church matters was subject to challenge. Due to the cultural rupture of the Turkish conquest, most western historians treat Constantine XI as the last meaningful claimant to the title Roman Emperor. From 1453, one of the titles used by the Ottoman Sultans was "Caesar of Rome", part of their titles until the Ottoman Empire ended in 1922.
A Byzantine group of claimant Roman emperors existed in the Empire of Trebizond until its conquest by the Ottomans in 1461, though they had used a modified title since 1282. Eastern emperors in Constantinople had been recognized and accepted as Roman emperors both in the East, which they ruled, by the Papacy and Germanic kingdoms of the West until the deposition of Constantine VI and accession of Irene of Athens as Empress regnant in 797. Objecting to a woman ruling the Roman Empire in her own right and issues with the eastern clergy, the Papacy would create a rival lineage of Roman emperors in western Europe, the Holy Roman Emperors, which ruled the Holy Roman Empire for most of the period between 800 and 1806; these Emperors were never recognized as Roman emperors by the court in Constantinople. Modern historians conventionally regard Augustus as the first Emperor whereas Julius Caesar is considered the last dictator of the Roman Republic, a view having its origins in the Roman writers Plutarch and Cassius Dio.
However, the majority of Roman writers, including Josephus, Pliny the Younger and Appian, as well as most of the ordinary people of the Empire, thought of Julius Caesar as the first Emperor. At the end of the Roman Republic no new, no single, title indicated the individual who held supreme power. Insofar as emperor could be seen as the English translation of imperator Julius Caesar had been an emperor, like several Roman generals before him. Instead, by the end of the civil wars in which Julius Caesar had led his armies, it became clear that there was no consensus to return to the old-style monarchy, but that the period when several officials, bestowed with equal power by the senate, would fight one another had come to an end. Julius Caesar, Augustus after him, accumulated offices and titles of the highest importance in the Republic, making the power attached to those offices permanent, preventing anyone with similar aspirations from accumulating or maintaining power for themselves. However, Julius Caesar, unlike those after
Shapur I
Shapur I known as Shapur the Great, was the second shahanshah of the Sasanian Empire. The dates of his reign are given as 240/42 – 270, but it is that he reigned as co-regent prior to his father's death in 242. Shapur I's rule was marked by successful military and political struggles in the Caucasus, against the Kushan Empire in the east, two wars with the Roman Empire. Shapur I's support for Zoroastrianism caused a rise in the position of the clergy, his religious tolerance accelerated the spread of Manichaeanism and Christianity in Persia, he is noted in the Jewish tradition. The name Shapur combines the words šāh and pūr, thus meaning the "king's son"; the name derives from Old Iranian *xšāyaθiyahyā-puθra-, appears in Manichaean sources as Shabuhr, while it is attested in Latin sources as Sapores and Sapor, which Shapur is known by in modern sources. Shapur was the son of the founder of the Sasanian dynasty and whom Shapur succeeded, his mother was Lady Myrōd, according to legend, was an Arsacid princess.
The Talmud cites a nickname for her, "Ifra Hurmiz", after her bewitching beauty. Shapur had a brother named Ardashir, who would serve as governor of Kirman. Shapur may have had another brother with the same name, who served as governor of Adiabene. Shapur accompanied his father's campaigns against the Parthians, who still controlled much of the Iranian plateau through a system of vassal states, in which the Persian kingdom had itself been a part. Before an assembly of magnates, Ardashir "judged him the gentlest, wisest and ablest of all his children" and nominated him as his successor. Shapur appears as heir apparent in Ardashir's investiture inscriptions at Naqsh-e Rajab and his capital, Gor; the Iranian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari observed of Shapur before his ascension to the Sasanian throne:, "The Iranians had well-tried Shapur before his accession and while his father still lived on account of his intelligence and learning as well as his outstanding boldness, logic, affection for the subject of people and kindheartedness."
The Cologne Mani-Codex indicates that, by 240, Ardashir and Shapur were reigning together. In a letter from the Roman Emperor Gordian III to his senate, dated to 242, the "Persian Kings" are referred to in the plural. Synarchy is evident in the coins of this period that portray Ardashir facing his youthful son and bear a legend that indicates Shapur as king; the date of Shapur's coronation remains debated: 240 is noted, but Ardashir lived until 242. The year 240 marks the seizure and subsequent destruction of Hatra, about 100 km southwest of Nineveh and Mosul in present-day Iraq. According to legend, al-Nadirah, the daughter of the king of Hatra, betrayed her city to the Sasanians, who killed the king and had the city razed; the Eastern provinces of the fledgling Sasanian Empire bordered on the land of the Kushans and the land of the Sakas. The military operations of Shapur’s father Ardashir I had led to the local Kushan and Saka kings offering tribute, satisfied by this show of submission, Ardashir seems to have refrained from occupying their territories.
Al-Tabari alleges he rebuilt the ancient city of Zrang in Sakastan, but the only early Sasanian period founding of a new settlement in the East of which we are certain is the building by Shapur I of Nishapur - “Beautifull by Shapur” - in Dihistan. Soon after the death of his father in 241 CE, Shapur felt the need to cut short the campaign they had started in Roman Syria, reassert Sasanian authority in the East because the Kushan and Saka kings were lax in abiding to their tributary status. However, he first had to fight “The Medes of the Mountains” - as we will see in the mountain range of Gilan on the Caspian coast - and after subjugating them, he appointed his son Bahram as their king, he marched to the East and annexed most of the land of the Kushans, appointing his son Narseh as Sakanshah - king of the Sakas - in Sistan. Shapur could now proudly proclaim that his empire stretched all the way to Peshawar, his relief in Rag-i-Bibi in present-day Afghanistan confirms this claim, he seems to have garrisoned the Eastern territories with POW’s from his previous campaign against the Medes of the Mountains.
Agathias claims Bahram II campaigned in the land of the Sakas and appointed his brother Hormizd as its king. When Hormizd revolted, the Panegyrici Latini list his forces as the Rufii and the Geli. Since the Gilaks are out of place among these easterners, as we know that Shapur I had to fight the Medes of the Mountains first before marching to the land of the Kushans, it is conceivable those Gilaks were the descendants of warriors captured during Shapur I's North-western campaign, forcibly drafted into the Sasanian army, settled as a hereditary garrison in Merv, Nishapur, or Zrang after the conclusion of Shapur's north-eastern campaign, the usual Sasanian practise with prisoners of war. Ardashir I had, towards the end of his reign, renewed the war against the Roman Empire, Shapur I had conquered the Mesopotamian fortresses Nisibis and Carrhae and had advanced into Syria. In 242, the Romans under the father-in-law of their child-
Roman Syria
Syria was an early Roman province, annexed to the Roman Republic in 64 BC by Pompey in the Third Mithridatic War, following the defeat of Armenian King Tigranes the Great. Following the partition of the Herodian Kingdom into tetrarchies in 6 AD, it was absorbed into Roman provinces, with Roman Syria annexing Iturea and Trachonitis. Syria was an early Roman province, annexed to the Roman Republic in 64 BC by Pompey in the Third Mithridatic War, following the defeat of Armenian King Tigranes the Great. During the early empire, the Roman army in Syria accounted for three legions with auxiliaries, they defended the border with Parthia. Following the partition of the Herodian Kingdom into tetrarchies in 6 AD, it was absorbed into Roman provinces, with Roman Syria annexing Iturea and Trachonitis around 34 AD. Syrian province forces were directly engaged in the Great Jewish Revolt of 66–70 AD. In 66 AD, Cestius Gallus, the legate of Syria, brought the Syrian army, based on XII Fulminata, reinforced by auxiliary troops, to restore order in Judaea and quell the revolt.
The legion, was ambushed and destroyed by Jewish rebels at the Battle of Beth Horon, a result that shocked the Roman leadership. The future emperor Vespasian was put in charge of subduing the Jewish revolt. In the summer of 69, with the Syrian units supporting him, launched his bid to become Roman emperor, he defeated his rival Vitellius and ruled as emperor for ten years when he was succeeded by his son Titus. Based on an inscription recovered from Dor in 1948, Gargilius Antiquus was known to have been the governor of a province in the eastern part of the Empire Syria, between his consulate and governing Asia. In November 2016, an inscription in Greek was recovered off the coast of Dor by Haifa University underwater archaeologists, which attests that Antiquus was governor of the province of Judea between 120 and 130 prior to the Bar Kokhba revolt. Syria Palæstina was established by the merger of Roman Syria and Roman Judea, following the defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135; the Syria-based legion took part in the quelling of the revolt in 132–136, in the aftermath, the emperor Hadrian added the depopulated province of Judea to the province of Syria thus forming Syria-Palaestina.
The governor of Syria retained the civil administration of the whole large province undiminished, held for long alone in all Asia a command of the first rank. It was only in the course of the second century that a diminution of his prerogatives occurred, when Hadrian took one of the four legions from the governor of Syria and handed it over to the governor of Palestine, it was Severus who at length withdrew the first place in the Roman military hierarchy from the Syrian governor. After having subdued the province amidst resistance from the capital Antioch in particular, he ordained its partition into a northern and a southern half, gave to the governor of the former, called Coele-Syria, two legions, to the governor of the latter, the province of Syro-Phoenicia, one legion; the emperor Septimius Severus divided up Roman Syria in the fashion it would remain until the rule of the Tetrarchs. Under his reign it was divided into three parts, Coele Syria in the north with Antioch as its provincial capital, Syria Phoenice with Tyre as the provincial capital and in the south Syria Palestina with Caesarea Maritima as the provincial capital.
From the 2nd century, the Roman Senate included several notable Syrians, including Claudius Pompeianus and Avidius Cassius. Syria was of crucial strategic importance during the Crisis of the Third Century. In 244 AD, Rome was ruled by a native Syrian from Philippopolis in the province of Arabia Petraea; the emperor was Marcus Iulius Philippus, more known as Philip the Arab. Philip became the 33rd emperor of Rome upon its millennial celebration. Roman Syria was invaded in 252/253 after a Roman field army was destroyed in the battle of Barbalissos by the King of Persia Shapur I which left the Euphrates river unguarded and the region was pillaged by the Persians. In 259/260 a similar event happened when Shapur I again defeated a Roman field army and captured the Roman emperor, alive at the battle of Edessa. Again Roman Syria suffered as cities were captured and pillaged. From 268 to 273, Syria was part of the breakaway Palmyrene Empire. Following the reforms of Diocletian, Syria Coele became part of the Diocese of Oriens.
Sometime between 330 and 350, the province of Euphratensis was created out of the territory of Syria Coele along the western bank of the Euphrates and the former realm of Commagene, with Hierapolis as its capital. After c. 415 Syria Coele was further subdivided into Syria I, with the capital remaining at Antioch, Syria II or Syria Salutaris, with capital at Apamea on the Orontes. In 528, Justinian I carved out the small coastal province Theodorias out of territory from both provinces; the region remained one of the most important provinces of the Byzantine Empire. It was occupied by the Sassanids between 609 and 628 recovered by the emperor Heraclius, but lost again to the advancing Muslims after the battle of Yarmouk and the fall of Antioch; the city of Antioch was recovered by Nikephorus Phocas in 963 AD, along with other parts of the country, at that time under the Hamdanids, although still under the official suzerainty of the Abbasid caliphs and claimed by the Fatimid caliphs. After emperor John Kurkuas's failed to recover Syria up to Jerusalem a Muslim "reconquest" of Syria followed in the late 970s undertaken by the Fatimid caliphate which resulted in the o
Balkans
The Balkans known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographic area in southeastern Europe with various definitions and meanings, including geopolitical and historical. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria from the Serbian-Bulgarian border to the Black Sea coast; the Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea on the northwest, the Ionian Sea on the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south and southeast, the Black Sea on the east and northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined; the highest point of the Balkans is 2,925 metres, in the Rila mountain range. The concept of the Balkan peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea; the term of Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey in the 19th century, the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe.
It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, further promoted during the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan peninsula's natural borders do not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula and hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan peninsula, while scholars discuss the Balkans as a region; the term has acquired a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related to the process of Balkanization, hence the rather used alternative term for the region is Southeast Europe. The word Balkan comes from Ottoman Turkish balkan'chain of wooded mountains'; the origin of the Turkic word is obscure. From classical antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains were called by the local Thracian name Haemus. According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment and the mountain has remained with his name. A reverse name scheme has been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus is derived from a Thracian word *saimon,'mountain ridge'.
A third possibility is that "Haemus" derives from the Greek word "haema" meaning'blood'. The myth relates to a fight between the monster/titan Typhon. Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhon's blood fell on the mountains, from which they got their name; the earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, in which the Haemus mountains are referred to as Balkan. The first attested time the name "Balkan" was used in the West for the mountain range in Bulgaria was in a letter sent in 1490 to Pope Innocent VIII by Buonaccorsi Callimaco, an Italian humanist and diplomat; the Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, although other Turkic tribes had settled in or were passing through the Peninsula. There is a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion; the word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its general meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, Ungurus-Balkani̊, but it was applied to the Haemus mountain.
The name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. English traveler John Morritt introduced this term into the English literature at the end of the 18th-century, other authors started applying the name to the wider area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea; the concept of the "Balkans" was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered it as the dominant central mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. During the 1820s, "Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers... Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term"; the term was not used in geographical literature until the mid-19th century because then scientists like Carl Ritter warned that only the part South of the Balkan Mountains can be considered as a peninsula and considered it to be renamed as "Greek peninsula".
Other prominent geographers who didn't agree with Zeune were Hermann Wagner, Theobald Fischer, Marion Newbigin, Albrecht Penck, while Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn in 1869 for the same territory used the term Südostereuropäische Halbinsel. Another reason it was not accepted as the definition of European Turkey had a similar land extent. However, after the Congress of Berlin there was a political need for a new term and the Balkans was revitalized, but in the maps the northern border was in Serbia and Montenegro without Greece, while Yugoslavian maps included Croatia and Bosnia; the term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey, the political borders of former Ottoman Empire provinces. The usage of the term changed in the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century when was embraced by Serbian geographers, most prominently by Jovan Cvijić, it was done with political reasoning as affirmation for Serbian nationalism on the whole territory of the South Slavs, included anthropological and ethnological studies of the South Slavs through which were claimed various nationalistic and racistic theories.
Through such policies and Yugoslavian maps the term was elevated to the modern status of
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