Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic and military force in Europe. Both the terms "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" are historiographical terms created after the end of the realm. Several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empire's Greek East and Latin West diverged. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, legalised Christianity. Under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empire's official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed.
Under the reign of Heraclius, the Empire's military and administration were restructured and adopted Greek for official use in place of Latin. Thus, although the Roman state continued and its traditions were maintained, modern historians distinguish Byzantium from ancient Rome insofar as it was centred on Constantinople, oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, characterised by Eastern Orthodox Christianity; the borders of the empire evolved over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Justinian I, the empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the Roman western Mediterranean coast, including North Africa and Rome itself, which it held for two more centuries; the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 exhausted the empire's resources and contributed to major territorial losses during the Early Muslim conquests of the 7th century, when it lost its richest provinces and Syria, to the Arab caliphate. During the Macedonian dynasty, the empire expanded again and experienced the two-century long Macedonian Renaissance, which came to an end with the loss of much of Asia Minor to the Seljuk Turks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia. The empire recovered during the Komnenian restoration, by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. However, it was delivered a mortal blow during the Fourth Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked in 1204 and the territories that the empire governed were divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small rival states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence, its remaining territories were progressively annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 ended the Byzantine Empire; the last of the imperial Byzantine successor states, the Empire of Trebizond, would be conquered by the Ottomans eight years in the 1461 Siege of Trebizond. The first use of the term "Byzantine" to label the years of the Roman Empire was in 1557, when the German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of historical sources.
The term comes from "Byzantium", the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantine's capital. This older name of the city would be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts; the publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, in 1680 of Du Cange's Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of "Byzantine" among French authors, such as Montesquieu. However, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world; the Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the "Roman Empire", the "Empire of the Romans", "Romania", the "Roman Republic", as "Rhōmais". The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and as late as the 19th century Greeks referred to Modern Greek as Romaiika "Romaic." After 1204 when the Byzantine Empire was confined to its purely Greek provinces the term'Hellenes' was used instead. While the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character during most of its history and preserved Romano-Hellenistic traditions, it became identified by its western and northern contemporaries with its predominant Greek element.
The occasional use of the term "Empire of the Greeks" in the West to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire and of the Byzantine Emperor as Imperator Graecorum were used to separate it from the prestige of the Roman Empire within the new kingdoms of the West. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more straightforwardly seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known as Rûm; the name millet-i Rûm, or "Roman nation," was used by the Ottomans through the 20th century to refer to the former subjects of the Byzantine Empire
Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient Greek city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. Its ruins lie near the modern city of Antakya and lends the modern city its name. Antioch was founded near the end of the fourth century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals; the city's geographical and economic location benefited its occupants such features as the spice trade, the Silk Road, the Royal Road. It rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the Near East; the city was the capital of the Seleucid Empire until 63 B. C. when the Romans took control. From the early 4th century the city was the seat of the Count of the Orient, head of the regional administration of sixteen provinces, it was the main center of Hellenistic Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period. Antioch was one of the most important cities in the eastern Mediterranean of Rome's dominions, it covered 1,100 acres within the walls of which one quarter was mountain, leaving 750 acres about one-fifth the area of Rome within the Aurelian Walls.
Antioch was called "the cradle of Christianity" as a result of its longevity and the pivotal role that it played in the emergence of both Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity. The Christian New Testament asserts, it was one of the four cities of the Syrian tetrapolis, its residents were known as Antiochenes. The city was a metropolis of a quarter million people during Augustan times, but it declined to relative insignificance during the Middle Ages because of warfare, repeated earthquakes, a change in trade routes, which no longer passed through Antioch from the far east following the Mongol invasions and conquests. Two routes from the Mediterranean, lying through the Orontes gorge and the Beilan Pass, converge in the plain of the Antioch Lake and are met there by the road from the Amanian Gate and western Commagene, which descends the valley of the Karasu River to the Afrin River, the roads from eastern Commagene and the Euphratean crossings at Samosata and Apamea Zeugma, which descend the valleys of the Afrin and the Quweiq rivers, the road from the Euphratean ford at Thapsacus, which skirts the fringe of the Syrian steppe.
A single route proceeds south in the Orontes valley. The settlement called Meroe pre-dated Antioch. A shrine of the Semitic goddess Anat, called by Herodotus the "Persian Artemis", was located here; this site was included in the eastern suburbs of Antioch. There was a village on the spur of Mount Silpius named Iopolis; this name was always adduced as evidence by Antiochenes anxious to affiliate themselves to the Attic Ionians—an eagerness, illustrated by the Athenian types used on the city's coins. Io may have been a small early colony of trading Greeks. John Malalas mentions an archaic village, Bottia, in the plain by the river. Alexander the Great is said to have camped on the site of Antioch, dedicated an altar to Zeus Bottiaeus; this account is found only in the writings of Libanius, a 4th-century orator from Antioch, may be legend intended to enhance Antioch's status. But the story is not unlikely in itself. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, his generals divided up the territory. After the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, Seleucus I Nicator won the territory of Syria, he proceeded to found four "sister cities" in northwestern Syria, one of, Antioch, a city named in honor of his father Antiochus.
He is reputed to have built sixteen Antiochs. Seleucus founded Antioch on a site chosen through ritual means. An eagle, the bird of Zeus, had been given a piece of sacrificial meat and the city was founded on the site to which the eagle carried the offering. Seleucus did this on the 22nd day of the month of Artemisios in the twelfth year of his reign. Antioch soon rose above Seleucia Pieria to become the Syrian capital; the original city of Seleucus was laid out in imitation of the grid plan of Alexandria by the architect Xenarius. Libanius describes the first arrangement of this city; the citadel was on Mt. Silpius and the city lay on the low ground to the north, fringing the river. Two great colonnaded streets intersected in the centre. Shortly afterwards a second quarter was laid out on the east and by Antiochus I, from an expression of Strabo, appears to have been the native, as contrasted with the Greek, town, it was enclosed by a wall of its own. In the Orontes, north of the city, lay a large island, on this Seleucus II Callinicus began a third walled "city", finished by Antiochus III.
A fourth and last quarter was added by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. From west to east the whole was about 6 kilometres in diameter and a little less from north to south; this area included many large gardens. The new city was populated by a mix of local settlers that Athenians brought from the nearby city of Antigonia and Jews; the total free population of Antioch at its foundation has been estimated at between 17,000 and 25,000, not including slaves and native settlers. During the late Hellenistic period and Early Roman period, Antioch's population reached its peak of over 500,000 inhabitants and was the third largest city in the Empire after Rome and Alexandria. In the second half o
Ancient higher-learning institutions
A variety of ancient higher-learning institutions were developed in many cultures to provide institutional frameworks for scholarly activities. These ancient centres were overseen by courts, they are to be distinguished from the Western-style university, an autonomous organization of scholars that originated in medieval Europe and has been adopted in other regions in modern times. The Platonic Academy, founded ca. 387 BC in Athens, Greece, by the philosopher Plato, lasted 916 years with interruptions. It was emulated during the Renaissance by the Florentine Platonic Academy, whose members saw themselves as following Plato's tradition. Around 335 BC, Plato's successor Aristotle founded the Peripatetic school, the students of which met at the Lyceum gymnasium in Athens; the school ceased in 86 BC during the famine and sacking of Athens by Sulla. During the Hellenistic period, the Museion in Alexandria became the leading research institute for science and technology from which many Greek innovations sprang.
The engineer Ctesibius may have been its first head. It was suppressed and burned between AD 216 and 272, the library was destroyed between 272 and 391; the reputation of these Greek institutions was such that at least four central modern educational terms derive from them: the academy, the lyceum, the gymnasium and the museum. The Pandidakterion of Constantinople, founded as an institution of higher learning in 425, educated graduates to take on posts of authority in the imperial service or within the Church, it was reorganized as a corporation of students in 849 by the regent Bardas of emperor Michael III, is considered by some to be the earliest institution of higher learning with some of the characteristics we associate today with a university. If a university is defined as "an institution of higher learning" it is preceded by several others, including the Academy that it was founded to compete with and replaced. If the original meaning of the word is considered "a corporation of students" this could be the first example of such an institution.
The Preslav Literary School and Ohrid Literary School were the two major literary schools of the First Bulgarian Empire. In Western Europe during the Early Middle Ages, bishops sponsored cathedral schools and monasteries sponsored monastic schools, chiefly dedicated to the education of clergy; the earliest evidence of a European episcopal school is that established in Visigothic Spain at the Second Council of Toledo in 527. These early episcopal schools, with a focus on an apprenticeship in religious learning under a scholarly bishop, have been identified in Spain and in about twenty towns in Gaul during the 6th and 7th centuries. In addition to these episcopal schools, there were monastic schools which educated monks and nuns, as well as future bishops, at a more advanced level. Around the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, some of them developed into autonomous universities. A notable example is when the University of Paris grew out of the schools associated with the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Monastery of Ste.
Geneviève, the Abbey of St. Victor. Major Buddhist monasteries, notably those at Pushpagiri and Taxila, included schools that were some of the primary institutions of higher learning in ancient India; the Pirivena was developed during this period, which covered lower levels of education too, was confined to the island of Lanka though its model was replicated throughout South East Asia. The school in Pushpagiri was established in the 3rd century AD as India; as of 2007, the ruins of this Mahavihara had not yet been excavated. Much of the Mahavihara's history remains unknown. Of the three Mahavihara campuses, Lalitgiri in the district of Cuttack is the oldest. Iconographic analysis indicates that Lalitgiri had been established during the Shunga period of the 2nd century BC, making it one of the oldest Buddhist establishments in the world; the Chinese traveller Xuanzang, who visited it in AD 639, as Puphagiri Mahavihara, as well as in medieval Tibetan texts. However, unlike Takshila and Nalanda, the ruins of Pushpagiri were not discovered until 1995, when a lecturer from a local college first stumbled upon the site.
The task of excavating Pushpagiri's ruins, stretching over 58 hectares of land, was undertaken by the Odisha Institute of Maritime and South East Asian Studies between 1996 and 2006. It is now being carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India; the Nagarjunakonda inscriptions mention about this learning center. Nalanda was established in the fifth century AD in Bihar and survived until circa 1200 AD, it was devoted to Buddhist studies, but it trained students in fine arts, mathematics, astronomy and the art of war. The center had eight separate compounds, ten temples, meditation halls, classrooms and parks, it had a nine-story library where monks meticulously copied books and documents so that individual scholars could have their own collections. It had dormitories for students, housing 10,000 students in the school’s heyday and providing accommodation for 2,000 professors. Nalanda attracted pupils and scholars from Sri Lanka, Japan, Tibet, Indonesia and Turkey, who left accounts of the center.
In 2014 a moder
Muslim conquest of Persia
The Muslim conquest of Persia known as the Arab conquest of Iran, led to the end of the Sasanian Empire of Persia in 651 and the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion. The rise of Muslims coincided with an unprecedented political, social and military weakness in Persia. Once a major world power, the Sasanian Empire had exhausted its human and material resources after decades of warfare against the Byzantine Empire; the internal political situation deteriorated after the execution of King Khosrow II in 628 AD. Subsequently, ten new claimants were enthroned within the next four years. With civil war erupting between different factions, the empire was no longer centralized. Arab Muslims first attacked the Sassanid territory in 633, when general Khalid ibn Walid invaded Mesopotamia, the political and economic center of the Sassanid state. Following the transfer of Khalid to the Byzantine front in the Levant, the Muslims lost their holdings to Sassanian counterattacks; the second invasion began in 636 under Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas, when a key victory at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah led to the permanent end of Sasanian control west of Iran.
The Zagros mountains became a natural barrier and border between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Sassanid Empire. Due to continuous raids by Persians into the area, Caliph Umar ordered a full invasion of the Sasanian empire in 642, which led to the complete conquest of the Sasanians around 651. Directing from Medina, a few thousand kilometres from the battlefields of Iran, Caliph Umar's quick conquest of Iran in a series of well-coordinated, multi-pronged attacks became his greatest triumph, contributing to his reputation as a great military and political strategist. Iranian historians have defended their forebears vis a vis Arab sources to illustrate that "contrary to the claims of some historians, Iranians, in fact, fought long and hard against the invading Arabs." By 651, most of the urban centers in Iranian lands, with the notable exception of the Caspian provinces and Transoxiana, had come under the domination of the Arab armies. Many localities fought against the invaders. In fact, although Arabs had established hegemony over most of the country, many cities rose in rebellion by killing the Arab governor or attacking their garrisons.
Military reinforcements quashed the insurgency and imposed Islamic control. The violent subjugation of Bukhara is a case in point: Conversion to Islam was gradual as the result of this violent resistance. However, the Persians began to reassert themselves by maintaining Persian culture. Islam would become the dominant religion late in the medieval ages; when Western academics first investigated the Muslim conquest of Persia, they only had to rely on the accounts of the Armenian Christian bishop Sebeos, accounts in Arabic that were written some time after the events they describe. The most significant work was that of Arthur Christensen, his L’Iran sous les Sassanides, published in Copenhagen and Paris in 1944. Recent scholarship has begun to question the traditional narrative: Parvaneh Pourshariati, in her Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran, published in 2008, provides both a detailed overview of the problematic nature of trying to establish what happened, a great deal of original research that questions fundamental facts of the traditional narrative, including the timeline and specific dates.
Pourshariati's central thesis is that contrary to what was assumed, the Sassanian Empire was decentralized, was in fact a "confederation" with the Parthians, who themselves retained a high level of independence. Despite their recent victories over the Byzantine Empire, the Parthians unexpectedly withdrew from the confederation, the Sassanians were thus ill-prepared and ill-equipped to mount an effective and cohesive defense against the Muslim armies. Moreover, the powerful northern and eastern Parthian families, the kust-i khwarasan and kust-i adurbadagan, withdrew to their respective strongholds and made peace with the Arabs, refusing to fight alongside the Sassanians. Another important theme of Pourshariati's study is a re-evaluation of the traditional timeline. Pourshariati argues that the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia "took place, not, as has been conventionally believed, in the years 632–634, after the accession of the last Sasanian king Yazdgerd III to power, but in the period from 628 to 632."
An important consequence of this change in timeline means that the Arab conquest started when the Sassanians and Parthians were engaged in internecine warfare over succession to the Sassanian throne. Since the 1st century BC, the border between the Roman and Parthian empires had been the Euphrates River; the border was contested. Most battles, thus most fortifications, were concentrated in the hilly regions of the north, as the vast Arabian or Syrian Desert separated the rival empires in the south; the only dangers expected from the south were occasional raids by nomadic Arab tribesmen. Both empires therefore allied themselves with small, semi-independent Arab principalities, which served as buffer states and protected Byzantium and Persia from Bedouin attacks; the Byzantine clients were the Ghassanids. The Ghassanids and Lakhmids feuded which kept them occupied, but that did not affect the Byzantines or the Persians. In the 6th and 7th centuries, various factors destroyed the balance of power that had held for so many ce
Athens
Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence starting somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennium BC. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state that emerged in conjunction with the seagoing development of the port of Piraeus, a distinct city prior to its 5th century BC incorporation with Athens. A center for the arts and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, it is referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy because of its cultural and political impact on the European continent, in particular the Romans. In modern times, Athens is a large cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, industrial, maritime and cultural life in Greece. In 2012, Athens was ranked the world's 39th richest city by purchasing power and the 67th most expensive in a UBS study. Athens is a global one of the biggest economic centres in southeastern Europe.
It has a large financial sector, its port Piraeus is both the largest passenger port in Europe, the second largest in the world. While at the same time being the sixth busiest passenger port in Europe; the Municipality of Athens had a population of 664,046 within its administrative limits, a land area of 38.96 km2. The urban area of Athens extends beyond its administrative municipal city limits, with a population of 3,090,508 over an area of 412 km2. According to Eurostat in 2011, the functional urban area of Athens was the 9th most populous FUA in the European Union, with a population of 3.8 million people. Athens is the southernmost capital on the European mainland; the heritage of the classical era is still evident in the city, represented by ancient monuments and works of art, the most famous of all being the Parthenon, considered a key landmark of early Western civilization. The city retains Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a smaller number of Ottoman monuments. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery.
Landmarks of the modern era, dating back to the establishment of Athens as the capital of the independent Greek state in 1834, include the Hellenic Parliament and the so-called "architectural trilogy of Athens", consisting of the National Library of Greece, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Academy of Athens. Athens is home to several museums and cultural institutions, such as the National Archeological Museum, featuring the world's largest collection of ancient Greek antiquities, the Acropolis Museum, the Museum of Cycladic Art, the Benaki Museum and the Byzantine and Christian Museum. Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, 108 years it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics, making it one of only a handful of cities to have hosted the Olympics more than once. In Ancient Greek, the name of the city was Ἀθῆναι a plural. In earlier Greek, such as Homeric Greek, the name had been current in the singular form though, as Ἀθήνη, it was rendered in the plural on, like those of Θῆβαι and Μυκῆναι.
The root of the word is not of Greek or Indo-European origin, is a remnant of the Pre-Greek substrate of Attica. In antiquity, it was debated whether Athens took its name from its patron goddess Athena or Athena took her name from the city. Modern scholars now agree that the goddess takes her name from the city, because the ending -ene is common in names of locations, but rare for personal names. During the medieval period, the name of the city was rendered once again in the singular as Ἀθήνα. However, after the establishment of the modern Greek state, due to the conservatism of the written language, Ἀθῆναι became again the official name of the city and remained so until the abandonment of Katharevousa in the 1970s, when Ἀθήνα, Athína, became the official name. According to the ancient Athenian founding myth, the goddess of wisdom, competed against Poseidon, the god of the seas, for patronage of the yet-unnamed city. According to the account given by Pseudo-Apollodorus, Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a salt water spring welled up.
In an alternative version of the myth from Vergil's Georgics, Poseidon instead gave the Athenians the first horse. In both versions, Athena offered the Athenians the first domesticated olive tree. Cecrops declared Athena the patron goddess of Athens. Different etymologies, now rejected, were proposed during the 19th century. Christian Lobeck proposed as the root of the name the word ἄθος or ἄνθος meaning "flower", to denote Athens as the "flowering city". Ludwig von Döderlein proposed the stem of the verb θάω, stem θη- to denote Athens as having fertile soil. In classical literature, the city was sometimes referred to as the City of the Violet Crown, first documented in Pindar's ἰοστέφανοι Ἀθᾶναι, or as τὸ κλεινὸν ἄστυ. In medieval texts, variant names include Setines and Astines, all derivations involving false splitting of p
Valerian (emperor)
Valerian known as Valerian the Elder, was Roman Emperor from 22 October 253 AD to spring 260 AD. He was taken captive by the Persian Emperor, Shapur I, after the Battle of Edessa, becoming the first Roman emperor to be captured as a prisoner of war, causing shock and instability throughout the empire. Unlike many of the would-be emperors and rebels who vied for imperial power during the Crisis of the Third Century of the Roman Empire, Valerian was of a noble and traditional senatorial family. Details of his early life are sparse, except for his marriage to Egnatia Mariniana, with whom he had two sons: emperor Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus and Valerianus Minor, he was Consul for the first time either in 238 as an Ordinarius. In 238 he was princeps senatus, Gordian I negotiated through him for senatorial acknowledgement for his claim as emperor. In 251 AD, when Decius revived the censorship with legislative and executive powers so extensive that it embraced the civil authority of the emperor, Valerian was chosen censor by the Senate, though he declined to accept the post.
During the reign of Decius he was left in charge of affairs in Rome when that prince left for his ill-fated last campaign in Illyricum. Under Trebonianus Gallus he was appointed dux of an army drawn from the garrisons of the German provinces which seems to have been intended for use in a war against the Persians. However, when Trebonianus Gallus had to deal with the rebellion of Aemilianus in 253 AD it was to Valerian he turned for assistance in crushing the attempted usurpation. Valerian headed south but was too late: Gallus was killed by his own troops, who joined Aemilianus before Valerian arrived; the Raetian soldiers proclaimed Valerian emperor and continued their march towards Rome. Upon his arrival in late September, Aemilianus's legions defected, killing Aemilianus and proclaiming Valerian emperor. In Rome, the Senate acknowledged Valerian, not only for fear of reprisals but because he was one of their own. Valerian's first act as emperor on October 22, 253, was to appoint his son Gallienus as a caesar.
Early in his reign, affairs in Europe went from bad to worse, the whole West fell into disorder. In the East, Antioch had fallen into the hands of a Sassanid vassal and Armenia was occupied by Shapur I. Valerian and Gallienus split the problems of the empire between them, with the son taking the West, the father heading East to face the Persian threat. In 254, 255, 257, Valerian again became Consul Ordinarius. By 257, he had returned the province of Syria to Roman control; the following year, the Goths ravaged Asia Minor. In 259, Valerian moved on to Edessa, but an outbreak of plague killed a critical number of legionaries, weakening the Roman position, the town was besieged by the Persians. At the beginning of 260, Valerian was decisively defeated in the Battle of Edessa, he arranged a meeting with Shapur to negotiate a peace settlement; the truce was betrayed by Shapur, who seized Valerian and held him prisoner for the remainder of his life. Valerian's capture was a tremendous defeat for the Romans.
While fighting the Persians, Valerian sent two letters to the Senate ordering that firm steps be taken against Christians. The first, sent in 257, commanded Christian clergy to perform sacrifices to the Roman gods or face banishment; the second, the following year, ordered the execution of Christian leaders. It required Christian senators and equites to perform acts of worship to the Roman gods or lose their titles and property, directed that they be executed if they continued to refuse, it decreed that Roman matrons who would not apostatize should lose their property and be banished, that civil servants and members of the Imperial household who would not worship the Roman gods should be reduced to slavery and sent to work on the Imperial estates. This indicates that Christians were well-established at that time, some in high positions; the execution of Saint Prudent at Narbonne is taken to have occurred in 257. Prominent Christians executed in 258 included Pope Sixtus II, Saint Romanus Ostiarius and Saint Lawrence.
Others executed in 258 included the saints Denis in Paris, Pontius in Cimiez, Cyprian in Carthage and Eugenia in Rome. In 259 Saint Patroclus was executed at Saint Fructuosus at Tarragona; when Valerian's son Gallienus became Emperor in 260, the decree was rescinded. Eutropius, writing between 364 and 378 AD, stated that Valerian "was overthrown by Shapur king of Persia, being soon after made prisoner, grew old in ignominious slavery among the Parthians." An early Christian source, thought to be virulently anti-Persian, thanks to the occasional persecution of Christians by some Sasanian monarchs, maintained that, for some time prior to his death, Valerian was subjected to the greatest insults by his captors, such as being used as a human footstool by Shapur when mounting his horse. According to this version of events, after a long period of such treatment, Valerian offered Shapur a huge ransom for his release. In reply, according to one version, Shapur was said to have forced Valerian to swallow molten gold and had Valerian skinned and his skin stuffed with straw and preserved as a trophy in the main Persian temple.
It was further alleged that it was only after a Persian defeat against Rome that his skin was given a cremation and burial. The captivity and death of Valerian has been debated by historians without any definitive conclusion. According to the modern scholar T
Science and technology in Iran
Iran has made considerable advances in science and technology through education and training, despite international sanctions in all aspects of research during the past 30 years. Iran's university population swelled from 100,000 in 1979 to 2 million in 2006. In recent years, the growth in Iran's scientific output is reported to be the fastest in the world. Iran has made great strides in different sectors, including aerospace, nuclear science, medical development, as well as stem cell and cloning research. Throughout history, Iran was always a cradle of science, contributing to medicine, mathematics and philosophy. Trying to revive the golden time of Iranian science, Iran's scientists now are cautiously reaching out to the world. Many individual Iranian scientists, along with the Iranian Academy of Medical Sciences and Academy of Sciences of Iran, are involved in this revival. Science in Persia evolved in two main phases separated by the arrival and widespread adoption of Islam in the region. References to scientific subjects such as natural science and mathematics occur in books written in the Pahlavi languages.
The Qanat originated in pre-Achaemenid Iran. The oldest and largest known qanat is in the Iranian city of Gonabad, after 2,700 years, still provides drinking and agricultural water to nearly 40,000 people. Iranian philosophers and inventors may have created the first batteries in the Parthian or Sassanid eras; some have suggested. Other scientists believe the batteries were used for electroplating—transferring a thin layer of metal to another metal surface—a technique still used today and the focus of a common classroom experiment. Windwheels were developed by the Babylonians ca. 1700 BC to pump water for irrigation. In the 7th century, Iranians engineers in Greater Iran developed a more advanced wind-power machine, the windmill, building upon the basic model developed by the Babylonians; the 9th century mathematician Muhammad Ibn Musa-al-Kharazmi created the Logarithm table, developed algebra and expanded upon Persian and Indian arithmetic systems. His writings were translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona under the title: De jebra et almucabola.
Robert of Chester translated it under the title Liber algebras et almucabala. The works of Kharazmi "exercised a profound influence on the development of mathematical thought in the medieval West". Other Iranian scientists included Abu Abbas Fazl Hatam, the Banu Musa brothers, Omar Ibn Farakhan, Abu Zeid Ahmad Ibn Soheil Balkhi, Abul Vafa Bouzjani, Abu Jaafar Khan, Bijan Ibn Rostam Kouhi, Ahmad Ibn Abdul Jalil Qomi, Bu Nasr Araghi, Abu Reyhan Birooni, the noted Iranian poet Hakim Omar Khayyam Neishaburi, Qatan Marvazi, Massoudi Ghaznavi, Khajeh Nassireddin Tusi, Ghiasseddin Jamshidi Kashani; the practice and study of medicine in Iran has a prolific history. Situated at the crossroads of the East and West, Persia was involved in developments in ancient Greek and Indian medicine. For example, the first teaching hospital where medical students methodically practiced on patients under the supervision of physicians was the Academy of Gundishapur in the Persian Empire; some experts go so far as to claim that: "to a large extent, the credit for the whole hospital system must be given to Persia".
The idea of xenotransplantation dates to the days of Achaemenidae, as evidenced by engravings of many mythologic chimeras still present in Persepolis. Several documents still exist from which the definitions and treatments of the headache in medieval Persia can be ascertained; these documents give precise clinical information on the different types of headaches. The medieval physicians listed various signs and symptoms, apparent causes, hygienic and dietary rules for prevention of headaches; the medieval writings are both accurate and vivid, they provide long lists of substances used in the treatment of headaches. Many of the approaches of physicians in medieval Persia are accepted today. In the 10th century work of Shahnameh, Ferdowsi describes a Caesarean section performed on Rudabeh, during which a special wine agent was prepared by a Zoroastrian priest and used to produce unconsciousness for the operation. Although mythical in content, the passage illustrates working knowledge of anesthesia in ancient Persia.
In the 10th century, Abu Bakr Muhammad Bin Zakaria Razi is considered the founder of practical physics and the inventor of the special or net weight of matter. His student, Abu Bakr Joveini, wrote the first comprehensive medical book in the Persian language. After the Islamic conquest of Iran, medicine continued to flourish with the rise of notables such as Rhazes and Haly Abbas, albeit Baghdad was the new cosmopolitan inheritor of Sassanid Jundishapur's medical academy. An idea of the number of medical works composed in Persian alone may be gathered from Adolf Fonahn's Zur Quellenkunde der Persischen Medizin, published in Leipzig in 1910; the author enumerates over 400 works in the Persian language on medicine, excluding authors such as Avicenna, who wrote in Arabic. Author-historians Meyerhof, Casey Wood, Hirschberg have recorded the names of at least 80 oculists who contributed treatises on subjects related to ophthalmology from the beginning of 800 AD to the full flowering of Muslim medical literature in 1300 AD.
Aside from the aforementioned, two other medical works attracted great attention in medieval Europe, namely Abu Mansur Muwaffaq's Materia Medica, written around 950 AD, the illustrated Anatomy of Man
