Princes' Islands
The Princes' Islands or Kızıl Adalar in Turkish just Adalar, are an archipelago off the coast of Istanbul, Turkey, in the Sea of Marmara. The islands constitute the Adalar district of Istanbul Province; the mayor of the Adalar district is Atilla Aytaç. They consist of four larger islands, Büyükada with an area of 5.46 km2, Heybeliada with an area of 2.4 km2, Burgazada with an area of 1.5 km2, Kınalıada with an area of 1.3 km2, five much smaller ones, Sedef Adası with an area of 0.157 km2, Yassıada with an area of 0.05 km2, Sivriada with an area of 0.05 km2, Kaşık Adası with an area of 0.006 km2, Tavşan Adası with an area of 0.004 km2. During the summer months, the Princes' Islands are popular destinations for day trips from Istanbul; as there is no motor traffic on the Islands, the only transport being bicycles and horse and cart, they are more peaceful than the city of Istanbul. They are just a short ferry ride from Istanbul, with ferries departing from Bostancı, Kartal and Maltepe on the Asian side, from Kabataş on the European side.
Most ferries call in turn at the four largest of the nine islands: Kınalıada, Heybeliada and Büyükada. Ferry and ship services are provided by six different companies. In spring and autumn, the islands are quieter and more pleasant, although the sea can be rough in spring and winter, the islands are sometimes cut off from the outside world when the ferry services are cancelled due to storms and high waves. During winter, with the addition of the biting cold and the strong winds and the resulting ferry cancellations, the islands become deserted; as for cultural tourism, Büyükada happens to have the first and only city museum in İstanbul, the Museum of the Princes' Islands in Aya Nikola Bay. During the Byzantine period and other royalty were exiled on the islands, members of the Ottoman sultans family were exiled there too, giving the islands their present name, they were taken by the Ottoman fleet during the siege of Constantinople in 1453. During the nineteenth century, the islands became a popular resort for Istanbul's wealthy, Victorian-era cottages and houses are still preserved on the largest of the Princes' Islands.
The Halki seminary, formally the Theological School of Halki, was founded on 1 October 1844 on the island of Halki, the second-largest of the Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara. It was the main school of theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church's Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople until the Turkish parliament enacted a law banning private higher education institutions in 1971; the theological school is located at the top of the island's Hill of Hope, on the site of the Byzantine-era Monastery of the Holy Trinity. The premises of the school continue to be maintained by the monastery and are used to host conferences, it is possible to visit the island where it is located via boat in one hour from the shore of Istanbul. In 1912 on the islands lived 10 250 Greeks and 670 Turks; the islands have become more and more ethnically Turkish in character due to the influx of wealthy Turkish jetsetters, a process which began in the first days of the Turkish Republic when the British Yacht Club on Büyükada was appropriated as Anadolu Kulübü, for Turkish parliamentarians to enjoy Istanbul in the summer.
The islands are an interesting anomaly because they allow for a rare, albeit incomplete, insight into a multicultural society in modern Turkey akin to the multicultural society that once existed during the Ottoman Empire in places such as nearby Istanbul/Constantinople. Prior to the 1950s, each of the inhabited islands had significant communities of ethnic minorities of Turkey, now the case to a much smaller extent. Since the vast majority of the residents and visitors are Turkish, today their legacy is of cultural rather than demographic importance. Many Turks fondly remember the Islands as home to famous short-story writer Sait Faik Abasıyanık and football legend Lefter Küçükandonyadis. After Leon Trotsky was deported from the Soviet Union in February 1929, his first residing place in exile was a house in Büyükada, the largest of the Princes' Islands, where Trotsky lived for four years between 1929 and 1933. Famous poet Nâzım Hikmet attended the Naval Cadet School in Heybeliada between 1913 and 1918.
Famous Armenian writers and poets have lived on the islands, including Zahrad and Zabel Sibil Asadour, both of whom lived in Kinaliada. Büyükada is the largest of the nine islands comprising the Princes' Islands in the Marmara Sea, close to Istanbul; as on the other islands, motorized vehicles – except service vehicles – are forbidden, so visitors explore the island by foot. A convent on Büyükada was the place of exile for the Byzantine empresses Irene, Theophano and Anna Dalassena. After his deportation from the Soviet Union in February 1929, Leon Trotsky stayed for four years on Büyükada, his first station in exile. Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid was born on the island. There are several historical buildings on Büyükada, such as the Ayi
Assassination
Assassination is the act of killing a prominent person for either political, religious or monetary reasons. An assassination may be prompted by political or military motives, it is an act that may be done for financial gain, to avenge a grievance, from a desire to acquire fame or notoriety, or because of a military, insurgent or secret police group's command to carry out the homicide. Acts of assassination have been performed since ancient times; the word assassin is believed to derive from the word Hashshashin, shares its etymological roots with hashish. It referred to a group of Nizari Shia Muslims. Founded by Hassan-i Sabbah, the Assassins were active in the fortress of Alamut in Persia from the 8th to the 14th centuries, expanded by capturing forts in Syria; the group killed members of the Abbasid, Seljuq and Christian Crusader elite for political and religious reasons. Although it is believed that Assassins were under the influence of hashish during their killings or during their indoctrination, there is debate as to whether these claims have merit, with many Eastern writers and an increasing number of Western academics coming to believe that drug-taking was not the key feature behind the name.
The earliest known use of the verb "to assassinate" in printed English was by Matthew Sutcliffe in A Briefe Replie to a Certaine Odious and Slanderous Libel, Lately Published by a Seditious Jesuite, a pamphlet printed in 1600, five years before it was used in Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Assassination is one of the oldest tools of power politics, it dates back at least as far as recorded history. In the Old Testament, King Joash of Judah was recorded as being assassinated by his own servants. Chanakya wrote about assassinations in detail in his political treatise Arthashastra, his student Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the Maurya Empire made use of assassinations against some of his enemies, including two of Alexander the Great's generals and Philip. Other famous victims are Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, Roman consul Julius Caesar. Emperors of Rome met their end in this way, as did many of the Muslim Shia Imams hundreds of years later; the practice was well known in ancient China, as in Jing Ke's failed assassination of Qin king Ying Zheng in 227 BC.
Whilst many assassinations were performed by individuals or small groups, there were specialized units who used a collective group of people to perform more than one assassination. The earliest were the sicarii in 6 A. D. who predated the Middle Eastern assassins and Japanese ninjas by centuries. In the Middle Ages, regicide was rare in Western Europe, but it was a recurring theme in the Eastern Roman Empire. Blinding and strangling in the bathtub were the most used procedures. With the Renaissance, tyrannicide—or assassination for personal or political reasons—became more common again in Western Europe. High medieval sources mention the assassination of King Demetrius Zvonimir, dying at the hands of his own people, who objected to a proposition by the Pope to go on a campaign to aid the Byzantines against the Seljuk Turks; this account is, contentious among historians, it being most asserted that he died of natural causes. The myth of the "Curse of King Zvonimir" is based on the legend of his assassination.
In 1192, Conrad of Montferrat, the de facto King of Jerusalem, was killed by an assassin. The reigns of King Przemysł II of Poland, William the Silent of the Netherlands, the French kings Henry III and Henry IV were all ended by assassins. In the modern world, the killing of important people began to become more than a tool in power struggles between rulers themselves and was used for political symbolism, such as in the propaganda of the deed. In Russia alone, two emperors, Paul I and his grandson Alexander II, were assassinated within 80 years. In the United Kingdom, only one Prime Minister has been assassinated—Spencer Perceval on May 11, 1812. In Japan, a group of assassins called the Four Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu killed a number of people, including Ii Naosuke, the head of administration for the Tokugawa shogunate, during the Boshin War. Most of the assassinations in Japan were committed with bladed weaponry, a trait, carried on into modern history. A video-record exists of the assassination of Inejiro Asanuma.
In the United States, within 100 years, four presidents—Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy—died at the hands of assassins. There have been at least 20 known attempts on U. S. presidents' lives. Huey Long, a Senator, was assassinated on September 10, 1935. Robert F. Kennedy, a Senator and a presidential candidate, was assassinated on June 6, 1968 in the United States. In Austria, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, carried out by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian national and a member of the Serbian nationalist insurgents, is blamed for igniting World War I after a succession of minor conflicts, while belligerents on both sides in World War II used operatives trained for assassination. Reinhard Heydrich died after an attack by British-trained Czechoslovak soldiers on behalf of the Czechoslovak government in exile in Operation Anthropoid, knowledge from decoded transmissions allowed the United States to carry out a targeted attack, killing Japanese Admiral
Nesebar
Nesebar is an ancient city and one of the major seaside resorts on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, located in Burgas Province. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Nesebar Municipality. Referred to as the "Pearl of the Black Sea", Nesebar is a rich city-museum defined by more than three millennia of ever-changing history; the small city exists in two parts separated by a narrow man-made isthmus with the ancient part of the settlement on the peninsula, the more modern section on the mainland side. The older part bears evidence of occupation by a variety of different civilisations over the course of its existence, it is one of the most prominent tourist destinations and seaports on the Black Sea, in what has become a popular area with several large resorts—the largest, Sunny Beach, is situated to the north of Nesebar. Nesebar has on several occasions found itself on the frontier of a threatened empire, as such it is a town with a rich history. Due to the city's abundance of historic buildings, UNESCO came to include Nesebar in its list of World Heritage Sites in 1983.
As of December 2009, the town has a population of 11,626 inhabitants. The settlement was known in Greek as Mesembria, sometimes mentioned as Mesambria or Melsembria, the latter meaning the city of Melsas. According to a reconstruction the name might derive from Thracian Melsambria; the Thracian origin of that name seems to be doubtful. Moreover, the tradition pertaining to Melsas, as founder of the city is tenuous and belongs to a cycle of etymological legends abundant among Greek cities, it appears that the story of Melsas was a latter reconstruction of the Hellenistic era, when Mesembria was an important coastal city. Before 1934, the common Bulgarian name for the town was Mesemvriya, it was replaced with the current name, used in the Erkech dialect spoken close to Nesebar. Both forms are derived from the Greek Mesembria. Bulgarian archaeologist Lyuba Ognenova-Marinova led six underwater archaeological expeditions for the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences between 1961 and 1972 in the waters along the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast.
Her work led to the identification of five chronological periods of urbanization on the peninsula surrounding Nesebar through the end of the second millennium B. C. which included the Thracian protopolis, the Greek colony Mesambria, a Roman-ruled village to the Early Christian Era, the Medieval settlement and a Renaissance era town, known as Mesemvria or Nessebar. A Thracian settlement, known as Menebria, the town became a Greek colony when settled by Dorians from Megara at the beginning of the 6th century BC, was an important trading centre from on and a rival of Apollonia, it remained the only Dorian colony along the Black Sea coast, as the rest were typical Ionian colonies. At 425-424 BC the town joined the Delian League, under the leadership of Athens. Remains date from the Hellenistic period and include the acropolis, a temple of Apollo and an agora. A wall which formed part of the Thracian fortifications can still be seen on the north side of the peninsula. Bronze and silver coins were minted in the city since the 5th century BC and gold coins since the 3rd century BC.
The town fell under Roman rule in 71 BC, yet continued to enjoy privileges such as the right to mint its own coinage. It was one of the most important strongholds of the Eastern Roman Empire from the 5th century AD onwards, was fought over by Byzantines and Bulgars, being captured and incorporated in the lands of the First Bulgarian Empire in 812 by Khan Krum after a two-week siege only to be ceded back to Byzantium by Knyaz Boris I in 864 and reconquered by his son Tsar Simeon the Great. During the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire it was contested by Bulgarian and Byzantine forces and enjoyed particular prosperity under Bulgarian tsar Ivan Alexander until it was conquered by Crusaders led by Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy in 1366; the Bulgarian version of the name, Nesebar or Mesebar, has been attested since the 11th century. Monuments from the Middle Ages include the 5–6th century Stara Mitropoliya, a basilica without a transept. In the 13th and 14th century a remarkable series of churches were built: St Theodore, St Paraskeva, St Michael St Gabriel, St John Aliturgetos.
The capture of the town by the Ottoman Empire in 1453 marked the start of its decline, but its architectural heritage remained and was enriched in the 19th century by the construction of wooden houses in style typical for the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast during this period. At the early 19th century many locals joined the Pan Orthodox organization sometimes wrongly called Greek patriotic organization, Filiki Eteria, while at the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence part of the town's youth participated in the struggle under Alexandros Ypsilantis. Nesebar was a kaza centre in İslimye sanjak of Edirne Province before 1878. After the Liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in 1878, Nesebar became part of the autonomous Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia in Burgaz department until it united with the Principality of Bulgaria in 1885. Around the end of the 19th century Nesebar was a small town of Greek vinegrowers. In the early 20th century, the total population increased to 1,870, but it remained a empty town.
It developed as a key Bulgarian seaside resort since the beginning of the 20th century. After 1925 a new t
Edirne
Edirne known as Adrianople, is a city in the northwestern Turkish province of Edirne in the region of East Thrace, close to Turkey's borders with Greece and Bulgaria. Edirne served as the third capital city of the Ottoman Empire from 1369 to 1453, before Constantinople became the empire's fourth and final capital between 1453 and 1922; the city's estimated population in 2014 was 165,979. The city was founded as Hadrianopolis, named after the Roman emperor Hadrian; this name is still used in the modern Greek language. The Turkish name Edirne derives from the Greek name; the name Adrianople was used in English until the Turkish adoption of the Latin alphabet in 1928 made Edirne the internationally recognized name. Bulgarian: Одрин, Albanian: Edrenë, Macedonian: Одрин / Eдрене, Slovene: Odrin and Serbian: Једрене / Jedrene are adapted forms of the name Hadrianopolis or of its Turkish version; the area around Edirne has been the site of numerous major battles and sieges, from the days of the ancient Greeks.
The vagaries of the border region between Asia and Europe gives rise to Edirne's historic claim to be the most contested spot on the globe. In Greek mythology, son of king Agamemnon, built this city as Orestias, at the confluence of the Tonsus and the Ardiscus with the Hebrus; the city was founded eponymously by the Roman Emperor Hadrian on the site of a previous Thracian settlement known as Uskadama, Uskodama or Uscudama. It was the capital of the Bessi, or of the Odrysians. Hadrian developed it, adorned it with monuments, changed its name to Hadrianopolis, made it the capital of the Roman province of Thrace. Licinius was defeated there by Constantine I in 323, Emperor Valens was killed by the Goths in 378 during the Battle of Adrianople. In 813, the city was temporarily seized by Khan Krum of Bulgaria who moved its inhabitants to the Bulgarian lands north of the Danube. During the existence of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the Crusaders were decisively defeated by the Bulgarian Emperor Kaloyan in the Battle of Adrianople.
In 1206 Adrianople and its territory was given to the Byzantine aristocrat Theodore Branas as a hereditary fief by the Latin regime. Theodore Komnenos, Despot of Epirus, took possession of it in 1227, but three years was defeated at Klokotnitsa by Emperor Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria. In 1361, the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Murad. Murad captured Adrianople in 1369; the city became "Edirne". Murad moved the Ottoman capital to Edirne. Mehmed the Conqueror was born in Edirne, where he fell under the influence of some Hurufis dismissed by Taş Köprü Zade in the Şakaiki Numaniye as "Certain accursed ones of no significance", who were burnt as heretics by a certain Mahmud Pasha; the city remained the Ottoman capital for 84 years until 1453, when Mehmed II took Constantinople and moved the capital there. Edirne is famed for its many mosques, domes and palaces from the Ottoman period. Under Ottoman rule, Edirne was the principal city of the administrative unit, the eponymous Eyalet of Edirne, after land reforms in 1867, the Vilayet of Edirne.
Sultan Mehmed IV left the palace in Constantinople and died in Edirne in 1693. During his exile in the Ottoman Empire, the Swedish king Charles XII stayed in the city during most of 1713. Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, lived in Edirne from 1863 to 1868, he was exiled there by the Ottoman Empire before being banished further to the Ottoman penal colony in Akka. He referred to Edirne in his writings as the "Land of Mystery". Edirne was a sanjak centre during the Ottoman period and was bound to, the Rumeli Eyalet and Silistre Eyalet before becoming a provincial capital of the Eyalet of Edirne at the beginning of the 19th century. Edirne was occupied by imperial Russian troops in 1829 during the Greek War of Independence and in 1878 during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878; the city suffered a fire in 1905. In 1905 it had about 80,000 inhabitants, of. Edirne was a vital fortress defending Ottoman Constantinople and Eastern Thrace during the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, it was occupied by the Bulgarians in 1913, following the Siege of Adrianople.
The Great Powers–Britain, Italy and Russia–forced the Ottoman Empire to cede Edirne to Bulgaria at the end of First Balkan War, which created a political scandal in the Ottoman government in Istanbul, leading to the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état. Although it was victorious in the coup, the Committee of Union and Progress was unable to keep Edirne, but under Enver Pasha, it was retaken from the Bulgarians soon after the Second Balkan War began, it was occupied by the Greeks between the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 and their defeat at the end of the Greco-Turkish War known as the Western Front of the larger Turkish War of Independence, in 1922. According to the 2007 census, Edirne Province had a population of 382,222 inhabitants; the city is a commercial centre for woven textiles, silks and agricultural products
Krum
Krum was the Khan of Bulgaria from sometime between 796 and 803 until his death in 814. During his reign the Bulgarian territory doubled in size, spreading from the middle Danube to the Dnieper and from Odrin to the Tatra Mountains, his able and energetic rule brought law and order to Bulgaria and developed the rudiments of state organization. Krum was a Bulgar chieftain from Pannonia, his background and the surroundings of his accession are unknown. It has been speculated that Krum might have been a descendant of the old Bulgar royal house of Kubrat; the name Krum is of Iranian origin. Around 805, Krum defeated the Avar Khaganate to destroy the remainder of the Avars and to restore Bulgar authority in Ongal again, the traditional Bulgar name for the area north of the Danube across the Carpathians covering Transylvania and along the Danube into eastern Pannonia; this resulted in the establishment of a common border between the Frankish Empire and Bulgaria, which would have important repercussions for the policy of Krum's successors.
Krum engaged in a policy of territorial expansion. In 807 Bulgarian forces defeated the Byzantine army in the Struma valley. In 809 Krum besieged and forced the surrender of Serdica, slaughtering the garrison of 6,000 despite a guarantee of safe conduct; this victory provoked Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros I to settle Anatolian populations along the frontier to protect it and to attempt to retake and refortify Serdica, although this enterprise failed. In early 811, Nikephoros I undertook a massive expedition against Bulgaria. Here Krum attempted to negotiate on July 11, 811, but Nikephoros was determined to continue with his plunder, his army somehow made its way into Moesia. They managed to take over Pliska on July 20, as only a small, hastily assembled army was in their way. Here Nikephoros helped himself to the treasures of the Bulgarians while setting the city afire and turning his army on the population. A new diplomatic tentative from Krum was rebuffed; the Chronicle of 12th-century patriarch of the Syrian Jacobites, Michael the Syrian, describes the brutalities and atrocities of Nikephoros: "Nikephoros, emperor of the Byzantine empire, walked into the Bulgarians' land: he was victorious and killed great number of them.
He seized it and devastated it. His savagery went to the point that he ordered to bring their small children, got them tied down on earth and made thresh grain stones to smash them." While Nikephoros I and his army pillaged and plundered the Bulgarian capital, Krum mobilized as many soldiers as possible, giving weapons to peasants and women. This army was assembled in the mountain passes to intercept the Byzantines as they returned to Constantinople. At dawn on July 26, the Bulgarians managed to trap the retreating Nikephoros in the Vărbica pass; the Byzantine army was wiped out in the ensuing battle and Nikephoros was killed, while his son Staurakios was carried to safety by the imperial bodyguard after receiving a paralyzing wound to the neck. It is said that Krum used it as a drinking cup. Staurakios was forced to abdicate after a brief reign, he was succeeded by his brother-in-law Michael I Rangabe. In 812 Krum invaded Byzantine Thrace, taking Develt and scaring the population of nearby fortresses to flee towards Constantinople.
From this position of strength, Krum offered a return to the peace treaty of 716. Unwilling to compromise his regime by weakness, the new Emperor Michael I refused to accept the proposal, ostensibly opposing the clause for exchange of deserters. To apply more pressure on the Emperor, Krum besieged and captured Mesembria in the autumn of 812. In February 813 the Bulgarians were repelled by the Emperor's forces. Encouraged by this success, Michael I summoned troops from the entire Byzantine Empire and headed north, hoping for a decisive victory. Krum pitched camp near Versinikia. Michael I lined up his army against the Bulgarians, but neither side initiated an attack for two weeks. On June 22, 813, the Byzantines attacked but were turned to flight. With Krum's cavalry in pursuit, the rout of Michael I was complete, Krum advanced on Constantinople, which he besieged by land. Discredited, Michael was forced to abdicate and become a monk — the third Byzantine Emperor forced to give up the throne by Krum in as many years.
The new emperor, Leo V the Armenian, arranged for a meeting with Krum. As Krum arrived, he was wounded as he made his escape. Furious, Krum ravaged the environs of Constantinople and headed home, capturing Adrianople en route, transplanting its inhabitants across the Danube. In spite of the approach of winter, Krum took advantage of good weather to send a force of 30,000 into Thrace, capturing Arkadioupolis and carrying off 50,000 captives in the Bulgarian lands across the Danube; the loot from Thrace was used to enrich Krum and his nobility and included architectural elements utilized in the reconstruction of Pliska largely by captured Byzantine artisans. Krum spent the winter preparing for a major attack on Constantinople, where rumor reported the assemblage of an extensive siege park to be transported on 5,000 carts, he died before he set out, however, on April 13, 814, he was succeeded by his son Omurtag. Krum was remembered for instituting the first known written Bulgarian law code, which ensured subsidies to beggars and state protection to all poor Bulgarians.
Drinking and robbery were severely
Nikephoros I of Constantinople
St. Nikephoros I or Nicephorus I was a Christian Byzantine writer and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from April 12, 806, to March 13, 815, he was born in Constantinople as the son of Theodore and Eudokia, of a orthodox family, which had suffered from the earlier Iconoclasm. His father Theodore, one of the secretaries of Emperor Constantine V, had been scourged and banished to Nicaea for his zealous support of Iconodules, the son inherited the religious convictions of the father, he entered the service of the Empire, became cabinet secretary, under Irene took part in the synod of 787 as imperial commissioner. He withdrew to one of the cloisters that he had founded on the eastern shore of the Bosporus, until he was appointed director of the largest home for the destitute in Constantinople c. 802. After the death of the Patriarch Tarasios of Constantinople, although still a layman, he was chosen patriarch by the wish of the emperor; the uncanonical choice met with opposition from the clerical party of the Stoudites, this opposition intensified into an open break when Nikephoros, in other respects a rigid moralist, showed himself compliant to the will of the emperor by reinstating the excommunicated priest Joseph.
After vain theological disputes, in December 814, there followed personal insults. Nikephoros at first replied to his removal from his office by excommunication, but was at last obliged to yield to force, was taken to one of the cloisters he had founded, Tou Agathou, to that called Tou Hagiou Theodorou. From there he carried on a literary polemic for the cause of the iconodules against the synod of 815. On the occasion of the change of emperors, in 820, he was put forward as a candidate for the patriarchate and at least obtained the promise of toleration, he died at the monastery of Saint Theodore, revered as a confessor. His remains were solemnly brought back to Constantinople by Methodios I of Constantinople on March 13, 847, interred in the Church of the Holy Apostles, where they were annually the object of imperial devotion, his feast is celebrated on this day both in Roman Churches. Compared with Theodore of Stoudios, Nikephoros appears as a friend of conciliation, learned in patristics, more inclined to take the defensive than the offensive, possessed of a comparatively chaste, simple style.
He was mild in his ecclesiastical and monastical rules and non-partisan in his historical treatment of the period from 602 to 769. He used the chronicle of Trajan the Patrician, his tables of universal history, in passages extended and continued, were in great favor with the Byzantines, were circulated outside the Empire in the Latin version of Anastasius Bibliothecarius, in Slavonic translation. The Chronography offered a universal history from the time of Eve to his own time. To it he appended a canon catalog; the catalog of the accepted books of the Old and New Testaments is followed by the antilegomena and the apocrypha. Next to each book is the count of its lines, his stichometry, to which we can compare our accepted texts and judge how much has been added or omitted; this is useful for apocrypha for which only fragmentary texts have survived. The principal works of Nikephorus are three writings referring to iconoclasm: Apologeticus minor composed before 814, an explanatory work for laymen concerning the tradition and the first phase of the iconoclastic movement.
Nikephoros follows in the path of John of Damascus. His merit is the thoroughness with which he traced the literary and traditional proofs, his detailed refutations are serviceable for the knowledge they afford of important texts adduced by his opponents and in part drawn from the older church literature. List of Catholic saints Development of the Canon of the New Testament: the Stichometry of Nicephorus St. Nicephorus
Bulgaria
Bulgaria the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north and North Macedonia to the west and Turkey to the south, the Black Sea to the east; the capital and largest city is Sofia. With a territory of 110,994 square kilometres, Bulgaria is Europe's 16th-largest country. One of the earliest societies in the lands of modern-day Bulgaria was the Neolithic Karanovo culture, which dates back to 6,500 BC. In the 6th to 3rd century BC the region was a battleground for Thracians, Persians and ancient Macedonians; the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire lost some of these territories to an invading Bulgar horde in the late 7th century. The Bulgars founded the First Bulgarian Empire in AD 681, which dominated most of the Balkans and influenced Slavic cultures by developing the Cyrillic script; this state lasted until the early 11th century, when Byzantine emperor Basil II conquered and dismantled it. A successful Bulgarian revolt in 1185 established a Second Bulgarian Empire, which reached its apex under Ivan Asen II.
After numerous exhausting wars and feudal strife, the Second Bulgarian Empire disintegrated in 1396 and its territories fell under Ottoman rule for nearly five centuries. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 resulted in the formation of the current Third Bulgarian State. Many ethnic Bulgarian populations were left outside its borders, which led to several conflicts with its neighbours and an alliance with Germany in both world wars. In 1946 Bulgaria became part of the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc; the ruling Communist Party gave up its monopoly on power after the revolutions of 1989 and allowed multi-party elections. Bulgaria transitioned into a democracy and a market-based economy. Since adopting a democratic constitution in 1991, the sovereign state has been a unitary parliamentary republic with a high degree of political and economic centralisation; the population of seven million lives in Sofia and the capital cities of the 27 provinces, the country has suffered significant demographic decline since the late 1980s.
Bulgaria is a member of the European Union, NATO, the Council of Europe. Its market economy is part of the European Single Market and relies on services, followed by industry—especially machine building and mining—and agriculture. Widespread corruption is a major socioeconomic issue; the name Bulgaria is derived from a tribe of Turkic origin that founded the country. Their name is not understood and difficult to trace back earlier than the 4th century AD, but it is derived from the Proto-Turkic word bulģha and its derivative bulgak; the meaning may be further extended to "rebel", "incite" or "produce a state of disorder", i.e. the "disturbers". Ethnic groups in Inner Asia with phonologically similar names were described in similar terms: during the 4th century, the Buluoji, a component of the "Five Barbarian" groups in Ancient China, were portrayed as both a "mixed race" and "troublemakers". Neanderthal remains dating to around 150,000 years ago, or the Middle Paleolithic, are some of the earliest traces of human activity in the lands of modern Bulgaria.
The Karanovo culture arose circa 6,500 BC and was one of several Neolithic societies in the region that thrived on agriculture. The Copper Age Varna culture is credited with inventing gold metallurgy; the associated Varna Necropolis treasure contains the oldest golden jewellery in the world with an approximate age of over 6,000 years. The treasure has been valuable for understanding social hierarchy and stratification in the earliest European societies; the Thracians, one of the three primary ancestral groups of modern Bulgarians, appeared on the Balkan Peninsula some time before the 12th century BC. The Thracians excelled in metallurgy and gave the Greeks the Orphean and Dionysian cults, but remained tribal and stateless; the Persian Achaemenid Empire conquered most of present-day Bulgaria in the 6th century BC and retained control over the region until 479 BC. The invasion became a catalyst for Thracian unity, the bulk of their tribes united under king Teres to form the Odrysian kingdom in the 470s BC.
It was weakened and vassalized by Philip II of Macedon in 341 BC, attacked by Celts in the 3rd century, became a province of the Roman Empire in AD 45. By the end of the 1st century AD, Roman governance was established over the entire Balkan Peninsula and Christianity began spreading in the region around the 4th century; the Gothic Bible—the first Germanic language book—was created by Gothic bishop Ulfilas in what is today northern Bulgaria around 381. The region came under Byzantine control after the fall of Rome in 476; the Byzantines were engaged in prolonged warfare against Persia and could not defend their Balkan territories from barbarian incursions. This enabled the Slavs to enter the Balkan Peninsula as marauders through an area between the Danube River and the Balkan Mountains known as Moesia; the interior of the peninsula became a country of the South Slavs, who lived under a democracy. The Slavs assimilated the Hellenized and Gothicized Thracians in the rural areas. Not l
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Leo (emperors)". Encyclopædia Britannica. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 439–440.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
