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Michael Maurex
Maurex or Maurikas ( el, Μαύρηξ/Μαυρίκας) was a Byzantine naval commander active in the latter half of the 11th century, chiefly in the Byzantine–Norman Wars. His identity is not certain, as several different people are habitually identified as the same person: a "Maurex" who was a wealthy sailor and magnate from Heraclea Pontica, an admiral called in Latin sources Mambrita or Mambrica who was active against the Normans in the 1060s and 1080s, and Michael Maurex, a general and governor known through his seals. According to Nikephoros Bryennios, Maurex was of humble origin, a native of Heraclea Pontica, and extremely experienced in naval matters. This made him, in Bryennios's words, "indispensable" to the Byzantine Empire, and he was given many gifts by the emperors, amassing a huge fortune. The general Michael Maurex is first attested in as carrying the lowly dignity of ''ostiarios'', and a number of seals trace his gradual advancement, to ''hypatos'' and ''patrikio ...
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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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Proedros
''Proedros'' ( el, πρόεδρος, "president") was a senior Byzantine court and ecclesiastic title in the 10th to mid-12th centuries. The female form of the title is ''proedrissa'' (προέδρισσα). Court dignity The title was created in the 960s by Nikephoros II Phokas and was first awarded to Basil Lekapenos, the eunuch '' parakoimōmenos''. It was placed very high in the court hierarchy, coming immediately below the position of the '' zostē patrikia'' and before the ''magistros'', meaning that it was the most senior non-imperial title open to males. The title apparently continued to be restricted to eunuchs until the mid-11th century, when it was opened up to the wider aristocracy and extensively awarded. The holder of this dignity was also the president of the Senate (), and the term ''proedros'' was often used to denote precedence in other offices, e.g. ''proedros'' of the ''notarioi'' for the '' prōtonotarios''. The title was widely awarded in the 11th century, aft ...
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Castellaneta
Castellaneta (Tarantino: ) is a city and ''comune'' in the province of Taranto in the Apulia region of Southern Italy, about from Taranto. Located in a territory spanning from the Murgia to the Ionian Sea, characterized by numerous ''gravina'' (ravines), it is part of the Comunità Montana della Murgia Tarantina (Tarentine Murgia Mountain Community). History Human settlements were present in the area since the Bronze Age (3rd–2nd millennium BC), and it was later probably settled by Sicels, Messapii and Iapyges. According to a theory, a fortified city (Castania in Latin) was founded in 550 and grew in size when the population of neighbouring cities fled there from Saracen attacks. Other historians maintain instead that it was a Greek colony which existed until the 8th century. When the Saracens destroyed it, the inhabitants joined in a ''Castellum Unitum'' (United Castle) on the hills, whence the current name. Whatever its origin, Castellaneta was conquered by the Normans ...
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Taranto
Taranto (, also ; ; nap, label= Tarantino, Tarde; Latin: Tarentum; Old Italian: ''Tarento''; Ancient Greek: Τάρᾱς) is a coastal city in Apulia, Southern Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Taranto, serving as an important commercial port as well as the main Italian naval base. Founded by Spartans in the 8th century BC during the period of Greek colonisation, Taranto was among the most important in Magna Graecia, becoming a cultural, economic and military power that gave birth to philosophers, strategists, writers and athletes such as Archytas, Aristoxenus, Livius Andronicus, Heracleides, Iccus, Cleinias, Leonidas, Lysis and Sosibius. By 500 BC, the city was among the largest in the world, with a population estimated up to 300,000 people. The seven-year rule of Archytas marked the apex of its development and recognition of its hegemony over other Greek colonies of southern Italy. During the Norman period, it became the capital of the Principality of ...
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Bari
Bari ( , ; nap, label= Barese, Bare ; lat, Barium) is the capital city of the Metropolitan City of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic Sea, southern Italy. It is the second most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy after Naples. It is a port and university city, as well as the city of Saint Nicholas. The city itself has a population of 315,284 inhabitants, over , while the urban area has 750,000 inhabitants. The metropolitan area has 1.3 million inhabitants. Bari is made up of four different urban sections. To the north is the closely built old town on the peninsula between two modern harbours, with the Basilica of Saint Nicholas, the Cathedral of San Sabino (1035–1171) and the Hohenstaufen Castle built for Frederick II, which is now also a major nightlife district. To the south is the Murat quarter (erected by Joachim Murat), the modern heart of the city, which is laid out on a rectangular grid-plan with a promenade on the sea and the majo ...
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Apulia
it, Pugliese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 = , demographics1_info2 = , demographics1_title3 = , demographics1_info3 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 = +01:00 , timezone1_DST = CEST , utc_offset1_DST = +02:00 , postal_code_type = , postal_code = , area_code_type = ISO 3166 code , area_code = IT-75 , blank_name_sec1 = GDP (nominal) , blank_info_sec1 = €76.6 billion (2018) , blank1_name_sec1 = GDP per capita , blank1_info_sec1 = €19,000 (2018) , blank2_name_sec1 = HDI (2018) , blank2_info_sec1 = 0.845 · 18th of 21 , blank_name_sec2 = NUTS Region , blank_info_sec2 = ...
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Geoffrey Of Taranto
Geoffrey, Godfrey, or Goffredo (died 1068x1072), called Lofredus in Latin, was an Italo-Norman military leader and the first Count of Taranto. He was the second son of Peter I of Trani, though of his elder brother, Amicus, nothing is known. He succeeded his father in the territory of Trani and was in control of it in 1064, though the city itself remained with the Byzantine Empire. His younger brother, Peter II, took the city from the Byzantines in 1054 and, taking advantage of Geoffrey's absence, took control of the patrimony. Geoffrey married a daughter of Drogo, lord of Mottola and Castellaneta. When Count Drogo of Apulia was assassinated in 1051, Geoffrey was put in charge of his young son, Richard. Geoffrey founded, probably on the site of an existing hermitage, the monastery of Santa Maria di Colonna, populating it with Cassinese monks and building it a defensive tower that still stands. In May 1063 Geoffrey conquered Taranto, which he eventually made his chief city. H ...
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Balkans
The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria. The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the northwest, the Ionian Sea in the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south, the Turkish Straits in the east, and the Black Sea in the northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala, , in the Rila mountain range, Bulgaria. The concept of the Balkan Peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. The term ''Balkan Peninsula'' was a synonym for Rumelia in the 19th century, the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire. It had a ge ...
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Breve Chronicon Northmannicum
The ''Breve chronicon Northmannicum'' or ''Little Norman Chronicle'' is a short, anonymous Latin chronicle of the Norman conquest of southern Italy, probably written in Apulia in the early twelfth-century. It covers the years from the first Norman "invasion" of Apulia in 1041 to the death of Robert Guiscard in 1085. Though once treated as an important source, its reliability and authenticity have been called into question by André Jacob, who showed that it is probably an eighteenth-century forgery by Pietro Polidori. According to John France, who seems unaware of Jacob's argument, it was based mainly on an oral tradition and was subsequently used as a source for both the ''Chronicon Amalfitanum'' and Romuald Guarna. The first edition of the ''Chronicon'' was published by Ludovico Antonio Muratori Lodovico Antonio Muratori (21 October 1672 – 23 January 1750) was an Italian historian, notable as a leading scholar of his age, and for his discovery of the Muratorian fragment, ...
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Alexander Kazhdan
Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan (russian: Алекса́ндр Петро́вич Кажда́н; 3 September 1922 – 29 May 1997) was a Soviet-American Byzantinist. Among his publications was the three-volume ''Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium'', a comprehensive encyclopedic work containing over than 5,000 entries. Early life and education Born in Moscow, Kazhdan was educated at the Pedagogical Institute of Ufa and the University of Moscow, where he studied with the historian of medieval England, Evgenii Kosminskii.Bryer, Anthony.Obituary: Alexander Kazhdan" ''The Independent''. 5 June 1997. Retrieved August 28, 2010. A post-war Soviet initiative to revive Russian-language Byzantine studies led Kazhdan to write a dissertation on the agrarian history of the late Byzantine empire (published in 1952 as ''Agrarnye otnosheniya v Vizantii XIII-XIV vv.'') Despite a growing reputation in his field, anti-Semitic prejudice in the Joseph Stalin-era Soviet academy forced Kazhdan to accept a series ...
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Oxford Dictionary Of Byzantium
The ''Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium'' (ODB) is a three-volume historical dictionary published by the English Oxford University Press. With more than 5,000 entries, it contains comprehensive information in English on topics relating to the Byzantine Empire. It was edited by Alexander Kazhdan, and was first published in 1991.''The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium'', Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1991. Kazhdan was a professor at Princeton University who became a Senior Research Associate at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, before his death. He contributed to many of the articles in the Dictionary and always signed his initials ''A.K.'' at the end of the article to indicate his contribution. Description The dictionary is available in printed and e-reference text versions from Oxford Reference Online. It covers the main historical events of Byzantium, as well as important social and religious events. It also includes biographies of eminent political and literary personal ...
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Prosopography Of The Byzantine World
The Prosopography of the Byzantine World (PBW) is a project to create a prosopographical database of individuals named in textual sources in the Byzantine Empire and surrounding areas in the period from 642 to 1265. The project is a collaboration between the British Academy and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Origins The project was begun in the 1980s with the aim of completing the work on later Roman Empire and Byzantine prosopography begun by Theodore Mommsen in the 19th century and carried on by A.H.M. Jones and J. R. Martindale, which produced ''The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire'' (three volumes, Cambridge, 1971–1992), covering the period from 260 (the accession of Gallienus) to 641 (the death of Heraclius, marking the end of late Antiquity). In 1993, the British Academy signed a collaboration agreement with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy. The work is divided into three periods, 641–867 (Heraclian dynasty to the Amorian dynasty), ...
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