''Toparchēs'' ( el, τοπάρχης, "place-ruler"), anglicized as toparch, is a Greek term for a governor or ruler of a district and was later applied to the territory where the toparch exercised his authority. In Byzantine times the term came to be applied to independent or semi-independent rulers in the periphery of the Byzantine world.

Hellenistic usage

The term originates in

Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

times, when ''topos'' (τόπος, "place, locale") was established as an administrative unit, most notably in the Ptolemaic Kingdom, but also among the Seleucids and Attalids, although less well attested in comparison to Ptolemaic practice. The Ptolemaic ''topos'' comprised a number of villages (''komai'', sing. ''komē'') under a ''toparchēs'' and was in turn a subdivision of the ''nomos'' ( nome or province), which was governed by a ''

strategos ''Strategos'', plural ''strategoi'', Linguistic Latinisation, Latinized ''strategus'', ( el, στρατηγός, pl. στρατηγοί; Doric Greek: στραταγός, ''stratagos''; meaning "army leader") is used in Greek language, Greek to ...

''. In Ptolemaic Egypt, the ''toparches'' was usually an Egyptian, and was responsible for the collection of revenue and administration, much as the '' nomarchēs'' for the ''nomos'' and the '' komarchēs'' for each ''komē''. In an account, the ''toparchies'' constituted the ''hyparchies'' such as Gaulanitis,

Galilea Galilee (; he, הַגָּלִיל, hagGālīl; ar, الجليل, al-jalīl) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Galilee traditionally refers to the mountainous part, divided into Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and Lower Galil ...

, Samaria, Judea, Perea, and Idumaea during New Testament times. The title remained in use under the Roman Empire in the Greek East, for the governor of a district. Such districts were then called "toparchies" (sing. toparchy, from Greek τοπαρχία, ''toparchia'').

Byzantine Empire

In the 6th century, in the ''

Novellae Constitutiones The ("new constitutions"; grc, Νεαραὶ διατάξεις), or ''Justinian's Novels'', are now considered one of the four major units of Roman law initiated by Roman emperor Justinian I in the course of his long reign (AD 527–565). The o ...

'' of Emperor Justinian I, the term ''toparchēs'' was used to encompass all local magistrates, both civilian and military. More often, however, Byzantine writers use the term to refer to local monarchs, especially during the 10th–13th centuries, when, according to the Byzantinist Paul Lemerle, "a ''toparchēs'' is the independent ruler of a foreign territory adjoining the Empire... He is in some manner under the influence of the Empire, as it is supposed that he may rebel against the Byzantines". This usage extended not only to actual breakaway or ''de facto'' autonomous Byzantine governors, who appear during the military crises and administrative disintegration of the 11th–12th centuries, but was also applied to independent rulers, usually on the periphery of the Byzantine Empire (e.g. the Emir of Crete, various Turkish lords in Anatolia, or the rulers of Bulgaria or Serbia), of territories which the Byzantines considered rightfully theirs. In this context, the late 11th-century writer Kekaumenos dedicates a large part of his '' Strategikon'' to advising the ''toparchēs'' on his conduct and dealings with the emperor and the other Byzantine governors.

Hellenistic usage

Byzantine Empire

References

Further reading