Byzantine Empire

I

Introduction

Byzantine Empire, eastern part of the Roman Empire, which survived after the break-up of the Western Empire in the 5th century ad. Its capital was Constantinople (now İstanbul, Turkey).

Constantinople became a capital of the Roman Empire in 330 after Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, founded it on the site of the ancient city of Byzantium and named it after himself. Only gradually did it develop into the true capital of the eastern Roman provinces, namely those areas of the empire in south-eastern Europe, south-western Asia, and the north-eastern corner of Africa, which included the present-day countries of the Balkan Peninsula, and western Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, Egypt, and the eastern part of Libya. Scholars have called the empire Byzantine after the ancient name of its capital, Byzantium, or the Eastern Roman Empire, but to contemporaries and in official terminology of the time, it was simply Roman, and its subjects were Romans (Greek Rhomaioi). The main language was Greek, although some of the empire’s inhabitants spoke Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and other local languages during its long history (330-1453). Its emperors regarded the geographical limits of the Roman Empire as theirs, and they looked to Rome for their traditions, symbols, and institutions. The empire, ruled by an emperor (Greek basileus) without any formal constitution, slowly formed a synthesis of late Roman institutions, orthodox Christianity, and Greek language and culture.

II

Early Period

Constantine established precedents for the harmony of Church and imperial authorities that persisted throughout the history of the empire. These included his creation of a successful monetary system based on the gold solidus, or nomisma, which lasted until the middle of the 11th century. The commercial prosperity of the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries enabled many ancient cities to flourish. Large estates dominated the rural countryside, and while heavy taxation resulted in much abandonment of land, agriculture remained the empire’s principal source of wealth. Church and emperor acquired vast landed estates thus becoming the empire’s largest landholders. Rigorous imperial regulation of the purity and supply of precious metals, as well as the organization of commerce and artisanship, characterized economic life.

Emperor Justinian I and his wife, Theodora, attempted to restore the former majesty, intellectual quality, and geographic limits of the Roman Empire. Between 534 and 565, they reconquered North Africa, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and parts of Spain. This effort, however, together with substantial expenses incurred in erecting public buildings and churches, such as Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople, overstrained the empire’s resources, while plagues reduced its population.

III

The Empire Besieged

The empire had survived the migrations and raids of the Goths and Huns in the 5th and 6th centuries and had established a reasonably secure eastern frontier against the Sasanian Persian Empire, but it could not recover, hold, and govern the entire Mediterranean world. During the second half of the 6th century the Lombards invaded and gradually occupied much of former Byzantine Italy, except for Rome, Ravenna, Naples, and the far south, while Turkic Avars raided and depopulated much of the Byzantine Balkans.

Many features of the empire and its culture changed during the 7th century. Most of the Balkans were lost to the Avars and Slavic tribes, who resettled abandoned sites. Meanwhile, the assassination of Maurice (reigned 582-602), the first Byzantine emperor to meet a violent death, led to civil and external war. Emperor Heraclius finally terminated a long series of wars with the Persians by a decisive victory in 628 and the recovery of Persian-occupied Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Exhaustion from this struggle and bitter religious disputes between rival Christian sects weakened Byzantine defences and morale, leaving the empire ill-prepared to face another danger in the decade that followed. Between 634 and 642, Arabs, inspired by a new religion, Islam, conquered Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Constantinople weathered major Arab sieges in the 670s and in 717-718, and Byzantine Asia Minor survived almost annual Arab raids. By a process that remains controversial among historians, the armies of the Byzantine Empire were transformed into an elite expeditionary guard named tagmata and into military districts called themes (themata). Each theme was commanded by a strategos, or general, with civil and military authority over his district; the soldiers of thematic armies acquired tax-exempt lands and preserved the core of the empire while avoiding the ruinous drain of cash that had overstrained the salaried armies of the period before the Arab invasions. Urban life and commerce declined except in Salonica (in present-day Greece) and Constantinople. Warfare and resulting insecurity inhibited agriculture and education. The empire, with limited resources, could no longer maintain the full dimensions, infrastructure, and complexity of the late Roman Empire. Nevertheless, it managed to endure and adapt to its straitened circumstances.

IV

Age of Reconquest

Beginning in the 9th century, the Byzantine Empire experienced a major recovery that took several forms. The Muslim offensive halted on the eastern frontier, both because of the decline of the caliphate and because of the ingenuity of Byzantine strategy. Between the early 10th and 11th centuries, the empire’s armies regained territory in south-eastern Asia Minor. Lands lost to the Slavs in Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace were reconquered and reorganized. The recovery peaked under the long-reigning Macedonian dynasty, which began in 867 under its founder, Emperor Basil I, and lasted until 1081. Intellectual life revived and was accompanied by a conscious return to Classical models in art and literature: ancient manuscripts were copied and summarized; encyclopedias and other reference works were compiled; and mathematics, astronomy, and literature received new attention. External trade also intensified in the Mediterranean and Black seas.

Bulgaria declined and was occupied by Byzantine armies in the 970s, while these armies also reconquered land south-east of the Taurus Mountains from the Muslims, including parts of northern Mesopotamia, northern Syria, and the northern Syrian coast.

The greatest Macedonian emperor was Basil II, who vigorously repressed (1014) a lengthy Bulgarian rebellion and expanded his control of the formerly independent Armenian and Georgian principalities. His efforts, like those of his predecessors, ultimately failed to reverse the growing concentration of land in the hands of a few individuals and the Church. Although he replaced many older families with a new group of loyal families, their growing wealth and power ultimately damaged the revenues, authority, personnel, and military resources of the state.

Following the death of Basil II, the empire enjoyed economic expansion and prosperity but suffered from a series of mediocre emperors who neglected new technological, cultural, and economic developments in Western Europe and the Islamic world while the army deteriorated. The Seljuk Turks, after conducting a series of devastating raids in the empire’s eastern territories, crushed an imperial army at the Battle of Manzikert (1071), near Lake Van (eastern Turkey), and overran most of Byzantine Asia Minor. The old thematic armies had decayed. Meanwhile, the Byzantines lost their last foothold in Italy and were alienated from the Christian West by the schism of 1054 between the Orthodox Church and the papacy.