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Centenaria (plant)
A centenarium is a type of Ancient Roman fortified farmhouse in the Limes Tripolitanus. It is called even in the plural ''centenaria'', because in the Limes Tripolitanus there were more than 2000 of these "fortifications", connected to create a defensive system against desert tribe raids. History The first ''centenaria'' were built during the reign of Trajan and during Septimius Severus expansions of Roman Libya and Africa Proconsularis, when the Limes Tripolitanus was established. From around the time of disbandment of the Legio III Augusta in 238 AD, legionaries built around two thousand ''centenaria'' in the areas around Leptis Magna and Sabratha. Examples remain at Gherait esh-Shergia and Gasr Banat. Some were characterized by the presence of paleochristian churches. Indeed, Leptis Magna, the main city in Roman Tripolitania, prospered mainly because Rome stopped bandits from plundering the countryside. But even because the Roman Empire – mainly under Trajan and Sep ...
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Wadi Buzra
Wadi ( ar, وَادِي, wādī), alternatively ''wād'' ( ar, وَاد), North African Arabic Oued, is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley. In some instances, it may refer to a wet (ephemeral) riverbed that contains water only when heavy rain occurs. Etymology The term ' is very widely found in Arabic toponyms. Some Spanish toponyms are derived from Andalusian Arabic where ' was used to mean a permanent river, for example: Guadalcanal from ''wādī al-qanāl'' ( ar, وَادِي الْقَنَال, "river of refreshment stalls"), Guadalajara from ''wādī al-ḥijārah'' ( ar, وَادِي الْحِجَارَة, "river of stones"), or Guadalquivir, from ''al-wādī al-kabīr'' ( ar, اَلْوَادِي الْكَبِير, "the great river"). General morphology and processes Wadis are located on gently sloping, nearly flat parts of deserts; commonly they begin on the distal portions of alluvial fans and extend to inland sabkhas or dry lakes. In basin and ra ...
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Gasr Banat
Gasr Banat or Gasr Isawi is an archaeological site near Bani Walid in Libya and the location of an Ancient Roman centenarium or "perched" oppidum. The area is also used as a semi-permanent camp for nomads. It was studied by Graeme Barker in 1984. Evidence from pottery found around the site suggests the date of construction was in the third century CE. The centenarium has a striking resemblance to one in Gherait esh-Shergia north of Wadi Nefud. There is an ancient temple-type mausoleum A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A mausoleum without the person's remains is called a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be consid ... dating to the same period as the centenarium in the valley, which contains a burial chamber decorated with fish. There are also remains of a Roman quarry and dams in the nearby wadi. This particular centenarium was used frequently for sever ...
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Africa (Roman Province)
Africa Proconsularis was a Roman province on the northern African coast that was established in 146 BC following the defeat of Carthage in the Third Punic War. It roughly comprised the territory of present-day Tunisia, the northeast of Algeria, and the coast of western Libya along the Gulf of Sirte. The territory was originally inhabited by Berber people, known in Latin as ''Mauri'' indigenous to all of North Africa west of Egypt; in the 9th century BC, Phoenicians built settlements along the Mediterranean Sea to facilitate shipping, of which Carthage rose to dominance in the 8th century BC until its conquest by the Roman Republic. It was one of the wealthiest provinces in the western part of the Roman Empire, second only to Italy. Apart from the city of Carthage, other large settlements in the province were Hadrumetum (modern Sousse, Tunisia), capital of Byzacena, and Hippo Regius (modern Annaba, Algeria). History Rome's first province in northern Africa was established ...
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Centurion
A centurion (; la, centurio , . la, centuriones, label=none; grc-gre, κεντυρίων, kentyríōn, or ) was a position in the Roman army during classical antiquity, nominally the commander of a century (), a military unit of around 80 legionaries. In a Roman legion, centuries were grouped into cohorts and commanded by their senior-most centurion. The prestigious first cohort was led by the ''primus pilus'', the most senior centurion in the legion and its fourth-in-command who was next in line for promotion to Praefectus Castrorum, and the primi ordines who were the centurions of the first cohort. A centurion's symbol of office was the vine staff, with which they disciplined even Roman citizens, who were otherwise legally protected from corporal punishment by the Porcian Laws. Centurions also served in the Roman navy. After the 107 BC Marian reforms of Gaius Marius, centurions were professional officers. In Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Byzantine army's cen ...
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Gasr
A Gasr (plural ''Gsur'') is a fortified building found predominantly in Libya. There is much conjecture about their relation to centenarium built by invading Ancient Roman In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ... forces. References {{Reflist Geography of Libya Ancient Libya Tripolitania ...
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Suq Al-Awty
A bazaar () or souk (; also transliterated as souq) is a marketplace consisting of multiple small stalls or shops, especially in the Middle East, the Balkans, North Africa and India. However, temporary open markets elsewhere, such as in the West, might also designate themselves as bazaars. The ones in the Middle East were traditionally located in vaulted or covered streets that had doors on each end and served as a city's central marketplace. Street markets are the European and North American equivalents. The term ''bazaar'' originates from Persian, where it referred to a town's public market district. The term bazaar is sometimes also used to refer to the "network of merchants, bankers and craftsmen" who work in that area. The term ''souk'' comes from Arabic and refers to marketplaces in the Middle East and North Africa. Evidence for the existence of bazaars or souks dates to around 3,000 BCE. Although the lack of archaeological evidence has limited detailed studies of the e ...
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Villa
A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became small farming compounds, which were increasingly fortified in Late Antiquity, sometimes transferred to the Church for reuse as a monastery. Then they gradually re-evolved through the Middle Ages into elegant upper-class country homes. In the Early Modern period, any comfortable detached house with a garden near a city or town was likely to be described as a villa; most survivals have now been engulfed by suburbia. In modern parlance, "villa" can refer to various types and sizes of residences, ranging from the suburban semi-detached double villa to, in some countries, especially around the Mediterranean, residences of above average size in the countryside. Roman Roman villas included: * the ''villa urbana'', a suburban or country seat t ...
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Arab Conquest Of North Africa
The Muslim conquest of the Maghreb ( ar, الْفَتْحُ الإسلَامِيُّ لِلْمَغرِب) continued the century of rapid Muslim conquests following the death of Muhammad in 632 and into the Byzantine-controlled territories of Northern Africa. In a series of three stages, the conquest of the Maghreb commenced in 647 and concluded in 709 with the Byzantine Empire losing its last remaining strongholds to the then-Umayyad Caliphate under Caliph Al Walid Ibn Abdul Malik. By 642 AD, under Caliph Umar, Arab Muslim forces had laid control of Mesopotamia (638 AD), Syria (641 AD), Egypt (642 AD), and had invaded Armenia (642 AD), all territories previously split between the warring Byzantine and Sasanian empires, and were concluding their conquest of the Persian Empire with their defeat of the Persian army at the Battle of Nahāvand. It was at this point that Arab military expeditions into North African regions west of Egypt were first launched, continuing for years and ...
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Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire remained the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. The terms "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" were coined after the end of the realm; its citizens continued to refer to their empire as the Roman Empire, and to themselves as Romans—a term which Greeks continued to use for themselves into Ottoman times. Although the Roman state continued and its traditions were maintained, modern historians prefer to differentiate the Byzantine Empire from Ancient Rome a ...
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Romanitas
''Romanitas'' is the collection of political and cultural concepts and practices by which the Romans defined themselves. It is a Latin word, first coined in the third century AD, meaning "Roman-ness" and has been used by modern historians as shorthand to refer to Roman identity and self-image. Literal meaning and origin ''Romanitas'' means, as a rough approximation, ''Roman-ness'' in Latin, although it has also been translated as "Romanism, the Roman way or manner". The term, not common in Roman sources, was first coined by the 3rd century Roman writer Tertullian, an early Christian from North Africa, in his work ''De Pallio''. Tertullian used the term pejoratively to refer to those in his native Carthage who aped Roman culture. Concepts behind literal meaning ''Romanitas'' is used to refer to the collection of political and cultural concepts and practices defining what it is to be a Roman. A notable part of Roman cultural identity was based on being part of a political and relig ...
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Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus as the first Roman emperor to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a Principate with Italia as the metropole of its provinces and the city of Rome as its sole capital. The Empire was later ruled by multiple emperors who shared control over the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The city of Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until AD 476 when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople following the capture of the Western capital of Ravenna by the Germanic barbarians. The adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire in AD 380 and the fall of the Western ...
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