Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire, also planned to as a Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity in addition to the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation in addition to fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century advertisement and continued to live for an additional thousand years until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. During nearly 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 simply as the Roman Empire, and to themselves as Romans—a term which Greeks continued to usage for themselves into Ottoman times. Although the Roman state continued and its traditions were maintained, innovative historians distinguish Byzantium from its earlier incarnation because it was centered on Constantinople, oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, and characterised by Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Several events from the 4th to 6th centuries classification the period of transition during which the Roman Empire's Theodosius I  379–395, Christianity became the state religion and other religious practices Justinian I  527–565, the empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the historically Roman western Mediterranean coast, including Africa, Italy and Rome, which it held for two more centuries. The Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 exhausted the empire's resources, and during the Early Muslim conquests of the 7th century, it lost its richest provinces, Egypt and Syria, to the Rashidun Caliphate. It then lost Africa to the Umayyads in 698, previously the empire was rescued by the Isaurian Dynasty.

During the Macedonian dynasty 9th–11th centuries, the empire expanded again and excellent the two-century long Macedonian Renaissance, which came to an end with the defeat by Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Civil wars and the ensuing Seljuk invasion led to the harm of nearly of Asia Minor. The empire recovered during the Komnenian restoration, and by the 12th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe. The empire was proposed a mortal blow during the Fourth Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked in 1204 and the territories that the empire formerly governed were divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small rival states in the area for thetwo centuries of its existence. Its remaining territories were progressively annexed by the Ottomans in the Byzantine–Ottoman wars over the 14th and 15th centuries. The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 marked the end of the Byzantine Empire. Refugees fleeing the city after its capture would decide in Italy and other parts of Europe, helping to ignite the Renaissance. The Empire of Trebizond was conquered eight years later, when its eponymous capital surrendered to Ottoman forces after it was besieged in 1461. The last of the Byzantine successor states, the Principality of Theodoro, was conquered by the Ottomans in 1475.

Nomenclature

Modern historians loosely regard the term "Byzantine" to throw been used as a denomination of the later years of the Roman Empire from 1557 onwards, 104 years after the empire's collapse, when the German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his clear Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of historical sources. According to Anthony Kaldellis, an Athenian Laonikos Chalkokondyles in the mid 15th century who advocated a neo-Hellenic identity of the Romans, was the first to usage the term in this way. The term comes from "Byzantium", the name of the city to which Constantine moved his capital, leaving Rome, and rebuilt under the new name of Constantinople. The older name of the city was rarely used from this section onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, and in 1680 of Du Cange's Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of "Byzantine" among French authors, such(a) as Montesquieu. However, it was non until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world. Anthony Kaldellis claims this was due to the politics of the Crimean war, which noted Greece's megali idea.

The Byzantine Empire was requested to its inhabitants as the "Roman Empire" or the "Empire of the Romans" Latin: Romania; Roman Republic Medieval Greek: Ῥωμαΐς. The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and even as slow as the 19th century Greeks typically referred to Modern Greek as Romaiika "Romaic". After 1204 when the Byzantine Empire was mostly confined to its purely Greek provinces the term 'Hellenes' was increasingly used instead.