Loulon
Loulon ( el, Λοῦλον), in Arabic known as Lu'lu'a ( ar, لولوة), was a fortress near the modern village of Hasangazi in Turkey. The site was of strategic importance as it controlled the northern exit of the Cilician Gates. In the 8th–9th centuries it was located on the border between the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Caliphate and played a prominent role in the Arab–Byzantine wars of the period, changing hands several times. Location The Scottish scholar W. M. Ramsay identified the fortress as a 300-metre high steep hill fortress west of the modern village of Porsuk in the Çakit valley, but modern scholars identify it with the 2,100-metre tall rocky hill some 13 km north of Porsuk, lying between the modern villages of Çanakçi and Gedelli. The identification is supported by ruins of walls encompassing an area of 40 x 60 metres and traces of barracks and cisterns on the hilltop dating to the 9th–12th centuries, as well as by an unobstructed view to Hasan D ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Byzantine Beacon System
In the 9th century, during the Arab–Byzantine wars, the Byzantine Empire used a semaphore system of beacons to transmit messages from the border with the Abbasid Caliphate across Asia Minor to the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. According to the Byzantine sources (Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Theophanes Continuatus and Symeon Magister), the line of beacons began with the fortress of Loulon, on the northern exit of the Cilician Gates, and continued with Mt. Argaios (identified mostly with Keçikalesı on Hasan Dağı, but also with Erciyes Dağı near Caesarea), Mt. Samos or Isamos (unidentified, probably north of Lake Tatta), the fortress of Aigilon (unidentified, probably south of Dorylaion), Mt. Mamas (unidentified, Constantine Porphyrogenitus has Mysian Olympus instead), Mt. Kyrizos (somewhere between Lake Ascania and the Gulf of Kios, possibly Katerlı Dağı according to W. M. Ramsay), Mt. Mokilos above Pylae on the southern shore of the Gulf of Nicomedia (identified by ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hasangazi
Hasangazi (formerly Lu'lu'a, Lulu, or Lüle) is a village of the district Ulukışla in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey. Located 16 km east of Ulukışla and 70 km south of Nigde, the village has a population of 887. The town is rumored to be named after a war veteran of the Turkish War of Independence but its name was stated as Esengazi in old Ottoman documents a few centuries before the war. In recent years, the town has experienced a seasonal population increase as residents of Mersin and Adana have fled the heat of the cities. The village is served by the Turkish State Railways station ''Gümüş''. History The village lies near the Byzantine fortress of Loulon, known in Arabic as Lu'lu'a. Between 1216 and 1218, Kaykaus I captured the town from the Armenians. The Seljuqs strengthened its fortifications and made it an important way station on the road between Sis and Kayseri Kayseri (; el, Καισάρεια) is a large Industrialisation, indus ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Faustinopolis
Faustinopolis ( grc, Φαυστινόπολις), also Colonia Faustinopolis and Halala, was an ancient city in the south of Cappadocia, about 20 km south of Tyana. It was named after the empress Faustina, the wife of Marcus Aurelius, who died there in a village, which her husband, by establishing a colony in it, raised to the rank of a town under the name of Faustinopolis. Hierocles assigns the place to Cappadocia Secunda, and it is mentioned also in the Antonine and Jerusalem Itineraries. The town was close to the defiles of the Cilician Gates, and was likely situated at modern-day Toraman, Niğde Province, Turkey. Following the Muslim conquests and the subsequent Arab raids, the site was abandoned for the nearby fortress of Loulon. Faustinopolis is a titular see of the Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Theophilos (emperor)
Theophilos ( gr, Θεόφιλος; sometimes Latinized or Anglicized as Theophilus or Theophilo; c. 812 20 January 842) was the Byzantine Emperor from 829 until his death in 842. He was the second emperor of the Amorian dynasty and the last emperor to support iconoclasm.Timothy E. Gregory (2010). ''A History of Byzantium''. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. p. 227. Theophilos personally led the armies in his long war against the Arabs, beginning in 831. Life Early Theophilos was the son of the Byzantine Phrygian Greek Emperor Michael II and his wife Thekla, and the godson of Emperor Leo V the Armenian. Michael II crowned Theophilos co-emperor in 821. The date is almost universally given as 12 May 821 (Whitsunday), although this is not really corroborated by any source (another possible date is 24 March, Easter). Unlike his father, Theophilos received an extensive education from John Hylilas, the grammarian, and was a great admirer of music and art. On 2 October 829, Theophilos suc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tyana
Tyana ( grc, Τύανα), earlier known as Tuwana (Hieroglyphic Luwian: ; Akkadian: ) and Tuwanuwa ( Hittite: ) was an ancient city in the Anatolian region of Cappadocia, in modern Kemerhisar, Niğde Province, Central Anatolia, Turkey. It was the capital of a Luwian-speaking Neo-Hittite kingdom in the 1st millennium BC. Name The name of the city and the region, and later kingdom, surrounding it was in the Hittite and Neo-Hittite periods. By the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the city was named Tyana, which was derived from its earlier Hittite name. Location The location of Tyana corresponds to the modern-day town of Kemerhisar in Niğde Province, Turkey. The region around Tyana was known as Tyanitis, and it corresponded to roughly the same area as the former Iron Age kingdom of Tuwana, which extended to the Cilician Gates and the kingdom of Quwê in the south, and in the north was bordered by the region of Tabal, which is sometimes considered part of Tuwana. History Hitti ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tarsus, Mersin
Tarsus (Hittite language, Hittite: 𒋫𒅈𒊭 ; grc, Ταρσός, label=Ancient Greek, Greek ; xcl, Տարսոն, label=Old Armenian, Armenian ; ar, طَرسُوس ) is a historic city in south-central Turkey, inland from the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean. It is part of the Adana-Mersin metropolitan area, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in Turkey with a population of 3 million people. Tarsus forms an administrative district in the eastern part of Mersin Province, Mersin province and lies at the heart of the region. With a history going back over 6,000 years, Tarsus has long been an important stop for traders and a focal point of many civilisations. During the Roman Empire, it was the capital of the province of Cilicia (Roman province), Cilicia. It was the scene of the first meeting between Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and the birthplace of Paul the Apostle, St Paul the Apostle. Tarsus is home to one of Turkey's most famous high schools, the Tarsus American College ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cilicia
Cilicia (); el, Κιλικία, ''Kilikía''; Middle Persian: ''klkyʾy'' (''Klikiyā''); Parthian: ''kylkyʾ'' (''Kilikiyā''); tr, Kilikya). is a geographical region in southern Anatolia in Turkey, extending inland from the northeastern coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Cilicia has a population ranging over six million, concentrated mostly at the Cilicia plain. The region includes the provinces of Mersin, Adana, Osmaniye, along with parts of Hatay and Antalya. Geography Cilicia is extended along the Mediterranean coast east from Pamphylia to the Nur Mountains, which separates it from Syria. North and east of Cilicia lie the rugged Taurus Mountains that separate it from the high central plateau of Anatolia, which are pierced by a narrow gorge called in antiquity the Cilician Gates. Ancient Cilicia was naturally divided into Cilicia Trachea and Cilicia Pedias by the Limonlu River. Salamis, the city on the east coast of Cyprus, was included in its administrative jurisdiction. T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leo The Mathematician
Leo the Mathematician, the Grammarian or the Philosopher ( grc-gre, Λέων ὁ Μαθηματικός or ὁ Φιλόσοφος, ''Léōn ho Mathēmatikós'' or ''ho Philósophos''; – after January 9, 869) was a Byzantine philosophy, Byzantine philosopher and logician associated with the Macedonian Renaissance and the end of Byzantine Iconoclasm, the Second Byzantine Iconoclasm. His only preserved writings are some notes contained in manuscripts of Plato's dialogues. He has been called a "true Polymath, Renaissance man"Marcus Louis Rautman (2006), ''Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, ), 294–95. and "the cleverest man in Byzantium in the 9th century". He was archbishop of Thessalonica and later became the head of the Magnaura, Magnaura School of philosophy in Constantinople, where he taught Organon, Aristotelian logic. Life Leo was born in Thessaly, a cousin of the Patriarch of Constantinople, John VII of Constantinople, John the Gramma ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston, 2011. Having emerged in the 1st century, it is named after the Arabs, Arab people; the term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula, as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece. Since the 7th century, Arabic has been characterized by diglossia, with an opposition between a standard Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige language—i.e., Literary Arabic: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Classical Arabic—and diverse vernacular varieties, which serve as First language, mother tongues. Colloquial dialects vary significantly from MSA, impeding mutual intelligibility. MSA is only acquired through formal education and is not spoken natively. It is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Caliphate
A caliphate or khilāfah ( ar, خِلَافَة, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; ar, خَلِيفَة , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a leader of the entire Muslim world ( ummah). Historically, the caliphates were polities based on Islam which developed into multi-ethnic trans-national empires. During the medieval period, three major caliphates succeeded each other: the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), and the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258). In the fourth major caliphate, the Ottoman Caliphate, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire claimed caliphal authority from 1517. Throughout the history of Islam, a few other Muslim states, almost all hereditary monarchies such as the Mamluk Sultanate (Cairo) and Ayyubid Caliphate, have claimed to be caliphates. The first caliphate, the Rashidun Caliphate, was establi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Michael III
Michael III ( grc-gre, Μιχαήλ; 9 January 840 – 24 September 867), also known as Michael the Drunkard, was Byzantine Emperor from 842 to 867. Michael III was the third and traditionally last member of the Amorian (or Phrygian) dynasty. He was given the disparaging epithet ''the Drunkard'' () by the hostile historians of the succeeding Macedonian dynasty, but modern historical research has rehabilitated his reputation to some extent, demonstrating the vital role his reign played in the resurgence of Byzantine power in the 9th century. He was also the youngest person to bear the imperial title, as well as the youngest to succeed as senior emperor. Life Early life and regency Michael was the youngest child of the emperor Theophilos and his empress Theodora. His precise date of birth is uncertain, but the balance of available evidence supports a birthdate in early 840, probably on 9 or 10 January. He was crowned co-emperor soon after, probably on 16 May of the same year ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Macedonian Dynasty
The Macedonian dynasty (Greek: Μακεδονική Δυναστεία) ruled the Byzantine Empire from 867 to 1056, following the Amorian dynasty. During this period, the Byzantine state reached its greatest extent since the Muslim conquests, and the Macedonian Renaissance in letters and arts began. The dynasty was named after its founder, Basil I the Macedonian who came from the theme of Macedonia, which, at the time, was part of Thrace. Origins The dynasty's ethnic origin is unknown, and has been a subject of debate. During Basil's reign, an elaborate genealogy was produced that purported that his ancestors were not mere peasants, as everyone believed, but descendants of the Arsacid (Arshakuni) kings of Armenia, and also of Constantine the Great. Some Persian writers such as Hamza al-Isfahani or Al-Tabari, called Basil a ''Saqlabi'', an ethnogeographic term that usually denoted the Slavs, but it can be interpreted as a generic term encompassing the inhabitants of the region ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |