Battle of Mu'tah
The Battle of Mu'tah was fought in September 629 C. E. near the village of Mu'tah, east of the Jordan River and Karak in Karak Governorate, between the forces of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the forces of the Byzantine Empire. In Islamic histories, the battle is described as the Muslims' attempt to take retribution against a Ghassanid chief for taking the life of an emissary. According to Byzantine sources, the Muslims planned to launch their attack on a feast day; the local Byzantine Vicarius collected the garrisons of the fortresses. Seeing the great number of the enemy forces, the Muslims withdrew to the south where the fighting started at the village of Mu'ta and they were routed. After three of their leaders were killed, the command was given to Khalid ibn al-Walid and he succeeded in saving the rest of the forces; the Byzantines were reoccupying territory following the peace accord between Emperor Heraclius and the Sasanid general Shahrbaraz in July 629. The Byzantine sakellarios Theodore, was placed in command of the army, while in the area of Balqa, Arab tribes were employed.
Meanwhile, Muhammad had sent his emissary to the ruler of Bosra. While on his way to Bosra, he was executed in the village of Mu'tah by the orders of a Ghassanid official. Muhammad dispatched 3,000 of his troops to Jumada al-Awwal in 629, for a quick expedition to attack and punish the tribes; the army was led by Zayd ibn Harithah. When the Muslim troops arrived at the area to the east of Jordan and learned of the size of the Byzantine army, they wanted to wait and send for reinforcements from Medina.'Abdullah ibn Rawahah reminded them about their desire for martyrdom and questioned the move to wait when what they desire was awaiting them, so they continued marching towards the waiting army. The Muslims engaged the Byzantines at their camp by the village of Musharif and withdrew towards Mu'tah, it was here. Some Muslim sources report that the battle was fought in a valley between two heights, which negated the Byzantines their numerical superiority. During the battle, all three Muslim leaders fell one after the other as they took command of the force: first, Zayd Ja'far, then'Abdullah.
After the death of the latter, some of the Muslim soldiers began to rout. Thabit ibn Al-Arqam, seeing the desperate state of the Muslim forces, took up the banner and rallied his comrades thus saving the army from complete destruction. After the battle, Al-Arqam took the banner, before asking Khalid bin Walid to take the lead. Khalid bin Walid reported that the fighting was so intense that he used nine swords which broke in the battle. Khalid, prepared to withdraw, he avoided pitched battle. It is said; the casualties of slain of the Muslim side were recorded as the four of them from Muhajireen while eight the rest from Ansar. Their names were: Zaid bin Haritha Ja'far ibn Abi Talib Abdullah bin Rawahah Masoud bin Al-Aswad Wahab bin Saad Abbad bin Qais Amr ibn Saad Harith bin Nu'man Saraqah bin Amr Abu Kulaib bin Amr Jabir ibn'Amr Amer bin SaadDaniel C. Peterson, Professor of Islamic Studies at Brigham Young University, finds the ratio of casualties among the leaders suspiciously high compared to the losses suffered by ordinary soldiers.
David Powers, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell mentions this curiosity concerning the minuscule casualties recorded by Muslim historians. It is reported that when the Muslim force arrived at Medina, they were berated for withdrawing and accused of fleeing. Salamah ibn Hisham, brother of Amr ibn Hishām was reported to have prayed at home rather than going to the mosque to avoid having to explain himself. Muhammad ordered saying that they would return to fight the Byzantines again, it would not be until the third century A. H. that Muslim historians would state that Muhammad bestowed upon Khalid the title of'Saifullah' meaning'Sword of Allah'. Today, Muslims are considered martyrs; some have claimed. A mausoleum was built at Mu'tah over their grave. According to al-Waqidi and Ibn Ishaq, the Muslims were informed that 100,000 or 200,000 enemy troops were encamped at Balqa'. Modern historians refute this stating the figure to be exaggerated. According to Walter Emil Kaegi, professor of Byzantine history at the University of Chicago, the size of the entire Byzantine army during the 7th century might have totaled 100,000 even half this number.
While the Byzantine forces at Mu'tah are unlikely to have numbered more than 10,000. Muslim accounts of the battle differ over the result. In early Muslim sources, the battle is recorded as a humiliating defeat. While Muslim historians would rework the early source material, revising the narrative of the battle as a Muslim victory on grounds that most of the Muslim soldiers returned safely. Military career of Muhammad List of expeditions of Muhammad History of Islam Muhammad as a general Jihad Muhammad and Christianity El Hareir, Idris; the Different Aspects of Islam Culture: Volume 3, The Spread of Islam throughout the World. UNESCO publishing. Buhl, F.. "Muʾta". In H. A. R. Gibb. Encyclopaedia o
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house and the second-largest university press in the world, it holds letters patent as the Queen's Printer. The press mission is "to further the University's mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education and research at the highest international levels of excellence". Cambridge University Press is a department of the University of Cambridge and is both an academic and educational publisher. With a global sales presence, publishing hubs, offices in more than 40 countries, it publishes over 50,000 titles by authors from over 100 countries, its publishing includes academic journals, reference works and English language teaching and learning publications. Cambridge University Press is a charitable enterprise that transfers part of its annual surplus back to the university. Cambridge University Press is both the oldest publishing house in the world and the oldest university press.
It originated from letters patent granted to the University of Cambridge by Henry VIII in 1534, has been producing books continuously since the first University Press book was printed. Cambridge is one of the two privileged presses. Authors published by Cambridge have included John Milton, William Harvey, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking. University printing began in Cambridge when the first practising University Printer, Thomas Thomas, set up a printing house on the site of what became the Senate House lawn – a few yards from where the press's bookshop now stands. In those days, the Stationers' Company in London jealously guarded its monopoly of printing, which explains the delay between the date of the university's letters patent and the printing of the first book. In 1591, Thomas's successor, John Legate, printed the first Cambridge Bible, an octavo edition of the popular Geneva Bible; the London Stationers objected strenuously. The university's response was to point out the provision in its charter to print "all manner of books".
Thus began the press's tradition of publishing the Bible, a tradition that has endured for over four centuries, beginning with the Geneva Bible, continuing with the Authorized Version, the Revised Version, the New English Bible and the Revised English Bible. The restrictions and compromises forced upon Cambridge by the dispute with the London Stationers did not come to an end until the scholar Richard Bentley was given the power to set up a'new-style press' in 1696. In July 1697 the Duke of Somerset made a loan of £200 to the university "towards the printing house and presse" and James Halman, Registrary of the University, lent £100 for the same purpose, it was in Bentley's time, in 1698, that a body of senior scholars was appointed to be responsible to the university for the press's affairs. The Press Syndicate's publishing committee still meets and its role still includes the review and approval of the press's planned output. John Baskerville became University Printer in the mid-eighteenth century.
Baskerville's concern was the production of the finest possible books using his own type-design and printing techniques. Baskerville wrote, "The importance of the work demands all my attention. Caxton would have found nothing to surprise him if he had walked into the press's printing house in the eighteenth century: all the type was still being set by hand. A technological breakthrough was badly needed, it came when Lord Stanhope perfected the making of stereotype plates; this involved making a mould of the whole surface of a page of type and casting plates from that mould. The press was the first to use this technique, in 1805 produced the technically successful and much-reprinted Cambridge Stereotype Bible. By the 1850s the press was using steam-powered machine presses, employing two to three hundred people, occupying several buildings in the Silver Street and Mill Lane area, including the one that the press still occupies, the Pitt Building, built for the press and in honour of William Pitt the Younger.
Under the stewardship of C. J. Clay, University Printer from 1854 to 1882, the press increased the size and scale of its academic and educational publishing operation. An important factor in this increase was the inauguration of its list of schoolbooks. During Clay's administration, the press undertook a sizeable co-publishing venture with Oxford: the Revised Version of the Bible, begun in 1870 and completed in 1885, it was in this period as well that the Syndics of the press turned down what became the Oxford English Dictionary—a proposal for, brought to Cambridge by James Murray before he turned to Oxford. The appointment of R. T. Wright as Secretary of the Press Syndicate in 1892 marked the beginning of the press's development as a modern publishing business with a defined editorial policy and administrative structure, it was Wright who devised the plan for one of the most distinctive Cambridge contributions to publishing—the Cambridge Histories. The Cambridge Modern History was published
Siege of Constantinople (626)
The Siege of Constantinople in 626 by the Sassanid Persians and Avars, aided by large numbers of allied Slavs, ended in a strategic victory for the Byzantines. The failure of the siege saved the Empire from collapse, combined with other victories achieved by Emperor Heraclius the previous year and in 627, enabled Byzantium to regain its territories and end the destructive Roman–Persian Wars by enforcing a treaty with borders status quo c. 590. In 602, Phocas overthrew Maurice, the incumbent Byzantine emperor, commenced a reign marked by atrocities and administrative incompetence; the new emperor's mismanagement left the Byzantine Empire vulnerable and unstable when the Sassanid king Khosrau II invaded, using the coup as a pretext for war. The Sassanid invasion was successful, with the Byzantines being driven into the Anatolian heartland. Phocas was overthrown by the son of the Exarch of Carthage, Heraclius. A general of astounding energy yet limited experience, Heraclius began undoing much of Phocas's damaging work.
Despite several counter-offensives into Mesopotamia, Heraclius was unable to stop his Persian enemies from laying siege to his capital where from Chalcedon they were able to launch their attack. From 14–15 May 626, riots in Constantinople against John Seismos occurred because he wanted to cancel the bread rations of the scholae or imperial guards and raise the cost of bread from 3 to 8 follis, he did this to conserve government resources. However, there were further disturbances in the city. Khosrau, seeing that a decisive counterattack was needed to defeat the Byzantines, recruited two new armies from all the able men, including foreigners. Shahin was entrusted with 50,000 men and stayed in Mesopotamia and Armenia to prevent Heraclius from invading Persia. Khosrau coordinated with the Khagan of the Avars so as to launch a coordinated attack on Constantinople from both European and Asiatic sides; the Persian army stationed themselves at Chalcedon, while the Avars placed themselves on the European side of Constantinople and destroyed the Aqueduct of Valens.
Because of the Byzantine navy's control of the Bosphorus strait, the Persians could not send troops to the European side to aid their ally. This reduced the effectiveness of the siege. Furthermore, the Persians and Avars had difficulties communicating across the guarded Bosphorus—though undoubtedly, there was some communication between the two forces; the defense of Constantinople was under the command of the patrician Bonus. Upon hearing the news, Heraclius split his army into three parts. Another part of the army was under the command of his brother Theodore and was sent to deal with Shahin, while the third and smallest part would remain under his own control, intending to raid the Persian heartland. On 29 June 626, a coordinated assault on the walls began. Inside the walls, some 12,000 well-trained Byzantine cavalry troops defended the city against the forces of some 80,000 Avars and Sclaveni, who were determined to remove all Roman imperial rule over Europe; the Persians had arrived in Chalcedon.
However, it was only when the Avars began moving forward heavy siege equipment towards the Theodosian Walls that a siege became clear. Despite continuous bombardment for a month, morale was high inside the walls of Constantinople because of Patriarch Sergius' religious fervor and his processions along the wall with the icon of the Virgin Mary, inspiring the belief that the Byzantines were under divine protection. Furthermore, the patriarch's cries for religious zeal among the peasantry around Constantinople was made more effective by the fact that they were facing heathens; every assault became a doomed effort. When the Avar-Slavic fleet and the Persian fleet were sunk in two different naval engagements, the attackers panicked and fled, abandoning the siege under the belief that divine intervention had won the day for Byzantium. On 7 August, a fleet of Persian rafts ferrying troops across the Bosphorus were surrounded and destroyed by Byzantine ships; the Slavs under the Avars attempted to attack the sea walls from across the Golden Horn, while the main Avar host attacked the land walls.
Patrician Bonus' galleys destroyed the Slavic boats. With the news that Theodore had decisively triumphed over Shahin, the Avars retreated to the Balkan hinterland within two days, never to threaten Constantinople again. Though the army of Shahrbaraz was still encamped at Chalcedon, the threat to Constantinople was over. In thanks for the lifting of the siege and the supposed divine protection of the Virgin Mary, the celebrated Akathist Hymn was written by an unknown author Patriarch Sergius or George of Pisidia; the loss in the siege came just after news had reached them of yet another Byzantine victory, where Heraclius's brother Theodore scored well against the Persian general Shahin. Furthermore, after the emperor showed Shahrbaraz intercepted letters from Khosrau ordering the Persian general's death, the latter switched to Heraclius' side. Shahrbaraz moved his army to northern Syria, where he could decide to support either Khosrau or Heraclius at a moment's notice. Still, with the neut
Anatolia
Anatolia known as Asia Minor, Asian Turkey, the Anatolian peninsula or the 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 Armenian Highlands to the east and the Aegean Sea to the west; 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. The eastern border of Anatolia is traditionally held to be a line between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Black Sea, bounded by the Armenian Highland to the east and Mesopotamia to the southeast. Thus, traditionally Anatolia is the territory that comprises the western two-thirds of the Asian part of Turkey. Nowadays, Anatolia is often considered to be synonymous with Asian Turkey, which comprises the entire country. By some definitions, the area called the Armenian highlands lies beyond the boundary of the Anatolian plateau.
The official name of this inland region is the Eastern Anatolia Region. The ancient inhabitants of Anatolia spoke the now-extinct Anatolian languages, which were replaced by the Greek language starting from classical antiquity and during the Hellenistic and Byzantine periods. Major Anatolian languages included Hittite and Lydian among other more poorly attested relatives; the Turkification of Anatolia began under the Seljuk Empire in the late 11th century and continued under the Ottoman Empire between the late 13th and early 20th centuries. However, various non-Turkic languages continue to be spoken by minorities in Anatolia today, including Kurdish, Neo-Aramaic, Arabic, Laz and Greek. Other ancient peoples in the region included Galatians, Assyrians, Cimmerians, as well as Ionian and Aeolian Greeks. Traditionally, Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to an indefinite line running from the Gulf of Alexandretta to the Black Sea, coterminous with the Anatolian Plateau; this traditional geographical definition is used, for example, in the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary, Under this definition, Anatolia is bounded to the east by the Armenian Highlands, 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 and the Mesopotamian plain. Following the Armenian genocide, Ottoman Armenia was renamed "Eastern Anatolia" by the newly established Turkish government. Vazken Davidian terms the expanded use of "Anatolia" to apply to territory referred to as Armenia an "ahistorical imposition", notes that a growing body of literature is uncomfortable with referring to the Ottoman East as "Eastern Anatolia". Most archeological sources consider the boundary of Anatolia to be Turkey's eastern border; the highest mountains in "Eastern Anatolia" are Mount Ararat. The Euphrates, Araxes and Murat rivers connect the Armenian plateau to the South Caucasus and the Upper Euphrates Valley. Along with the Çoruh, these rivers are the longest in "Eastern Anatolia"; the oldest known reference to Anatolia – as “Land of the Hatti” – appears on Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets from the period of the Akkadian Empire. The first recorded name the Greeks used for the Anatolian peninsula, Ἀσία echoed the name of the Assuwa league in western Anatolia.
As the name "Asia" broadened its scope to apply to other areas east of the Mediterranean, Greeks in Late Antiquity came to use the name Μικρὰ Ἀσία or Asia Minor, meaning "Lesser Asia" to refer to present-day Anatolia. The English-language name Anatolia itself derives from the Greek ἀνατολή meaning “the East” or more “sunrise”; the precise reference of this term has varied over time originally referring to the Aeolian and Dorian colonies on the west coast of Asia Minor. In the Byzantine Empire, the Anatolic Theme was a theme covering the western and central parts of Turkey's present-day Central Anatolia Region; the term "Anatolia" is Medieval Latin. The modern Turkish form of Anatolia, derives from the Greek name Aνατολή; the Russian male name Anatoly and the French Anatole share the same linguistic origin. The term "Anatolia" referred to a northwestern Byzantine province. By the 12th century Europeans had started referring to Anatolia as Turchia, it has also been called "Asia Minor". In earlier times, it was called" Rûm" by the Seljuqs.
During the era of the Ottoman Empire mapmakers outside the Empire referred to the mountainous plateau in eastern Anatolia as Armenia. Other contemporary sources called the same area Kurdistan. Geographers have variously used the terms east Anatolian plateau and Armenian plateau to refer to the region, although the territory encompassed by each term overlaps with the other. According to archaeologist Lori Khatchadourian this difference in terminology "primarily result from the shifting political fortunes and cultural trajectories of the region since the nineteenth century."Turkey's First Geography Congress in 1941 created two regions to the east of the Gulf of Iskenderun-Black Sea line named the Eastern Anatolia Region and the Southeastern Anatolia Region, the former corresponding to the weste
Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628
The Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 was the final and most devastating of the series of wars fought between the Byzantine Empire and the Sasanian Empire of Iran. The previous war between the two powers had ended in 591 after Emperor Maurice helped the Sasanian king Khosrow II regain his throne. In 602 Maurice was murdered by his political rival Phocas. Khosrow proceeded ostensibly to avenge the death of Maurice; this became a decades-long conflict, the longest war in the series, was fought throughout the Middle East: in Egypt, the Levant, the Caucasus, Armenia, the Aegean Sea and before the walls of Constantinople itself. While the Persians proved successful during the first stage of the war from 602 to 622, conquering much of the Levant, several islands in the Aegean Sea and parts of Anatolia, the ascendancy of emperor Heraclius in 610 led, despite initial setbacks, to a status quo ante bellum. Heraclius' campaigns in Iranian lands from 622 to 626 forced the Persians onto the defensive, allowing his forces to regain momentum.
Allied with the Avars and Slavs, the Persians made a final attempt to take Constantinople in 626, but were defeated there. In 627 Heraclius invaded the heartland of Persia. A civil war broke out in Persia, during which the Persians killed their king, sued for peace. By the end of the conflict, both sides had exhausted their human and material resources and achieved little, they were vulnerable to the sudden emergence of the Islamic Rashidun Caliphate, whose forces invaded both empires only a few years after the war. The Muslim forces swiftly conquered the entire Sasanian Empire and deprived the Byzantine Empire of its territories in the Levant, the Caucasus and North Africa. Over the following centuries, much of what remained of the Byzantine Empire, the entire Sasanian Empire, would come under Muslim rule. After decades of inconclusive fighting, Emperor Maurice ended the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 572–591 by helping the exiled Sasanian prince Khosrow, the future Khosrow II, to regain his throne from the usurper Bahrām Chobin.
In return the Sasanians ceded to the Byzantines parts of northeastern Mesopotamia, much of Persian Armenia and Caucasian Iberia, though the exact details are not clear. More for the Byzantine economy, they no longer had to pay tribute to the Sasanians. Emperor Maurice began new campaigns in the Balkans to stop incursions by the Slavs and Avars; the magnanimity and campaigns of emperor Tiberius II had eliminated the surplus in the treasury left from the time of Justin II. In order to generate a reserve in the treasury, Maurice instituted strict fiscal measures and cut army pay; the final mutiny in 602 resulted from Maurice ordering his troops in the Balkans to live off the land during the winter. The army proclaimed a Thracian centurion, as emperor. Maurice attempted to defend Constantinople by arming the Blues and the Greens – supporters of the two major chariot racing teams of the Hippodrome – but they proved ineffective. Maurice was soon intercepted and killed by the soldiers of Phocas. Upon the murder of Maurice, governor of the Byzantine province of Mesopotamia, rebelled against Phocas and seized Edessa, a major city of the province.
Emperor Phocas instructed general Germanus to besiege Edessa, prompting Narses to request help from the Persian king Khosrow II. Khosrow, only too willing to help avenge Maurice, his "friend and father-", used Maurice's death as an excuse to attack the Byzantine Empire, trying to reconquer Armenia and Mesopotamia. General Germanus died in battle against the Persians. An army sent by Phocas against Khosrow was defeated near Dara in Upper Mesopotamia, leading to the capture of that important fortress in 605. Narses escaped from Leontius, the eunuch appointed by Phocas to deal with him, but when Narses attempted to return to Constantinople to discuss peace terms, Phocas ordered him seized and burned alive; the death of Narses along with the failure to stop the Persians damaged the prestige of Phocas' military regime. In 608, general Heraclius the Elder, Exarch of Africa, urged on by Priscus, the Count of the Excubitors and son-in-law of Phocas. Heraclius proclaimed himself and his son of the same name as consuls—thereby implicitly claiming the imperial title—and minted coins with the two wearing the consular robes.
At about the same time rebellions began in Roman Syria and Palaestina Prima in the wake of Heraclius' revolt. In 609 or 610 the Patriarch of Antioch, Anastasius II, died. Many sources claim that the Jews were involved in the fighting, though it is unclear where they were members of factions and where they were opponents of Christians. Phocas responded by appointing Bonus. Bonus punished the Greens, a horse racing party, in Antioch for their role in the violence in 609. Heraclius the Elder sent his nephew Nicetas to attack Egypt. Bonus was defeated by the latter outside Alexandria. In 610, Nicetas succeeded in capturing the province, establishing a power base there with the help of Patriarch John the Almsgiver, elected with the help of Nicetas; the main rebel force was employed in a naval invasion of Constantinople, led by the younger Heraclius, to be the new emperor. Organized resistance against Heraclius soon collapsed, Phocas was handed to him by the patrician Probos. Phocas was executed, though not before a celebrated exchange of comments between him and his successor:"Is it thus", asked Heraclius, "that you have governed the Empire?""Will you," replied Phocas, with unexpected spirit, "govern it any better?"
The elder Heraclius disappears soon afterward from sources dying, t
Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient Greek city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. Its ruins lie near the modern city of Antakya and lends the modern city its name. Antioch was founded near the end of the fourth century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals; the city's geographical and economic location benefited its occupants such features as the spice trade, the Silk Road, the Royal Road. It rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the Near East; the city was the capital of the Seleucid Empire until 63 B. C. when the Romans took control. From the early 4th century the city was the seat of the Count of the Orient, head of the regional administration of sixteen provinces, it was the main center of Hellenistic Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period. Antioch was one of the most important cities in the eastern Mediterranean of Rome's dominions, it covered 1,100 acres within the walls of which one quarter was mountain, leaving 750 acres about one-fifth the area of Rome within the Aurelian Walls.
Antioch was called "the cradle of Christianity" as a result of its longevity and the pivotal role that it played in the emergence of both Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity. The Christian New Testament asserts, it was one of the four cities of the Syrian tetrapolis, its residents were known as Antiochenes. The city was a metropolis of a quarter million people during Augustan times, but it declined to relative insignificance during the Middle Ages because of warfare, repeated earthquakes, a change in trade routes, which no longer passed through Antioch from the far east following the Mongol invasions and conquests. Two routes from the Mediterranean, lying through the Orontes gorge and the Beilan Pass, converge in the plain of the Antioch Lake and are met there by the road from the Amanian Gate and western Commagene, which descends the valley of the Karasu River to the Afrin River, the roads from eastern Commagene and the Euphratean crossings at Samosata and Apamea Zeugma, which descend the valleys of the Afrin and the Quweiq rivers, the road from the Euphratean ford at Thapsacus, which skirts the fringe of the Syrian steppe.
A single route proceeds south in the Orontes valley. The settlement called Meroe pre-dated Antioch. A shrine of the Semitic goddess Anat, called by Herodotus the "Persian Artemis", was located here; this site was included in the eastern suburbs of Antioch. There was a village on the spur of Mount Silpius named Iopolis; this name was always adduced as evidence by Antiochenes anxious to affiliate themselves to the Attic Ionians—an eagerness, illustrated by the Athenian types used on the city's coins. Io may have been a small early colony of trading Greeks. John Malalas mentions an archaic village, Bottia, in the plain by the river. Alexander the Great is said to have camped on the site of Antioch, dedicated an altar to Zeus Bottiaeus; this account is found only in the writings of Libanius, a 4th-century orator from Antioch, may be legend intended to enhance Antioch's status. But the story is not unlikely in itself. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, his generals divided up the territory. After the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, Seleucus I Nicator won the territory of Syria, he proceeded to found four "sister cities" in northwestern Syria, one of, Antioch, a city named in honor of his father Antiochus.
He is reputed to have built sixteen Antiochs. Seleucus founded Antioch on a site chosen through ritual means. An eagle, the bird of Zeus, had been given a piece of sacrificial meat and the city was founded on the site to which the eagle carried the offering. Seleucus did this on the 22nd day of the month of Artemisios in the twelfth year of his reign. Antioch soon rose above Seleucia Pieria to become the Syrian capital; the original city of Seleucus was laid out in imitation of the grid plan of Alexandria by the architect Xenarius. Libanius describes the first arrangement of this city; the citadel was on Mt. Silpius and the city lay on the low ground to the north, fringing the river. Two great colonnaded streets intersected in the centre. Shortly afterwards a second quarter was laid out on the east and by Antiochus I, from an expression of Strabo, appears to have been the native, as contrasted with the Greek, town, it was enclosed by a wall of its own. In the Orontes, north of the city, lay a large island, on this Seleucus II Callinicus began a third walled "city", finished by Antiochus III.
A fourth and last quarter was added by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. From west to east the whole was about 6 kilometres in diameter and a little less from north to south; this area included many large gardens. The new city was populated by a mix of local settlers that Athenians brought from the nearby city of Antigonia and Jews; the total free population of Antioch at its foundation has been estimated at between 17,000 and 25,000, not including slaves and native settlers. During the late Hellenistic period and Early Roman period, Antioch's population reached its peak of over 500,000 inhabitants and was the third largest city in the Empire after Rome and Alexandria. In the second half o
Khagan
Khagan or Qaghan is a title of imperial rank in the Turkic and some other languages, equal to the status of emperor and someone who rules a khaganate. The female equivalent is Khatun, it may be translated as Khan of Khans, equivalent to King of Kings. In modern Turkic, the title became Khaan with the'g' sound becoming silent or non-existent. Since the division of the Mongol Empire, emperors of the Yuan dynasty held the title of Khagan and their successors in Mongolia continued to have the title. Kağan and Kaan are common Turkish names in Turkey; the common western rendering as Great Khan, notably in the case of the Mongol Empire, is translation of Yekhe Khagan. The term is of unknown origin and a loanword from the Ruanruan language. According to Vovin the term comes from qaγan and was used in several languages in Turkic and Mongolic. Turkic and Para-Mongolic origin has been suggested by a number of scholars including Ramstedt, Shiratori and Doerfer, was first used by the Xianbei. While Sinor believes "qaγan/qapγan" is an intensification of "qan" just as qap-qara is an intensification of "qara" - black, in Turkic, with the eventual loss of the "p".
Shiratori rejects a Turkic etymology, instead supporting a Mongolic origin for both "qan" and the female form "qatun". According to Vovin, the word *qa-qan "great-qan" is of non-Altaic origin, but instead linked to Yeniseian *qε> "big" or "great". The origin of qan itself is harder according to Vovin, he says that the origin for the word qan is not found in any reconstructed proto-language and was used by Turkic, Mongolic and Korean people with variations from kan, qan and hwan. A relation exists to the Yeniseian words *qij or *qaj meaning "ruler", it maybe impossible to prove the ultimate origin of the title, but Vovin says: "Thus, it seems to be quite that the ultimate source of both qaγan and qan can be traced back to Xiong-nu and Yeniseian". The title was first seen in a speech between 283 and 289, when the Xianbei chief Tuyuhun tried to escape from his younger stepbrother Murong Hui, began his route from the Liaodong Peninsula to the areas of Ordos Desert. In the speech one of Murong's generals, addressed him as kehan.
The Rouran Khaganate was the first people to use the titles Khagan and Khan for their emperors, replacing the Chanyu of the Xiongnu, whom Grousset and others assume to be Turkic. The Rouran are assumed to be a "non-Altaic" group; the Avar Khaganate, who may have included Rouran elements after the Göktürks crushed the Rouran ruling Mongolia used this title. The Avars invaded Europe, for over a century ruled the Carpathian region. Westerners Latinized the title "Khagan" into "Gaganus", "Cagan", or "Cacano"; the Secret History of the Mongols, written for that dynasty distinguishes Khagan and Khan: only Genghis Khan and his ruling descendants are called Khagan, while other rulers are referred to as Khan. Khagan or Khaan refers to Emperor or King in the Mongolian language, Yekhe Khagan means Great Khagan or Grand Emperor; the Mongol Empire began to split politically with the Toluid Civil War during 1260–1264 and the death of Kublai Khan in 1294, but the term Ikh Khagan was still used by the emperors of the Yuan dynasty, who assumed the role of Emperor of China, after the fall of the Yuan in China it continued to be used during the Northern Yuan dynasty in Mongolia homeland.
Thus, the Yuan is sometimes referred to as the Empire of the Great Khan, coexisting with the independent Mongol khanates in the west, including the Chagatai Khanate and Golden Horde. Only the Ilkhanate recognized the Yuan's overlordship as allies; because Kublai founded the Yuan, the members of the other branches of the Borjigin could take part in the election of a new Khagan as the supporters of one or other of the contestants, but they could not enter the contest as candidates themselves. Yuan emperors made peace with the three western khanates of the Mongol Empire and were considered as their nominal suzerain; the nominal supremacy, while based on nothing like the same foundations as that of the earlier Khagans, did last for a few decades, until the Yuan dynasty fell in China. After the breakdown of Mongol Empire and the fall of the Yuan dynasty in the mid-14th century, the Mongols turned into a political turmoil. Dayan Khan once revived Emperor's authority and recovered its reputation in Mongolia, but with the distribution of his empire among his sons and relatives as fiefs it again caused decentralized rule.
The last Khagan of the Chahars, Ligdan Khan, died in 1634 while fighting the Qing dynasty founded by the Manchu people. In contemporary Mongolian language the words "Khaan" and "Khan" have different meanings, while English language does not differentiate between them; the title is used as a generic term for a king or emperor, as in "Испанийн хаан Хуан Карлос". The early Khagans of the Mongol Empire were: Genghis Khan Ögedei Khan Güyük Khan
