1.
Nicaea
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The ancient city is located within the modern Turkish city of İznik, and is situated in a fertile basin at the eastern end of Lake Ascanius, bounded by ranges of hills to the north and south. It is situated with its west wall rising from the lake itself, the lake is large enough that it could not be blockaded from the land easily, and the city was large enough to make any attempt to reach the harbour from shore-based siege weapons very difficult. The ancient city is surrounded on all sides by 5 kilometres of walls about 10 metres high and these are in turn surrounded by a double ditch on the land portions, and also included over 100 towers in various locations. Large gates on the three sides of the walls provided the only entrance to the city. Today the walls have been pierced in places for roads. The later version however was not widespread even in Antiquity, Antigonus is also known to have established Bottiaean soldiers in the vicinity, lending credence to the tradition about the citys founding by Bottiaeans. Following Antigonus defeat and death at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, the city was captured by Lysimachus, who renamed it Nicaea, in tribute to his wife Nicaea, who had recently died. Sometime before 280 BC, the city came under the control of the dynasty of the kings of Bithynia. This marks the beginning of its rise to prominence as a seat of the royal court, the two cities dispute over which one was the pre-eminent city of Bithynia continued for centuries, and the 38th oration of Dio Chrysostom was expressly composed to settle the dispute. Along with the rest of Bithynia, Nicaea came under the rule of the Roman Republic in 72 BC. The geographer Strabo described the city as built in the typical Hellenistic fashion with great regularity, in the form of a square, measuring 16 stadia in circumference, i. e. approx. This monument stood in the gymnasium, which was destroyed by fire but was restored with increased magnificence by Pliny the Younger, in his writings Pliny makes frequent mention of Nicaea and its public buildings. Emperor Hadrian visited the city in 123 AD after it had been damaged by an earthquake. The new city was enclosed by a wall of some 5 kilometres in length. Reconstruction was not completed until the 3rd century, and the new set of walls failed to save Nicaea from being sacked by the Goths in 258 AD, by the 4th century, Nicaea was a large and prosperous city, and a major military and administrative centre. Emperor Constantine the Great convened the First Ecumenical Council there, the city remained important in the 4th century, seeing the proclamation of Emperor Valens and the failed rebellion of Procopius. During the same period, the See of Nicaea became independent of Nicomedia and was raised to the status of a metropolitan bishopric, many of its grand civic buildings began to fall into ruin, and had to be restored in the 6th century by Emperor Justinian I. Nicaea became the capital of the Opsician Theme in the 8th century and remained a center of administration, a Jewish community is attested in the city in the 10th century
2.
Konya
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Konya is a major city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. It is the city in Turkey. As of 2014, Konya has a population of 1,174,536, Konya is an economically and industrially developed city and the capital of Konya Province. Konya was historically the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, Konya, was known in classical antiquity and during the medieval period as Ἰκόνιον in Greek and as Iconium in Latin. In some historic English texts, the name appears as Konia or Koniah. Excavations have shown that the region was inhabited during the Late Copper Age, the city came under the influence of the Hittites around 1500 BC. These were overtaken by the Sea Peoples around 1200 BC, the Phrygians established their kingdom in central Anatolia in the 8th century BC. Xenophon describes Iconium, as the city was called, as the last city of Phrygia, the region was overwhelmed by Cimmerian invaders c.690 BC. It was later part of the Persian Empire, until Darius III was defeated by Alexander the Great in 333 BC, alexanders empire broke up shortly after his death and the town came under the rule of Seleucus I Nicator. During the Hellenistic period the town was ruled by the kings of Pergamon, as Attalus III, the last king of Pergamon, was about to die without an heir, he bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman Republic. During the Roman Empire, under the rule of emperor Claudius, the name was changed to Claudioconium. They fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, Paul recalled this experience in his second letter to Timothy, Albert Barnes therefore suggesting that Timothy had been present with Paul in Iconium, Antioch and Lystra. The city became the seat of a bishop, which in ca.370 was raised to the status of a metropolitan see for Lycaonia, with Saint Amphilochius as the first metropolitan bishop. In Christian legend, based on the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, Iconium was also the birthplace of Saint Thecla, under the Byzantine Empire, the city was part of the Anatolic Theme. During the 8th–10th centuries, the town and the nearby Kabala Fortress were a frequent target of Arab attacks as part of the Arab–Byzantine wars, the city was finally conquered by the Seljuks in 1084. From 1097 to 1243 it was the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and it was briefly occupied by the Crusaders Godfrey of Bouillon, and Frederick Barbarossa after the Battle of Iconium. The area was retaken by the Turks, the name of the town was changed to Konya by Mesud I in 1134. This golden age lasted until the first decades of the 13th century, by the 1220s, the city of Konya was filled with refugees from the Khwarezmid Empire
3.
Sivas
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Sivas is a city in central Turkey and the seat of Sivas Province. According to a 2011 estimate, its population is 425,297. Rail repair shops and a manufacturing industry of rugs, bricks, cement. The surrounding region is an area with large deposits of iron ore which are worked at Divriği. Sivas is also a hub for the north-south and east-west trade routes to Iraq and Iran. With the development of railways, the city gained new importance as junction of important rail lines linking the cities of Ankara, Kayseri, Samsun. The city is linked by air to Istanbul, the popular name Sebastian derives from the Latin Sebastianus, meaning someone from the city. Excavations at a known as Topraktepe indicate Hittite settlement in the area as early as 2600 BC. In 64 BC as part of his reorganization of Asia Minor after the Third Mithridatic War, numismatic evidence suggests that Megalopolis changed its name in the last years of the 1st century BC to Sebaste, which is the feminine form of the Greek name corresponding to Augustus. The name Sivas is the Turkish version deriving from the name Sebasteia and it was also the place of martyrdom of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, also 4th century. Justinian I had a wall around it rebuilt in the 6th century. Sebasteia was the first important city to be plundered by Turkish tribes in 1059, in the August of that year the troops of various emirs gathered before the unwalled city. Initially they hesitated to sack it, mistaking that the domes of the several Christian churches were tends of military camps, as soon as they realized that the city was defenceless they burned it for eight days, slaughtered large part of its population and took many prisoners. The city came under the domain of Turkmen Danishmend dynasty after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, after the death of Danişmend Gazi, Sivas passed to Nizamettin Yağıbasan who won it after a struggle with Danişmend Gazis successors. In 1174, the city was captured by Seljuk ruler Kilij Arslan II, then it passed to the Ilkhanids, Eretna and Kadı Burhanettin. The city was acquired by Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I, in 1398, Tamerlane swept into the area and his forces destroyed the city in 1400, after which it was recaptured by the Ottomans in 1408. Under the Ottomans, Sivas served as the center of the province of Rum until about the late 19th century. The Armenian Catholic Church and the Latins also had one church, two Protestant churches and eight, mostly German- and American-staffed, schools
4.
Persian language
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Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
5.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
6.
Sunni Islam
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Sunni Islam is the largest group of Islam. Its name comes from the word Sunnah, referring to the behavior of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. According to Sunni tradition, Muhammad did not clearly designate a successor and this contrasts with the Shia view, which holds that Muhammad intended his son-in-law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib to succeed him. Political tensions between Sunnis and Shias continued with varying intensity throughout Islamic history and they have been exacerbated in recent times by ethnic conflicts, as of 2009, Sunni Muslims constituted between 87–90% of the worlds Muslim population. Sunni Islam is the worlds largest religious denomination, followed by Catholicism and its adherents are referred to in Arabic as ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamāʻah or ahl as-sunnah for short. In English, its doctrines and practices are sometimes called Sunnism, while adherents are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis, Sunnites, Sunni Islam is sometimes referred to as orthodox Islam. The Quran, together with hadith and binding juristic consensus form the basis of all traditional jurisprudence within Sunni Islam, sunnī, also commonly referred to as Sunnīism, is a term derived from sunnah meaning habit, usual practice, custom, tradition. The Muslim use of this term refers to the sayings and living habits of the prophet Muhammad, in Arabic, this branch of Islam is referred to as ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamāʻah, the people of the sunnah and the community, which is commonly shortened to ahl as-sunnah. One common mistake is to assume that Sunni Islam represents a normative Islam that emerged during the period after Muhammads death, and that Sufism and Shiism developed out of Sunni Islam. This perception is due to the reliance on highly ideological sources that have been accepted as reliable historical works. Both Sunnism and Shiaism are the end products of centuries of competition between ideologies. Both sects used each other to further cement their own identities and doctrines, the first four caliphs are known among Sunnis as the Rashidun or Rightly-Guided Ones. Sunni recognition includes the aforementioned Abu Bakr as the first, Umar who established the Islamic calendar as the second, Uthman as the third, Sunnis believe that the companions of Muhammad were the best of Muslims. Support for this view is found in the Quran, according to Sunnis. Sunnis also believe that the companions were true believers since it was the companions who were given the task of compiling the Quran, furthermore, narrations that were narrated by the companions are considered by Sunnis to be a second source of knowledge of the Muslim faith. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2010 and released January 2011 found that there are 1.62 billion Muslims around the world, Islam does not have a formal hierarchy or clergy. Leaders are informal, and gain influence through study to become a scholar of Islamic law, according to the Islamic Center of Columbia, South Carolina, anyone with the intelligence and the will can become an Islamic scholar. During Midday Mosque services on Fridays, the congregation will choose a person to lead the service
7.
Sultan
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Sultan is a noble title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning strength, authority, rulership, derived from the verbal noun سلطة sulṭah, the dynasty and lands ruled by a sultan are referred to as a sultanate. A feminine form of sultan, used by Westerners, is Sultana or Sultanah, but Turkish and Ottoman Turkish also uses sultan for imperial lady, because Turkish grammar uses the same words for women and men. However, this styling misconstrues the roles of wives of sultans, in a similar usage, the wife of a German field marshal might be styled Frau Feldmarschall. The female leaders in Muslim history are known as sultanas. Special case in Brunei, the Queen Consort is known as Raja Isteri with suffix Pengiran Anak if the queen consort is a royal princess. Among those modern hereditary rulers who wish to emphasize their secular authority under the rule of law and these are generally secondary titles, either lofty poetry or with a message, e. g. g. Sultan ul-Mujahidin as champion of jihad, ghaznavid Sultanate Sultans of Great Seljuk Seljuk Sultanate of Rum Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, the Osmanli Elisu Sultanate and a few others. A Sultan ranked below a Khan and this usage underlines the Ottoman conception of sovereign power as family prerogative. Western tradition knows the Ottoman ruler as sultan, but Ottomans themselves used padişah or hünkar to refer to their ruler, the emperors formal title consisted of sultan together with khan. In formal address, the children were also entitled sultan, with imperial princes carrying the title before their given name. Example, Şehzade Sultan Mehmed and Mihrimah Sultan, son and daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent, henceforth, the mother of the reigning sultan was the only person of non imperial blood to carry the title sultan. In Kazakh Khanate a Sultan was a lord from the ruling dynasty elected by clans, the best of sultans was elected as khan by people at Kurultai. See ru, Казахские султаны In a number of states under Mongol or Turkic rule. These administrations were often decimal, using originally princely titles such as khan, malik, in the Persian empire, the rank of sultan was roughly equivalent to that of a modern-day captain in the West, socially in the fifth-rank class, styled Ali Jah
8.
Seljuk Empire
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The Seljuk Empire or Great Seljuk Empire was a medieval Turko-Persian Sunni Muslim empire, originating from the Qynyq branch of Oghuz Turks. The Seljuk Empire controlled a vast area stretching from the Hindu Kush to eastern Anatolia, from their homelands near the Aral sea, the Seljuks advanced first into Khorasan and then into mainland Persia before eventually conquering eastern Anatolia. The Seljuk empire was founded by Tughril Beg in 1037, Tughril was raised by his grandfather, Seljuk-Beg, who was in a high position in the Oghuz Yabgu State. Seljuk gave his name to both the Seljuk empire and the Seljuk dynasty, the Seljuks united the fractured political scene of the eastern Islamic world and played a key role in the first and second crusades. Highly Persianized in culture and language, the Seljuks also played an important role in the development of the Turko-Persian tradition, the Seljuqs were allied with the Persian Samanid shahs against the Qarakhanids. The Samanid fell to the Qarakhanids in Transoxania, however, whereafter the Ghaznavids arose, the Seljuqs became involved in this power struggle in the region before establishing their own independent base. Tughril was the grandson of Seljuq and brother of Chaghri, under whom the Seljuks wrested an empire from the Ghaznavids, initially the Seljuqs were repulsed by Mahmud and retired to Khwarezm, but Tughril and Chaghri led them to capture Merv and Nishapur. Later they repeatedly raided and traded territory with his successors across Khorasan and Balkh, in 1040 at the Battle of Dandanaqan, they decisively defeated Masud I of the Ghaznavids, forcing him to abandon most of his western territories to the Seljuqs. In 1055, Tughril captured Baghdad from the Shia Buyids under a commission from the Abbasids, arslans decisive victory at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 effectively neutralized the Byzantine resistance to the Turkish invasion of Anatolia. He authorized his Turkmen generals to carve their own out of formerly Byzantine Anatolia. Malikshāh moved the capital from Rey to Isfahan and it was during his reign that the Great Seljuk Empire reached its zenith. The Iqta military system and the Nizāmīyyah University at Baghdad were established by Nizām al-Mulk, the Abbasid Caliph titled him The Sultan of the East and West in 1087. The Seljuq power was at its zenith under Malikshāh I, the Seljuq dominion was established over the ancient Sasanian domains, in Iran and Iraq, and included Anatolia as well as parts of Central Asia and modern Afghanistan. The Seljuk rule was modelled after the organization common in Turkic and Mongol nomads. Under this organization, the member of the paramount family assigned family members portions of his domains as autonomous appanages. When Malikshāh I died in 1092, the split as his brother. Malikshāh I was succeeded in Anatolia by Kilij Arslan I, who founded the Sultanate of Rum, and in Syria by his brother Tutush I. In Persia he was succeeded by his son Mahmud I, whose reign was contested by his three brothers Barkiyaruq in Iraq, Muhammad I in Baghdad, and Ahmad Sanjar in Khorasan
9.
Mesud II
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Masud II or Masud II (Old Anatolian Turkish, مَسعود دوم, Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Masūd bin Kaykāwūs bore the title of Sultanate of Rum at various times between 1284 and 1308. He was a vassal of the Mongols and exercised no real authority, history does not record his ultimate fate. Masud II was the eldest son of Kaykaus II and he spent part of his youth as an exile in the Crimea and lived for a time in Constantinople, then the capital of the Byzantine Empire. He appears first in Anatolia in 1280 as a pretender to the throne, in 1284 the new Ilkhan Sultan Ahmad deposed and executed the Seljuq sultan Kaykhusraw III and installed Masud in his place. Ahmad’s successor, Arghun, divided the Seljuq lands and granted Konya, Masud invaded with a small force, had the two boys killed, and established himself in the city in 1286. He led several campaigns against the emerging Turkmen principalities, the Beyliks, always on behalf of the Mongols, notable among these is the expedition beginning late in 1286 against the Germiyanids. The Germiyanids were a band of Turkmen ancestry, settled by the Seljuqs a generation before in southwestern Anatolia to keep the more unruly Turkmen nomads in check. Masud conducted the campaign under the tutelage of the vizier and elder statesman, though there were a few successes on the battlefield, the highly mobile Germiyanids remained a significant force in the region. Masud and his Mongol allies conducted similarly futile expeditions against the Karamanids and Eshrefids and he was pardoned but deprived of his throne and confined in Tabriz. He was replaced with Kayqubad III who soon became involved in a plot and was executed by Sultan Mahmud Ghazan. The impoverished Masud returned to the throne in 1303, from about 1306 Masud, and the Seljuq Sultanate with him, disappears from the historical record. Although, latest findings in 2015 propose the grave of him has been identified in Samsun, examples of coinage in Masuds name, Seljuk numismatics
10.
Karamanids
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From the 13th century until its fall in 1487, the Karamanid dynasty was one of the most powerful Turkish beyliks in Anatolia. The Karamanids traced their ancestry from Hodja Sad al-Din and his son Nure Sufi Bey, the Karamanids were members of the Salur tribe of Oghuz Turks. Nûre Sûfi worked there as a woodcutter and his son, Kerîmeddin Karaman Bey, gained a tenuous control over the mountainous parts of Cilicia in the middle of the 13th century. A persistent but spurious legend, however, claims that the Seljuq Sultan of Rum, Kayqubad I, Karaman Bey expanded his territories by capturing castles in Ermenek, Mut, Ereğli, Gülnar, and Silifke. The year of the conquests is reported as 1225, during the reign of Ala al-Din Kaykubadh I, the rivalry between Kilij Arslan IV and Izz al-Din Kaykaus II allowed the tribes in the border areas to live virtually independently. Karaman Bey helped Kaykus, but Arslan had the support of both the Mongols and Pervâne Sulayman Muin al-Din. Rukn al-Din Kilidj Arslan IV got rid of almost all hostile begs and amirs except Karaman Bey, to whom he gave the town of Larende, in the meantime, Bunsuz, brother of Karaman Bey, was chosen as a Candar, or bodyguard, for Kilij Arslan IV. Their power rose as a result of the unification of Turkish clans that lived in the regions of Cilicia with the new Turkish population transferred there by Kayqubad. Good relations between the Seljuqs and the Karamanids did not last, a combined Seljuq and Mongol army, led by the Pervane, defeated the Karamanid army and captured Karaman Beys two brothers. After Karaman Bey died in 1262, his son, Mehmet I of Karaman. He immediately negotiated alliances with other Turkmen clans to raise an army against the Seljuqs, during the 1276 revolt of Hatıroğlu Şemseddin Bey against Mongol domination in Anatolia, Karamanids also defeated several Mongol-Seljuq armies. In the Battle of Göksu in 1277 in particular, the power of the Seljuq was dealt a severe blow. Taking advantage of the confusion, Mehmed Bey captured Konya on 12 May and placed on the throne a pretender called Jimri. In the end, however, Mehmed was defeated by Seljuq and Mongol forces, despite these blows, the Karamanids continued to increase their power and influence, largely aided by the Mamluks of Egypt, especially during the reign of Baybars. An expansion of Karamanoğlu power occurred after the fall of the Ilkhanids, a second expansion coincided with Karamanoğlu Alâeddin Ali Beys marriage to Nefise Sultan, the daughter of the Ottoman sultan Murat I, the first important contact between the two dynasties. As Ottoman power expanded into the Balkans, Aleaddin Ali Bey captured the city of Beyşehir, however, it did not take much time for the Ottomans to react and march on Konya, the Karamanoğlu capital city. A treaty between the two kingdoms was formed, and peace existed until the reign of Bayezid I, timur gave control of the Karamanid lands to Mehmet Bey, the oldest son of Aleaddin Ali Bey. After Bayezid I died in 1403, the Ottoman Empire went into a crisis as the Ottoman family fell prey to internecine strife
11.
Danishmends
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Danishmend dynasty or Danishmendid was a Turkish dynasty that ruled in north-central and eastern Anatolia in the 11th and 12th centuries. The dynasty was established by Danishmend Gazi for whom information is rather scarce and was generally written long after his death. His title or name, Dānishmand, means man in Persian. Danishmend Gazi himself was alternatively called Danishmend Taylu, Danishmends established themselves in Anatolia in the aftermath of the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, in which the Seljuks defeated the Byzantine Empire and captured most of Anatolia. Gazi took advantage of the struggles of the Seljuks upon the death of the Sultan Suleyman I of Rûm in 1086 to establish his own dynasty in central Anatolia. The capital was likely first established in Amasia, in 1100, Gazis son, Emir Gazi Gümüshtigin. Captured Bohemond I of Antioch, who remained in their captivity until 1103, a Seljuk-Danishmend alliance was also responsible for defeating the Crusade of 1101. In 1116, the Danishmends helped Mesud I become the Seljuk sultan, in 1130 Bohemond II of Antioch was killed in a battle with Gazi Gümüshtigin, after coming to the aid of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which Gümüshtigin had invaded. Gümüshtigin died in 1134 and his son and successor Mehmed did not have the spirit of his father and grandfather. He is nevertheless considered the first builder of Kayseri as a Turkish city, in 1155, Seljuk Sultan Kilij Arslan II attacked Melik Yaghibasan, who sought help from Nur ad-Din, the Zengid emir of Mosul. However, when Nur ad-Din died in 1174, the Sivas lands were incorporated into the Sultanate, following the death of Fahreddin in a riding accident in 1172, he was succeeded by his brother Afridun. By 1175, Nasreddin Muhammed was back in power, and ruled as a Seljuk vassal, in 1178, Malatya was occupied which marked the end of the Danishmend rule, while the remaining Danishmends joined Seljuk service. Virtually all Danishmend rulers entered the traditions of the Turkish folk literature, the same uniformity in appellations in popular parlance may also apply to other edifices built by Danishmends. The official title of the Danischmend dynasty, Grand Melik of All Romania, the Danishmends coins, along with being bilingual, included an image of a figure slaying a dragon, thought to represent St. George
12.
Mengujekids
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Mengujekids was an Anatolian beylik of the first period, founded after the Battle of Manzikert. The Mengujekids ruled the regions of Erzincan, Kemah, Şebinkarahisar, little is known about the founder Mengujek Ghazi. This beylig was split branches of Erzincan and Divriği after death of Emir İshak in 1142, Erzincan branch was subjugated by Sultanate of Rum in 1228 and Divriği one was ended in 1277 by Ilkhanate. The Mengujek dynasty is remembered primarily for its monuments in Divriği, the Divriği Great Mosque was built in 1228 by Ahmed Shah. The adjoining medical center, or Darüşşifa, was built in the year by Turan Melek Sultan, daughter of the Mengujek ruler of Erzincan. Both buildings are on UNESCOs World Heritage List
13.
Artuqids
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The Artquids or Artuqid dynasty was a Turkmen dynasty that ruled in Eastern Anatolia, Northern Syria and Northern Iraq in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Artuqid dynasty took its name from its founder, Zaheer-ul-Daulah Artuk Bey, the Artuqid rulers viewed the state as the common property of the dynasty members. Artuqid rulers commissioned many buildings, such as mosques, bazaars, bridges, hospitals. They left an important cultural heritage by contributing to literature and the art of metalworking, the door and door handles of the great Mosque of Cizre are unique examples of Artuqid metal working craftsmanship, which can be seen in the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. The dynasty was founded by Artuk Bey, son of Eksük, Tutush appointed Artuq governor of Jerusalem in 1086. Artuq died in 1091, and his sons Sökmen and Ilghazi were expelled from Jerusalem by the Fatimid vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah in 1098, the Fatimids lost the city to the crusaders the following year. Sokman and Ilghazi set themselves up in Diyarbakır, Mardin, and Hasankeyf in the Jezirah, Sokman, bey of Mardin, defeated the crusaders at the Battle of Harran in 1104. Ilghazi succeeded Sokman in Mardin and imposed his control over Aleppo at the request of the qadi Ibn al-Khashshab in 1118, in 1119 Ilgazi defeated the crusader Principality of Antioch at the Battle of Ager Sanguinis. In 1121 a Seljuq-Artuqid alliance, commanded by Mehmed I of Great Seljuq, Ilghazi died in 1122, and although his nephew Balak nominally controlled Aleppo, the city was really controlled by Ibn al-Khashshab. Al-Kashshab was assassinated in 1125, and Aleppo fell under the control of Zengi of Mosul, after the death of Balak, the Artuqids were split between Harput, Hasankeyf and Mardin. Sokmans son Davud, bey of Hasankeyf, died in 1144, Kara Aslan allied with Joscelin II of Edessa against the Zengids, and while Joscelin was away in 1144, Zengi recaptured Edessa, the first of the Crusader states to fall. Hasankeyf became a vassal of Zengi as well, Kara Aslans son Nur ad-Din Muhammad allied with the Ayyubid sultan Saladin against the Sultan of Rum Kilij Arslan II, whose daughter had married Nur ad-Din Muhammad. In the peace settlement with Kilij Arslan, Saladin gained control of the Artuqid territory, even though the Artuqids were still technically vassals of Mosul, with Artuqid support, however, Saladin eventually took control of Mosul as well. The Artuklu dynasty remained in command of upper Mesopotamia. The Hasankeyf branch conquered Diyarbakır in 1198 and its center was moved here, the Harput branch was destroyed by the Sultanate of Rum due to following a slippery policy between the Ayyubids and Seljuqs. The Mardin branch survived for longer, but as a vassal of the Ayyubids, Sultanate of Rum, Il-Khanate, karakoyunlu captured Mardin and finally put an end to Artuklu rule in 1409. Despite their constant preoccupation with war, members of the Artuklu dynasty left many architectural monuments and they made the most significant additions to Diyarbakır City Walls. Urfa Gate was rebuilt by Muhammad, son of Kara Arslan, a large caravanserai in Mardin as well as the civil engineering feat of Malabadi Bridge are still in regular use in our day
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Anatolian beyliks
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Anatolian beyliks, sometimes known as Turkmen beyliks, were small Turkish principalities in Anatolia governed by Beys, the first of which were founded at the end of the 11th century. A second more extensive period of foundations took place as a result of the decline of the Seljuq Sultanate of Rûm in the half of the 13th century. One of the beyliks, the Ottomans, expanded from its capital in Bursa and completed its conquest of the other beyliks by the late 15th century, the word beylik denotes a territory under the jurisdiction of a Bey, equivalent in other European societies to a Lord. The term has a context within the 16th century Ottoman governmental institutions in the then regencies along the coastline of Tunisia and Algeria. Following the 1071 Seljuq victory over the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert and these clans, led by beys, would receive military and financial aid from the Seljuqs in return for their services and full allegiance. Seljuq power deteriorated with the Mongol invasions from the east, the Ilkhanate commanders in Anatolia then gained strength and authority and this encouraged the beys to declare sovereignty. To maintain control of their new territory, these reestablished emirs employed Ghazi warriors from Persia, as the Byzantine empire weakened, their cities in Asia Minor could resist the assaults of the beyliks less and less, and many Turks gradually settled in the western parts of Anatolia. By 1300, Turks had reached the Aegean coastline, held momentarily two centuries before, in the beginning, the most powerful states were the Karamanids and the Germiyanids in the central area. The Beylik of Osmanoğlu Dynasty who were later to found the Ottoman Empire was situated to the northwest, around Söğüt, along the Aegean coast, from north to south, stretched Karasids, Sarukhanids, Aydinids, Menteşe and Teke principalities. The Jandarids controlled the Black Sea region around Kastamonu and Sinop, under its eponymous founder, Osman I, the Beylik of Osmanoğlu expanded at Byzantine expense south and west of the Sea of Marmara in the first decades of the 14th century. Towards the end of the 14th century, the Ottomans advanced further into Anatolia by acquiring towns, meanwhile, the Karamanids assaulted the Ottomans many times with the help of other beyliks, Mamluks, Aq Qoyunlu, Byzantines, Pontics and Hungarians, failing and losing power every time. By the close of the century, the early Ottoman leaders had conquered parts of land from Karamanids. These had a respite when their territories were restored to them after the Ottoman defeat suffered against Tamerlane in 1402 in the Battle of Ankara. But the Ottoman state quickly collected itself under Mehmed I and his son Murad II re-incorporated most of these beyliks into Ottoman territory in a space of around 25 years. The final blow for the Karamanids was struck by Mehmed II who conquered their lands, many of the former Anatolian beyliks became the basis for administrative subdivisions in the Ottoman Empire. In 1337 Alaşehir was granted autonomy under Aydınids and this lasted until the total Ottoman conquest, combined with the Seljuqs and the immigration of Turkic tribes into the Anatolian mainland the Anatolian Beyliks spread Turkish and Islamic influence in Anatolia. Unlike the Seljuqs, whose language of administration was Persian, the Anatolian emirates adopted spoken Turkish as their literary language. The Turkish language achieved widespread use in these principalities and reached its highest sophistication during the Ottoman era, in spite of their limited sources and the political climate of their era, art during the Anatolian beyliks flourished, probably building the basis for Ottoman art
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Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
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Ilkhanate
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The Ilkhanate, also spelled Il-khanate, was established as a khanate that formed the southwestern sector of the Mongol Empire, ruled by the Mongol House of Hulagu. It was founded in the 13th century and was based primarily in Iran as well as neighboring territories, such as present-day Azerbaijan and the central and eastern parts of present-day Turkey. The Ilkhanate was originally based on the campaigns of Genghis Khan in the Khwarazmian Empire in 1219–24 and was founded by Hulagu Khan, with the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire after 1259 it became a functionally separate khanate. At its greatest extent, the state expanded into territories that comprise most of Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Turkey, western Afghanistan. Later Ilkhanate rulers, beginning with Ghazan in 1295, would convert to Islam, according to the historian Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, Kublai Khan granted Hulagu the title of Ilkhan after his defeat of Ariq Böke. The term il-Khan means subordinate khan and refers to their initial deference to Möngke Khan, the title Ilkhan, borne by the descendants of Hulagu and later other Borjigin princes in Persia, does not materialize in the sources until after 1260. When Muhammad II of Khwarezm executed a contingent of merchants dispatched by the Mongols, the Mongols overran the empire, occupying the major cities and population centers between 1219 and 1221. Persian Iraq was ravaged by the Mongol detachment under Jebe and Subedei, Transoxiana also came under Mongol control after the invasion. The undivided area west of the Transoxiana was the inheritance of Genghis Khans Borjigin family, thus, the families of the latters four sons appointed their officials under the Great Khans governors, Chin-Temür, Nussal, and Korguz, in that region. Muhammads son Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu returned to Iran in c.1224 after his exile in India, the rival Turkic states, which were all that remained of his fathers empire, quickly declared their allegiance to Jalal. He repulsed the first Mongol attempt to take Central Persia, however, Jalal ad-Din was overwhelmed and crushed by Chormaqans army sent by the Great Khan Ögedei in 1231. During the Mongol expedition, Azerbaijan and the southern Persian dynasties in Fars and Kerman voluntarily submitted to the Mongols, to the west, Hamadan and the rest of Persia was secured by Chormaqan. The Mongols invaded Armenia and Georgia in 1234 or 1236, completing the conquest of the Kingdom of Georgia in 1238 and they began to attack the western parts of Greater Armenia, which was under the Seljuks, the following year. In 1236 Ögedei was commanded to raise up Khorassan and proceeded to populate Herat, the Mongol military governors mostly made camp in the Mughan plain in what is now Azerbaijan. Realizing the danger posed by the Mongols, the rulers of Mosul, Chormaqan divided the Transcaucasia region into three districts based on the Mongol military hierarchy. In Georgia, the population was divided into eight tumens. By 1237 the Mongol Empire had subjugated most of Persia, Armenia, Georgia, as well as all of Afghanistan and Kashmir. After the battle of Köse Dağ in 1243, the Mongols under Baiju occupied Anatolia, while the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm and the Empire of Trebizond became vassals of the Mongols
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Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia
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Located outside of the Armenian Highland and distinct from the Armenian Kingdom of antiquity, it was centered in the Cilicia region northwest of the Gulf of Alexandretta. Their capital was originally at Tarsus, and later became Sis, Cilicia was a strong ally of the European Crusaders, and saw itself as a bastion of Christendom in the East. It also served as a focus for Armenian nationalism and culture, in 1198, with the crowning of Levon the Magnificent of the Rubenid dynasty, Cilician Armenia became a kingdom. In 1226, the crown was passed to rival Hethumids through Isabellas second husband, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Crusader states disintegrated and the Mongols became Islamized, leaving the Armenian Kingdom without any regional allies. After relentless attacks by the Mamluks in Egypt in the fourteenth century, commercial and military interactions with Europeans brought new Western influences to the Cilician Armenian society. Many aspects of Western European life were adopted by the nobility including chivalry, fashions in clothing, and the use of French titles, names, moreover, the organization of the Cilician society shifted from its traditional system to become closer to Western feudalism. The European Crusaders themselves borrowed know-how, such as elements of Armenian castle-building, Cilician Armenia thrived economically, with the port of Ayas serving as a center for East to West trade. Armenian presence in Cilicia dates back to the first century BC, when under Tigranes the Great, in 83 BC, the Greek aristocracy of Seleucid Syria, weakened by a bloody civil war, offered their allegiance to the ambitious Armenian king. Tigranes then conquered Phoenicia and Cilicia, effectively ending the Seleucid Empire, the southern border of his domain reached as far as Ptolemais. Many of the inhabitants of conquered cities were sent to the new metropolis of Tigranakert, at its height, Tigranes Armenian Empire extended from the Pontic Alps to Mesopotamia, and from the Caspian to the Mediterranean. Tigranes invaded as far southeast as the Parthian capital of Ecbatana, in 27 BC, the Roman Empire conquered Cilicia and transformed it into one of its eastern provinces. After the 395 AD partition of the Roman Empire into halves, Cilicia became incorporated into the Eastern Roman Empire, in the sixth century AD, Armenian families relocated to Byzantine territories. Many served in the Byzantine army as soldiers or as generals, Cilicia fell to Arab invasions in the seventh century and was entirely incorporated into the Rashidun Caliphate. However, the Caliphate failed to gain a permanent foothold in Anatolia, Nicephorus thus expelled the Muslims living in Cilicia, and encouraged Christians from Syria and Armenia to settle in the region. Emperor Basil II tried to expand into Armenian Vaspurakan in the east, as a result of the Byzantine military campaigns, the Armenians spread into Cappadocia, and eastward from Cilicia into the mountainous areas of northern Syria and Mesopotamia. The formal annexation of Greater Armenia to the Byzantine Empire in 1045, the Armenians could not re-establish an independent state in their native highland after the fall of Bagratid Armenia as it remained under foreign occupation. The Armenians came to serve the Byzantines as military officers or governors, the Seljuks also played a significant role in the Armenian population movement into Cilicia. In 1064, the Seljuk Turks led by Alp Arslan made their advance towards Anatolia by capturing Ani in Byzantine-held Armenia, seven years later, they earned a decisive victory against Byzantium by defeating Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes army at Manzikert, north of Lake Van
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Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
19.
Turco-Persian tradition
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The composite Turko-Persian tradition refers to a distinctive culture that arose in the 9th and 10th centuries in Khorasan and Transoxiana. It was Persianate in that it was centered on a tradition of Iranian origin and it was Turkic insofar as it was founded by. Turko-Persian tradition was a variant of Islamic culture and it was Islamic in that Islamic notions of virtue, permanence, and excellence infused discourse about public issues as well as the religious affairs of the Muslims, who were the presiding elite. Despite Arabization of public affairs, the peoples retained much of their outlook and way of life. Under the Abbasids, the Persianate customs of their Barmakid viziers became the style of the ruling elite, politically, the Abbasids soon started losing their control, causing two major and lasting consequences. This culture would persist, at least in the form of the Ottoman Empire. Middle Persian was a lingua franca of the region before the Arab invasion, in the ninth century emerged a new Persian language as the idiom of administration and literature. The Samanids began recording their court affairs in Arabic and in this language, the earliest great poetry in New Persian was written for the Samanid court. Samanids encouraged translation of works from Arabic into Persian. Even the learned authorities of Islam, the ulama, began using the Persian lingua franca in public, ferdowsi enshrined in literary form the most treasured stories of popular folk-memory. Before the Ghaznavids broke away, the Samanid rulership was internally falling to its Turkic servants, the Samanids had their own guard of Turkic Mamluk mercenaries, who were headed by a chamberlain, and a Persian and Arabic speaking bureaucracy, headed by a Persian vizier. The army was composed of mostly Turkic Mamluks. By the latter part of the century, Samanid rulers gave the command of their army to Turkic generals. These generals eventually had effective control over all Samanid affairs, the rise of Turks in Samanid times brought a loss of Samanid southern territories to one of their Mamluks, who were governing on their behalf. Mahmud of Ghazni ruled over southeastern extremities of Samanid territories from the city of Ghazni, the Ghaznavids founded empire which became a most powerful in the east since Abbasid Caliphs at their peak, and their capital at Ghazni became second only to Baghdad in cultural elegance. It attracted many scholars and artists of the Islamic world, Turkic ascendance to power in the Samanid court brought Turks as the main patrons of Persianate culture, and as they subjugated Western and Southern Asia, they brought along this culture. The Kara-Khanid Khanate at that time were gaining pre-eminence over the countryside, the Kara-Khanids were pastoralists of noble Turkic backgrounds, and they cherished their Turkic ways. As they gained strength they fostered development of a new Turkish literature alongside the Persian, in Samanid times began the growth of the public influence of the ulama, the learned scholars of Islam
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Anatolia
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Anatolia, in geography known as Asia Minor, Asian Turkey, Anatolian peninsula, or Anatolian plateau, is the westernmost protrusion of Asia, which makes up the majority of modern-day Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Sea of Marmara forms a connection between the Black and Aegean Seas through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits and separates Anatolia from Thrace on the European mainland. Traditionally, Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to a line between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Black Sea to the Armenian Highlands, thus, traditionally Anatolia is the territory that comprises approximately the western two-thirds of the Asian part of Turkey. The Turkification of Anatolia began under the Seljuk Empire in the late 11th century, however, various non-Turkic languages continue to be spoken by minorities in Anatolia today, including Kurdish, Assyrian, Armenian, Arabic, Laz, Georgian, and Greek. Traditionally, Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to a line running from the Gulf of Alexandretta to the Black Sea. This traditional geographical definition is used, for example, in the latest edition of Merriam-Websters Geographical Dictionary, under this definition, Anatolia is bounded to the east by the Armenian Highlands, and the Euphrates before that river bends to the southeast to enter Mesopotamia. To the southeast, it is bounded by the ranges that separate it from the Orontes valley in Syria, the first name the Greeks used for the Anatolian peninsula was Ἀσία, presumably after the name of the Assuwa league in western Anatolia. As the name of Asia came to be extended to areas east of the Mediterranean. The name Anatolia derives from the Greek ἀνατολή meaning “the East” or more literally “sunrise”, the precise reference of this term has varied over time, perhaps originally referring to the Aeolian, Ionian and Dorian colonies on the west coast of Asia Minor. In the Byzantine Empire, the Anatolic Theme was a theme covering the western, the modern Turkish form of Anatolia is Anadolu, which again derives from the Greek name Aνατολή. The Russian male name Anatoly and the French Anatole share the same linguistic origin, in English the name of Turkey for ancient Anatolia first appeared c. It is derived from the Medieval Latin Turchia, which was used by the Europeans to define the Seljuk controlled parts of Anatolia after the Battle of Manzikert. Human habitation in Anatolia dates back to the Paleolithic, neolithic Anatolia has been proposed as the homeland of the Indo-European language family, although linguists tend to favour a later origin in the steppes north of the Black Sea. However, it is clear that the Anatolian languages, the oldest branch of Indo-European, have spoken in Anatolia since at least the 19th century BC. The earliest historical records of Anatolia stem from the southeast of the region and are from the Mesopotamian-based Akkadian Empire during the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 24th century BC, scholars generally believe the earliest indigenous populations of Anatolia were the Hattians and Hurrians. The region was famous for exporting raw materials, and areas of Hattian-, one of the numerous cuneiform records dated circa 20th century BC, found in Anatolia at the Assyrian colony of Kanesh, uses an advanced system of trading computations and credit lines. They were speakers of an Indo-European language, the Hittite language, originating from Nesa, they conquered Hattusa in the 18th century BC, imposing themselves over Hattian- and Hurrian-speaking populations. According to the most widely accepted Kurgan theory on the Proto-Indo-European homeland, however, the Hittites adopted the cuneiform script, invented in Mesopotamia
21.
Seljuq dynasty
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The Seljuqs established both the Seljuk Empire and Sultanate of Rum, which at their heights stretched from Anatolia through Iran and were targets of the First Crusade. During the 10th century, due to events, the Oghuz had come into close contact with Muslim cities. Around 985, Seljuq converted to Islam, in the 11th century the Seljuqs migrated from their ancestral homelands into mainland Persia, in the province of Khurasan, where they encountered the Ghaznavid empire. In 1025,40,000 families of Oghuz Turks migrated to the area of Caucasian Albania, the Seljuqs defeated the Ghaznavids at the battle of Nasa plains in 1035. Tughril, Chaghri, and Yabghu received the insignias of governor, grants of land, at the battle of Dandanaqan they defeated a Ghaznavid army, and after a successful siege of Isfahan by Tughril in 1050/51, they established an empire later called the Great Seljuk Empire. The Seljuqs mixed with the population and adopted the Persian culture. The Great Seljuqs were heads of the family, in theory their authority extended over all the other Seljuq lines, turkish custom called for the senior member of the family to be the Great Seljuq, although usually the position was associated with the ruler of western Persia. Muhammads son Mahmud II succeeded him in western Persia, but Ahmad Sanjar, the rulers of western Persia, who maintained a very loose grip on the Abbasids of Baghdad. Several Turkic emirs gained a level of influence in the region. Kerman was a province in southern Persia, between 1053 and 1154, the territory also included Umman. Kerman was eventually annexed by the Khwarezmid Empire in 1196, the Empire of the Steppes, a History of Central Asia. Early Seljuq History, A New Interpretation, New York, NY, Routledge,2010 Previté-Orton, C. W
22.
Rome
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Rome is a special comune and the capital of Italy. Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region, with 2,873,598 residents in 1,285 km2, it is also the countrys largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the center of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4.3 million residents, the city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber. Romes history spans more than 2,500 years, while Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at only around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe. The citys early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans and it was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression was also taken up by Ovid, Virgil, and Livy. Rome is also called the Caput Mundi, due to that, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, and then the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters, sculptors and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, in 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city, Rome ranked in 2014 as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy. Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, monuments and museums such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are among the worlds most visited tourist destinations with both locations receiving millions of tourists a year. Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics and is the seat of United Nations Food, however, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was actually derived from Rome itself. As early as the 4th century, there have been alternate theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. There is archaeological evidence of occupation of the Rome area from approximately 14,000 years ago. Evidence of stone tools, pottery and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence, several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the age and the beginning of the Iron age. However, none of them had yet an urban quality, nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city was gradually born through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine. All these happenings, which according to the excavations took place more or less around the mid of the 8th century BC. Despite recent excavations at the Palatine hill, the view that Rome has been indeed founded with an act of will as the legend suggests in the middle of the 8th century BC remains a fringe hypothesis. Traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth
23.
Roman Empire
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Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
24.
Koine Greek
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It was based mainly on Attic and related Ionic speech forms, with various admixtures brought about through dialect levelling with other varieties. Koine Greek displayed a wide spectrum of different styles, ranging from more conservative literary forms to the vernaculars of the time. As the dominant language of the Byzantine Empire, it developed further into Medieval Greek, Koine Greek remained the court language of the Byzantine Empire until its dissolution in 1453, while Medieval and eventually Modern Greek were the everyday language. Literary Koine was the medium of much of post-classical Greek literary and scholarly writing, such as the works of Plutarch, Koine is also the language of the Christian New Testament, of the Septuagint, and of most early Christian theological writing by the Church Fathers. In this context, Koine Greek is also known as Biblical, New Testament and it continues to be used as the liturgical language of services in the Greek Orthodox Church. The word koinē is the Greek word for common, and is understood as referring to the common dialect. The word is pronounced /kɔɪˈneɪ/, /ˈkɔɪneɪ/ or /kiːˈniː/ in US English, the pronunciation of the word in Koine gradually changed from Greek pronunciation, to Greek pronunciation. Its pronunciation in Modern Greek is, the term was applied in several different senses by ancient scholars. Others chose to refer to Koine as the Alexandrian dialect or the dialect of Alexandria, the former was often used by modern classicists. Koine Greek arose as a dialect within the armies of Alexander the Great. Under the leadership of Macedon, their newly formed common variety was spoken from the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt to the Seleucid Empire of Mesopotamia and it replaced existing ancient Greek dialects with an everyday form that people anywhere could understand. The passage into the period, known as Medieval Greek. The post-Classical period of Greek thus refers to the creation and evolution of Koine Greek throughout the entire Hellenistic, the linguistic roots of the Common Greek dialect had been unclear since ancient times. During the Hellenistic period, most scholars thought of Koine as the result of the mixture of the four main Ancient Greek dialects, ἡ ἐκ τῶν τεττάρων συνεστῶσα. The view accepted by most scholars today was given by the Greek linguist Georgios Hatzidakis, who showed that, despite the composition of the Four, the stable nucleus of Koine Greek is Attic. In other words, Koine Greek can be regarded as Attic with the admixture of elements especially from Ionic, the degree of importance of the non-Attic linguistic elements on Koine can vary depending on the region of the Hellenistic World. The literary Koine of the Hellenistic age resembles Attic in such a degree that it is mentioned as Common Attic. Koine Greek was therefore considered a form of Greek which was not worthy of attention
25.
Names of the Greeks
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The Greeks have been identified by many ethnonyms. The most common native ethnonym is Hellen, pl. Hellenes, among his descendants are also mentioned the Graeci and the Makedones. The first Greek-speaking people, called Myceneans or Mycenean-Achaeans by historians, Homer refers to Achaeans as the dominant tribe during the Trojan war period usually dated to the 12th-11th centuries BC, using Hellenes to describe a relatively small tribe in Thessaly. The Dorians, an important Greek-speaking group appeared roughly at that time, according to the Greek tradition, the Graeci were renamed Hellenes probably with the establishment of the Great Amphictyonic League after the Trojan war. The Persians used the name Yaunas after the Ionians, a Greek tribe who occupied areas on the coasts of western Asia Minor and the term was used later in Hebrew, Arabic. The word entered the languages of the Indian subcontinent as the Yona, a unique form is used in Georgian, where the Greeks are called Berdzeni. By Late Antiquity, the Greeks referred to themselves as Graikoi and Rhomaioi/Romioi the latter of which was used virtually all Greeks were Roman citizens after 212 CE. The term Hellene became applied to the followers of the religion after the establishment of Christianity by Theodosius I. Although Homer refers to a union of the Greek kingdoms under the leadership of the king of Mycenea during the Trojan War, most of the Mycenean palaces were destroyed at the end of the 13th century BC. It seems that the myth of Hellen, the patriarch of Hellenes was invented when the Greek tribes started to separate from each other, the name Hellenes was probably used by the Greeks with the establishment of the Great Amphictyonic League, an ancient association of Greek tribes. According to legend it was founded after the Trojan War, by the eponymous Amphictyon and it had twelve founders and was organized to protect the great temples of Apollo in Delphi and of Demeter near Thermopylae. Among the descendants of Hellen are mentioned Aeolus, Ion, Achaeus, Dorus, Graecos and it seems that the Macedonians were a Dorian tribe which stayed behind in Macedonia when the main Dorian tribes moved to the south. The Greek cultural tradition has been continuous for centuries, it has always centered on those who were wealthy. They have defined the Greeks as those being in some similar to themselves, by descent, speech, culture. The evidence from before this period, such as it is, in Homers Iliad, the Greek allied forces are described under three different names, often used interchangeably, Argives, Danaans and Achaeans. Argives is an annotation drawn from the most prominent city of the Achaeans, danaos is the name attributed to a Greek mythological character, twin brother of Aegyptus and son of Achiroe and Belus. There is currently no satisfactory etymology for the name Hellenes, some scholars assert that the name of the priests of Zeus in Dodona, Selloi, changed to Sellanes and then to Hellanes and Hellenes. The land was inhabited by Selloi and Graeci, who came to be known as Hellenes
26.
Battle of Manzikert
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The Battle of Manzikert was fought between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Turks on August 26,1071 near Manzikert. Many of the Turks, who had been, during the 11th century, travelling westward, the brunt of the battle was borne by the professional soldiers from the eastern and western tagmata, as large numbers of mercenaries and Anatolian levies fled early and survived the battle. This led to the movement of Turks into central Anatolia—by 1080. It took three decades of internal strife before Alexius I restored stability to Byzantium and it was the first time in history a Byzantine Emperor had become the prisoner of a Muslim commander. Under Constantine IX the Byzantines first came into contact with the Seljuk Turks when they attempted to annex Ani, Constantine made a truce with the Seljuks that lasted until 1064, but they then took Ani, and in 1067 the rest of Armenia, followed by Caesarea. In 1068 Romanos IV took power, and after some speedy military reforms entrusted Manuel Comnenus to lead an expedition against the Seljuks. Manuel captured Hierapolis Bambyce in Syria, next thwarted a Turkish attack against Iconium with a counter-attack, in February 1071, Romanos sent envoys to Alp Arslan to renew the 1069 treaty, and keen to secure his northern flank against attack, Alp Arslan happily agreed. Abandoning the siege of Edessa, he led his army to attack Fatimid-held Aleppo. However, the treaty had been a deliberate distraction, Romanos now led a large army into Armenia to recover the lost fortresses before the Seljuks had time to respond. Accompanying Romanos was Andronicus Ducas, son of his rival, John Ducas, the expedition rested at Sebasteia on the river Halys, reaching Theodosiopolis in June 1071. There, some of his generals suggested continuing the march into Seljuk territory, others, including Nicephorus Bryennius, suggested they wait and fortify their position. It was decided to continue the march, Alp Arslan was already in the area, however, with allies and 30,000 cavalry from Aleppo and Mosul. Alp Arslans scouts knew exactly where Romanos was, while Romanos was completely unaware of his opponents movements and this split the forces in half, each taking about 20,000 men. Either way, Romanos army was reduced to less than half his planned 40,000 to 70,000 men, Alp Arslan summoned his army and delivered a speech by appearing in a white robe, as in an Islamic funeral shroud, in the morning of the battle. This was a message that he was ready to die in battle. Romanos was unaware of the loss of Tarchaneiotes and continued to Manzikert, which he captured on August 23. The next day some foraging parties under Bryennios discovered the Seljuk army and were forced to back to Manzikert. The Armenian general Basilakes was sent out some cavalry, as Romanos did not believe this was Alp Arslans full army
27.
Antalya
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Antalya is the fifth most populous city in Turkey and the capital of its eponymous province. The city that is now Antalya was first settled around 200 BC by the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon, Roman rule saw Antalya thrive, including the construction of several new monuments, such as Hadrians Gate, and the proliferation of neighboring cities. The city has changed several times, including to the Byzantine Empire in 1207. Ottoman rule brought peace and stability for the next five hundred years. The city was transferred to Italian suzerainty in the aftermath of World War I, Antalya is Turkeys biggest international sea resort, located on the Turkish Riviera. Large-scale development and governmental funding has promoted tourism, a record 12.5 million tourists passed through the city in 2014. Antalya was the host city for the 2015 G-20 summit and the EXPO2016, in 2015, the population was 2.288 million. The city was founded as Attaleia, named after its founder Attalos II and this name, still in use in Greek, was later evolved in Turkish as Adalia and then Antalya. Attaleia was also the name of a festival at Delphi and Attalis was the name of an old Greek tribe at Athens, despite the close similarity, there is no relationship to the name Anatolia. King Attalus II of Pergamon is looked on as founder of the city in about 150 BC and it was named Attaleia or Attalia in his honour. The city served as a base for Attalus powerful fleet. Excavations in 2008, in the Doğu Garajı plot, uncovered remains dating to the 3rd century BC, suggesting that Attalea was a rebuilding and expansion of an earlier town. Attalea became part of the Roman Republic in 133 BC when Attalus III, the city grew and prospered during the Ancient Roman period and was part of the Roman province of Pamphylia Secunda, whose capital was Perga. And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia, some of the bishops attributed to the episcopal see of Attalea in Pamphylia may instead have been bishops of Attalea in Lydia, since Lequien lists them under both sees. No longer a residential bishopric, Attalea in Pamphylia is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see, the 13th-century Seljuk mosque at Attalea, now in ruins, had been a Christian Byzantine basilica from the 7th century. The Great Mosque had also been a Christian basilica and the Kesik Minare Mosque had been the 5th-century Christian Church of the Panaghia or Virgin and was decorated with carved marble. Antalya was a city in the Byzantine Empire. It was the capital of the Byzantine Theme of the Cibyrrhaeots, besides the local merchants, one could expect to see Armenians, Saracens, Jews, and Italians
28.
Sinop, Turkey
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The city serves as the capital of Sinop Province. Long used as a Hittite port, which appears in Hittite sources as Sinuwa, Sinope flourished as the Black Sea port of a caravan route that led from the upper Euphrates valley. It issued its own coinage, founded colonies, and gave its name to a red pigment called sinopia. Sinope escaped Persian domination until the early 4th century BC and it was ruled by Scydrothemis from 301 to 280 BC. In 183 BC it was captured by Pharnaces I and became capital of the Kingdom of Pontus, the Roman general Lucullus conquered Sinope in 70 BC, and Julius Caesar established a Roman colony there, Colonia Julia Felix, in 47 BC. After the division of the Roman Empire in 395, Sinope remained with the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. After the sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, it was captured for the Empire of Trebizond by David Komnenos, the city returned briefly to Trapezuntine rule in 1254, but returned to Turkish control in 1265, where it has remained since. After 1265, Sinop became home to two successive independent emirates following the fall of the Seljuks, the Pervâne and the Jandarids. The Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II overawed Ismail, the emir of Sinope on his march on Trebizond, the emir was exiled to Philippopolis in northern Thrace. In 1614 Sinop was targeted by Cossack raiders and extensively looted and burned in an event which shocked Ottoman contemporaries, in the late 19th and early 20th century, Sinop was part of the Kastamonu Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. As of 1920, Sinop was described as populated mainly by Greeks with a population of 8,000. It was also considered the safest port between Bosphorus and Batum, at the time, during this period, the port was exporting wheat, tobacco, seeds, timber and hides. They imported produce, coal and hardware, Sinop hosted a US military base and radar that was important for intelligence during the cold war era. The US base was closed in 1992, explorer Bob Ballard discovered an ancient ship wreck north west of Sinop in the Black Sea and was shown on National Geographic. Sinop has warm and humid summers with a daytime high of 26 °C however temperatures rarely exceed 30 °C. The highest recorded temperature for Sinop was 34.4 °C on 6 July 2000, the winters are cool and wet. The average for winter ranging around 5 °C, the lowest recorded temperature for Sinop was -7.5 °C on 21 February 1985. Snowfall is quite common between the months of December and March, snowing for a week or two, as of 1920, Sinop was producing embroidered cotton cloth
29.
Lake Van
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Lake Van, the largest lake in Turkey, lies in the far east of that country in the provinces of Van and Bitlis. It is a soda lake, receiving water from numerous small streams that descend from the surrounding mountains. Lake Van is one of the worlds largest endorheic lakes - a volcanic eruption blocked the outlet from the basin in ancient times. Although Lake Van has an altitude of 1,640 m in a region with harsh winters, its high salinity prevents most of it from freezing, and even the shallow northern section freezes only rarely. Lake Van is 119 kilometres across at its widest point, averaging a depth of 171 metres with a recorded depth of 451 metres. The lake surface lies 1,640 metres above sea level, Lake Van has an area of 3,755 km2 and a volume of 607 cubic kilometres. The western portion of the lake is deepest, with a large basin deeper than 400 m lying northeast of Tatvan, the eastern arms of the lake are shallower. The Van-Ahtamar portion shelves gradually, with a depth of about 250 m on its northwest side where it joins the rest of the lake. The Erciş arm is much shallower, mostly less than 50 m, the lake water is strongly alkaline and rich in sodium carbonate and other salts, which are extracted by evaporation and used as detergents. The lakes outlet was blocked at some time during the Pleistocene, now dormant, Nemrut Dağı is close to the western shore of the lake, and another dormant stratovolcano, Süphan Dağı dominates the northern side of the lake. The water level of the lake has often altered dramatically, near Tatvan, investigation by Degens and others in the early 1980s determined that the highest lake levels had been during the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago. Approximately 9,500 years ago there was a drop to more than 300 metres below the present level. This was followed by an equally-dramatic rise around 6,500 years ago, similar-but-smaller fluctuations have been seen recently. The level of the rose by at least three metres during the 1990s, drowning much agricultural land, and seems to be rising again. The level rose approximately two meters in the ten years prior to 2004. As a deep lake with no outlet, Lake Van has accumulated great amounts of sediment washed in from surrounding plains and valleys, and occasionally deposited as ash from eruptions of nearby volcanoes. This layer of sediment is estimated to be up to 400 metres thick in places, in 1989 and 1990, an international team of geologists led by Dr. Stephan Kempe from the University of Hamburg retrieved ten sediment cores from depths up to 446 m. Although these cores only penetrated the first few meters of sediment, litt expects to find that Lake Van stores the climate history of the last 800,000 years—an incomparable treasure house of data which we want to tap for at least the last 500,000 years
30.
Central Asia
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Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
31.
Caravanserai
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A caravanserai (/kærəˈvænsəri/, was a roadside inn where travelers could rest and recover from the days journey. Caravanserais supported the flow of commerce, information, and people across the network of routes covering Asia, North Africa. Major urban caravanserais were built along the Grand Trunk Road in the Indian subcontinent. The word is rendered as caravansary, caravansaray, caravanseray. The Persian word کاروانسرای kārvānsarāy is a word combining kārvān caravan with sarāy palace, building with enclosed courts. Here caravan means a group of traders, pilgrims, or other travelers, the word serai is sometimes used with the implication of caravanserai. The Persian caravanserai was built as a road station, outside of towns. An inn built inside a town would be smaller and was known in Persian as a khan, in the Middle-East the term khan covers both meanings, of roadside inn as well as of inner-town inn. In Turkish the word is rendered as han, the same word was used in Bosnian, having arrived through Ottoman conquest. Welcoming all, thus meaning inn, led to funduq in Arabic, pundak in Hebrew, fundaco in Venice, fondaco in Genoa and alhóndiga in Spanish. Guards were stationed at every gate to ensure that taxes for these goods be paid in full, most typically a caravanserai was a building with a square or rectangular walled exterior, with a single portal wide enough to permit large or heavily laden beasts such as camels to enter. Caravanserais provided water for human and animal consumption, washing, and ritual purification such as wudu and they also kept fodder for animals and had shops for travelers where they could acquire new supplies. In addition, some shops bought goods from the traveling merchants, turkishhan. org, The Seljuk Han in Anatolia. Encyclopædia Iranica, p. 798-802 Erdmann, Kurt, Erdmann, berlin, Mann,1976, ISBN 3-7861-2241-5 Hillenbrand, Robert. Islamic Architecture, Form, function and meaning, reprinted from, Traditions Architecturales en Iran, Tehran, No.2 &3,1976. Caravanserai, Traces, Places, Dialogue in the Middle East, milan,5 Continents Editions, ISBN 978-88-7439-604-7 Yavuz, Aysil Tükel. The Concepts that Shape Anatolian Seljuq Caravansara, muqarnas XIV, An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World. Shah Abbasi Caravanserai, Tishineh Caravansara Pictures Consideratcaravanserai. net, Texts and photos on research on caravanserais and travel journeys in Middle East, caravanserais in Turkey The Seljuk Han in Anatolia
32.
Republic of Genoa
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It began when Genoa became a self-governing commune within the Regnum Italicum, and ended when it was conquered by the French First Republic under Napoleon and replaced with the Ligurian Republic. Corsica was ceded to France in the Treaty of Versailles of 1768, before 1100, Genoa emerged as an independent city-state, one of a number of Italian city-states during this period. Nominally, the Holy Roman Emperor was overlord and the Bishop of Genoa was president of the city, however, actual power was wielded by a number of consuls annually elected by popular assembly. The Adorno, Campofregoso, and other merchant families all fought for power in this Republic, as the power of the consuls allowed each family faction to gain wealth. The Republic of Genoa extended over modern Liguria and Piedmont, Sardinia, Corsica, through Genoese participation on the Crusades, Genoese colonies were established in the Middle East, in the Aegean, in Sicily and Northern Africa. The collapse of the Crusader States was offset by Genoa’s alliance with the Byzantine Empire, as Venices relations with the Byzantine Empire were temporarily disrupted by the Fourth Crusade and its aftermath, Genoa was able to improve its position. Genoa took advantage of opportunity to expand into the Black Sea and Crimea. Internal feuds between the families, the Grimaldi and Fieschi, the Doria, Spinola, and others caused much disruption. However, this prosperity did not last, the Black Death was imported into Europe in 1347 from the Genoese trading post at Caffa in Crimea, on the Black Sea. Following the economic and population collapse, Genoa adopted the Venetian model of government, the wars with Venice continued, and the War of Chioggia -- where Genoa almost managed to decisively subdue Venice—ended with Venices recovery of dominance in the Adriatic. In 1390 Genoa initiated a crusade against the Barbary pirates with help from the French, though it has not been well-studied, the fifteenth century seems to have been a tumultuous time for Genoa. After a period of French domination from 1394–1409, Genoa came under rule by the Visconti of Milan, Genoa lost Sardinia to Aragon, Corsica to internal revolt and its Middle Eastern, Eastern European and Asia Minor colonies to the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Under the ensuing economic recovery, many aristocratic Genoese families, such as the Balbi, Doria, Grimaldi, Pallavicini, according to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto and others, the practices Genoa developed in the Mediterranean were crucial in the exploration and exploitation of the New World. At the time of Genoa’s peak in the 16th century, the city attracted many artists, including Rubens, Caravaggio and Van Dyck. The architect Galeazzo Alessi designed many of the city’s splendid palazzi, as did in the decades that followed by fifty years Bartolomeo Bianco, a number of Genoese Baroque and Rococo artists settled elsewhere and a number of local artists became prominent. At the time of its founding in the early 11th century the Republic of Genoa consisted of the city of Genoa, as the commerce of the city increased, so did the territory of the Republic. By 1015 all of Liguria fell under the Republic of Genoa, after the First Crusade in 1098 Genoa gained settlements in Syria. In 1261 the city of Smyrna in Asia Minor became Genoese territory, in 1255 Genoa established the colony of Caffa in Crimea
33.
Crusades
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The First Crusade arose after a call to arms in a 1095 sermon by Pope Urban II. Urban urged military support for the Byzantine Empire and its Emperor, Alexios I, the response to Urbans preaching by people of many different classes across Western Europe established the precedent for later Crusades. Volunteers became Crusaders by taking a vow and receiving plenary indulgences from the church. Some were hoping for apotheosis at Jerusalem, or forgiveness from God for all their sins, others participated to satisfy feudal obligations, gain glory and honour, or find opportunities for economic and political gain. Many modern Historians have polarised opinions of the Crusaders behaviour under Papal sanction, to some it was incongruous with the stated aims and implied moral authority of the papacy and the Crusades, to the extent that on occasions that the Pope excommunicated Crusaders. Crusaders often pillaged as they travelled, while their leaders retained control of captured territory rather than returning it to the Byzantines. During the Peoples Crusade thousands of Jews were murdered in what is now called the Rhineland massacres, Constantinople was sacked during the Fourth Crusade rendering the reunification of Christendom impossible. These tales consequently galvanised medieval romance, philosophy and literature, but the Crusades also reinforced the connection between Western Christendom, feudalism, and militarism. Crusade is not a term, instead the terms iter for journey or peregrinatio for pilgrimage were used. Not until the word crucesignatus for one who was signed with the cross was adopted at the close of the century was specific terminology developed. The Middle English equivalents were derived from old French, croiserie in the 13th–15th centuries, croisade appeared in English c1575, and continued to be the leading form till c1760. By convention historians adopt the term for the Christian holy wars from 1095, the Crusades in the Holy Land are traditionally counted as nine distinct campaigns, numbered from the First Crusade of 1095–99 to the Ninth Crusade of 1271/2. Usage of the term Crusade may differ depending on the author, pluralists use the term Crusade of any campaign explicitly sanctioned by the reigning Pope. This reflects the view of the Roman Catholic Church that every military campaign given Papal sanction is equally valid as a Crusade, regardless of its cause, justification, generalists see Crusades as any and all holy wars connected with the Latin Church and fought in defence of their faith. Popularists limit the Crusades to only those that were characterised by popular groundswells of religious fervour – that is, only the First Crusade, Medieval Muslim historiographers such as Ali ibn al-Athir refer to the Crusades as the Frankish Wars. The term used in modern Arabic, ḥamalāt ṣalībiyya حملات صليبية, campaigns of the cross, is a loan translation of the term Crusade as used in Western historiography. The Islamic prophet Muhammad founded Islam in the Arabian Peninsula, the resulting unified polity in the seventh and eighth centuries led to a rapid expansion of Arab power. This influence stretched from the northwest Indian subcontinent, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, southern Italy, tolerance, trade, and political relationships between the Arabs and the Christian states of Europe waxed and waned
34.
Mongol invasions and conquests
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Mongol invasions and conquests took place throughout the 13th century, resulting in the vast Mongol Empire, which by 1300 covered much of Asia and Eastern Europe. Historians regard the destruction under the Mongol Empire as results of some of the deadliest conflicts in human history. In addition, Mongol expeditions brought the plague along with them, spreading it across much of Asia and Europe. The Mongol Empire developed in the course of the 13th century through a series of conquests and invasions throughout Asia, thus most Mongol conquering and plundering took place during the warmer seasons, when there was sufficient grass for the herds. Tartar and Mongol raids against Russian states continued well beyond the start of the Mongol Empires fragmentation around 1260, elsewhere, the Mongols territorial gains in China continued into the 14th century under the Yuan dynasty, while those in Persia persisted into the 15th century under the Timurid Empire. In India, a Mongol state survived into the 19th century in the form of the Mughal Empire, genghis Khan forged the initial Mongol Empire in Central Asia, starting with the unification of the Mongol and Turkic confederations such as Merkits, Tartars, and Mongols. The Uighur Buddhist Qocho Kingdom surrendered and joined the empire and he then continued expansion of the empire via conquest of the Qara Khitai and the Khwarazmian dynasty. Large areas of Islamic Central Asia and northeastern Iran were seriously depopulated, each soldier was required to execute a certain number of persons, with the number varying according to circumstances. For example, after the conquest of Urgench, each Mongol warrior – in an group that might have consisted of two tumens – was required to execute 24 people. Hungary became a refuge after the Mongol invasions for fleeing Cumans, one thousand northern Chinese engineer squads accompanied the Mongol Khan Hulagu during his conquest of the Middle East. The Yuan dynasty created a Han Army out of defected Jin troops, the Mongol force which invaded southern China was far greater than the force they sent to invade the Middle East in 1256. The Mongols greatest triumph was when Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty in China in 1271, the top-level government agency Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs was established to govern Tibet, which was conquered by the Mongols and put under Yuan rule. The Mongols also invaded Sakhalin between 1264 and 1308, likewise, Korea became a semi-autonomous vassal state and compulsory ally of the Yuan dynasty for about 80 years. The Yuan dynasty was overthrown during the Red Turban Rebellion in 1368 by the Han Chinese who gained independence. Kublai Khans Yuan dynasty invaded Burma between 1277 and 1287, resulting in the capitulation and disintegration of the Pagan Kingdom, however, the invasion in 1301 was repulsed by the Burmese Myinsaing Kingdom. The Mongol invasions of Vietnam and Java resulted in defeat for the Mongols, the Mongols invaded and destroyed Volga Bulgaria and Kievan Rus, before invading Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, and others. Over the course of three years, the Mongols destroyed and annihilated all of the cities of Russia with the exceptions of Novgorod. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls, the Mongol invasions induced population displacement on a scale never seen before in central Asia as well as eastern Europe
35.
Ottoman dynasty
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The Ottoman dynasty was made up of the members of the imperial House of Osman. According to Ottoman tradition, the family originated from the Kayı tribe branch of the Oghuz Turks, the Ottoman dynasty, named after Osman I, ruled the Ottoman Empire from c.1299 to 1922. During much of the Empires history, the sultan was the regent, head of state. The imperial family was deposed from power and the sultanate was abolished on 1 November 1922 after the Turkish War of Independence, the Republic of Turkey was declared the following year. The living members of the dynasty were sent into exile as persona non gratae, though some have been allowed to return. In its current form, the family is known as the Osmanoğlu family, before Orhans proclamation of the dynasty, the tribe was known as the Bilecik Söğüt Beylik or Beys but was renamed Osmanlı in honor of Osman. The Ottoman dynasty is known in modern Turkish as Osmanlı Hanedanı, meaning House of Osman, in Ottoman Turkish it was known as Hanedan-ı Âl-i Osman, thus they still formally acknowledged the sovereignty of the Seljuk Empire and its successor, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm. The first Ottoman ruler to claim the title of Sultan was Murad I. The holder of the title Sultan was in Arabic-Islamic dynasties originally the power behind the throne of the Caliph in Bagdad, the Ottoman sultans also claimed the title of Caliph starting with Murad I, who transformed the Ottoman state into a transcontinental empire. With the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II Fatih claimed the title Kaysar-i-Rûm Emperor of Rome and he appointed the Patriarch of Constantinople Gennadius Scholarius, whom he protected and whose status he elevated into leader of all the Eastern Orthodox Christians. As Emperor of Rome he laid claim to all Roman territories, Sultan Mehmed II also took the title of Padishah, a Persian title meaning Master of Kings and ranking as Emperor, claiming superiority among the other kings. He was the first Ottoman ruler to adopt the title of Padishah. The Ottoman claim to caliphate was strengthened when they defeated the Mamluks in 1517, as the empire grew, sultans adopted secondary titles expressing the empires claim to be the legitimate successor of the absorbed states. Furthermore, they tended to enumerate even regular provinces, not unlike the long lists of -mainly inherited- feudal titles in the style of many Christian European monarchs. Some early Ottoman Sultans even had to accept the status in the eyes of a foreign overlord. However, the Ottoman Caliphate too was abolished soon afterwards, and Abdulmecid II was utterly deposed and expelled from Turkey with the rest of the Ottoman dynasty on 3 March 1924
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Rise of the Ottoman Empire
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The foundation and rise of the Ottoman Empire is a period of history that started with the emergence of the Ottoman principality in c. 1299, and ended with the conquest of Constantinople on May 29,1453. For this reason, this period in the history has been described as the Proto-Imperial Era. Throughout most of period, the Ottomans were merely one of many competing states in the region. The cause of Ottoman success cannot be attributed to any single factor, the earlier part of this period, the fourteenth century, is particularly difficult for historians to study due to the scarcity of sources. Not a single written document survives from the reign of Osman I, the Ottomans, furthermore, did not begin to record their own history until the fifteenth century, more than a hundred years after many of the events they describe. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Anatolia was divided between two powerful states, the Byzantine Empire in the west and the Anatolian Seljuks in the central plateau. Mongol pressure pushed nomadic Turkish tribes to migrate westward, into the now poorly-defended Byzantine territory, the power of these groups was largely dependent upon their ability to attract military manpower. Western Anatolia was then a hotbed of raiding activity, with warriors switching allegiance at will to whichever chief seemed most able to provide them opportunities for plunder. The Ottoman dynasty is named after the first independent ruler of the Ottoman polity, according to later Ottoman tradition, he was descended from a Turkic tribe which migrated out of Central Asia in the wake of the Mongol Conquests. As evidenced by coins minted during his reign, Osmans father was named Ertuğrul, the origins of the Ottoman dynasty thus remain obscure, shrouded in myth and legend, and the identity of Osmans tribe and ancestors is not known for certain. Likewise, nothing is known about how Osman first established his principality as the sources, none of contemporary, provide many different. Osmans principality was initially supported by the manpower of nomadic Turkish groups. This Ottoman tribe was based not on blood-ties, but on political expedience, thus it was inclusive of all who wished to join, including people of Byzantine origin. The Ottoman enterprise came to be led by several great families, at least one of which was of Greek Christian origin. Nevertheless, Islam played a role in Ottoman self-identity from the start, as evidenced by a land grant issued by Osmans son Orhan in 1324. Such a war was known as gaza, and a fighting in it was called a gazi. Beginning in the 1980s, historians began to criticize Witteks thesis. Scholars now recognize that the terms gaza and gazi did not have religious connotations for the early Ottomans
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Malik-Shah I
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Jalāl al-Dawla Muizz al-Dunyā Wal-Din Abul-Fatḥ ibn Alp Arslān, better known by his regnal name of Malik-Shah I, was sultan of the Seljuq Empire from 1072 to 1092. During his youth, he spent his time participating in the campaigns of his father Alp Arslan, during one of such campaigns in 1072, Alp Arslan was fatally wounded and died only a few days later. After that, Malik-Shah was crowned as the new sultan of the empire, however, Malik-Shah did not access the throne peacefully, and had to fight his uncle Qavurt, who claimed the throne. Although Malik-Shah was the head of the Seljuq state, the vizier Nizam al-Mulk held near absolute power during his reign. Malik-Shah spent the rest of rest waging war against the Karakhanids on the eastern side, Malik-Shahs death to this day remains under dispute, according to some scholars, he was poisoned by the Caliph, while others say that he was poisoned by the supporters of Nizam al-Mulk. Although he was known by names, he was mostly known as Malik-Shah, a combination of the Arabic word malik. Malik-Shah was born on 16 August 1055 and spent his youth in Isfahan, according to the 12th-century Persian historian Muhammad bin Ali Rawandi, Malik-Shah had fair skin, was tall and somewhat bulky. In 1064, Malik-Shah, only 9 years old by then, along with Nizam al-Mulk, the same year, Malik-Shah was married to Terken Khatun, the daughter of the Karakhanid khan Ibrahim Tamghach-Khan. In 1066, Alp Arslan arranged a ceremony near Merv, where he appointed Malik-Shah as his heir, in 1071, Malik-Shah took part in the Syrian campaign of his father, and stayed in Aleppo when his father fought the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes at Manzikert. In 1072, Malik-Shah and Nizam al-Mulk accompanied Alp-Arslan during his campaign in Transoxiana against the Karakhanids, however, Alp-Arslan was badly wounded during his expedition, and Malik-Shah shortly took over the army. Alp-Arslan died some days later, and Malik-Shah was declared as the new sultan of the empire, Malik-Shah then replied by sending the following message, A brother does not inherit when there is a son. This message enraged Qavurt, who thereafter occupied Isfahan, in 1073 a battle took place near Hamadan, which lasted three days. Qavurt was accompanied by his seven sons, and his army consisted of Turkmens, while the army of Malik-Shah consisted of ghulams and contingents of Kurdish, during the battle, the Turks of Malik-Shahs army mutinied against him, but he nevertheless managed to defeat and capture Qavurt. Qavurt then begged for mercy and in return promised to retire to Oman, however, Nizam al-Mulk declined the offer, claiming that sparing him was an indication of weakness. After some time, Qavurt was strangled to death with a bowstring, after having dealt with that problem, Malik-Shah appointed Qutlugh-Tegin as the governor of Fars and Sav-Tegin as the governor of Kerman. Malik-Shah eventually managed to repel the Karakhanids and captured Tirmidh, giving Sav-Tegin the key of the city, Malik-Shah then appointed his other brother Shihab al-Din Tekish as the ruler of Tukharistan and Balkh. In 1074, Malik-Shah ordered the Turkic warlord Arghar to restore what he had destroyed during his raids in the territory of the Shirvanshah Fariburz I, during the same year, he appointed Qavurts son Rukn al-Dawla Sultan-Shah as the ruler of Kerman. One year later, Malik-Shah sent an army under Sav-Tegin to Arran, Sav-Tegin managed to easily conquer the region, thus ending Shaddadid rule
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Byzantine Empire
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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, cultural, several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empires Greek East and Latin West divided. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empires official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed. Finally, under the reign of Heraclius, the Empires military, the borders of the Empire evolved significantly over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Maurice, the Empires eastern frontier was expanded, in a matter of years the Empire lost its richest provinces, Egypt and Syria, to the Arabs. This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia, the Empire recovered again during the Komnenian restoration, such that by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence. Its remaining territories were annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 finally ended the Byzantine Empire, the term comes from Byzantium, the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantines capital. This older name of the city would rarely be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, and in 1680 of Du Canges Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of Byzantine among French authors, 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, Graikia, and also as Rhōmais. The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and Graikoi, and even as late as the 19th century Greeks typically referred to modern Greek as Romaika and Graikika. The authority of the Byzantine emperor as the legitimate Roman emperor was challenged by the coronation of Charlemagne as Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III in the year 800. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known primarily as Rûm, the Roman army succeeded in conquering many territories covering the entire Mediterranean region and coastal regions in southwestern Europe and north Africa. These territories were home to different cultural groups, both urban populations and rural populations. The West also suffered heavily from the instability of the 3rd century AD
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Antioch
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Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient Greco-Roman city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. Its ruins lie near the city of Antakya, Turkey. Antioch was founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, the citys geographical, military, and economic location benefited its occupants, particularly such features as the spice trade, the Silk Road, and the Persian Royal Road. It eventually rivaled Alexandria as the city of the Near East. It was also the center of Hellenistic Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period. Most of the development of Antioch was done during the Roman Empire. Antioch was called the cradle of Christianity as a result of its longevity, the Christian New Testament asserts that the name Christian first emerged in Antioch. It was one of the four cities of the Syrian tetrapolis, a single route proceeds south in the Orontes valley. The settlement of 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 suburbs of Antioch. There was a village on the spur of Mount Silpius named Io and this name was always adduced as evidence by Antiochenes anxious to affiliate themselves to the Attic Ionians—an eagerness which is illustrated by the Athenian types used on the citys coins. Io may have been an early colony of trading Greeks. John Malalas also mentions a village, Bottia, in the plain by the river. Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great is said to have camped on the site of Antioch and this account is found only in the writings of Libanius, a 4th-century orator from Antioch, and may be legend intended to enhance Antiochs status. But the story is not unlikely in itself, after Alexanders death in 323 BC, his generals divided up the territory he had conquered. Seleucus I Nicator won the territory of Syria, and he proceeded to found four sister cities in northwestern Syria, one of which was Antioch and 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 year of his reign
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Syria
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Syrias capital and largest city is Damascus. Religious groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Mandeans, Shiites, Salafis, Sunni Arabs make up the largest religious group in Syria. Its capital Damascus and largest city Aleppo are among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, in the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt. The post-independence period was tumultuous, and a number of military coups. In 1958, Syria entered a union with Egypt called the United Arab Republic. Syria was under Emergency Law from 1963 to 2011, effectively suspending most constitutional protections for citizens, Bashar al-Assad has been president since 2000 and was preceded by his father Hafez al-Assad, who was in office from 1970 to 2000. Mainstream modern academic opinion strongly favours the argument that the Greek word is related to the cognate Ἀσσυρία, Assyria, in the past, others believed that it was derived from Siryon, the name that the Sidonians gave to Mount Hermon. However, the discovery of the inscription in 2000 seems to support the theory that the term Syria derives from Assyria. The area designated by the word has changed over time, since approximately 10,000 BC, Syria was one of centers of Neolithic culture where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time in the world. The following Neolithic period is represented by houses of Mureybet culture. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gyps, finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations. Cities of Hamoukar and Emar played an important role during the late Neolithic, archaeologists have demonstrated that civilization in Syria was one of the most ancient on earth, perhaps preceded by only those of Mesopotamia. The earliest recorded indigenous civilisation in the region was the Kingdom of Ebla near present-day Idlib, gifts from Pharaohs, found during excavations, confirm Eblas contact with Egypt. One of the earliest written texts from Syria is an agreement between Vizier Ibrium of Ebla and an ambiguous kingdom called Abarsal c.2300 BC. The Northwest Semitic language of the Amorites is the earliest attested of the Canaanite languages, Mari reemerged during this period, and saw renewed prosperity until conquered by Hammurabi of Babylon. Ugarit also arose during this time, circa 1800 BC, close to modern Latakia, Ugaritic was a Semitic language loosely related to the Canaanite languages, and developed the Ugaritic alphabet. The Ugarites kingdom survived until its destruction at the hands of the marauding Indo-European Sea Peoples in the 12th century BC, Yamhad was described in the tablets of Mari as the mightiest state in the near east and as having more vassals than Hammurabi of Babylon. Yamhad imposed its authority over Alalakh, Qatna, the Hurrians states, the army of Yamhad campaigned as far away as Dēr on the border of Elam
