Zuccabar (or Zucchabar) was an ancient town in the

Roman province The Roman provinces (Latin: ''provincia'', pl. ''provinciae'') were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was rule ...

Mauretania Caesariensis Mauretania Caesariensis (Latin for " Caesarean Mauretania") was a Roman province located in what is now Algeria in the Maghreb. The full name refers to its capital Caesarea Mauretaniae (modern Cherchell). The province had been part of the King ...

. It is located in present-day

Miliana Miliana ( ar, مليانة) is a commune in Aïn Defla Province in northwestern Algeria. It is the administrative center of the daïra, or district, of the same name. It is approximately southwest of the Algerian capital, Algiers.r/sup>, which ...

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

History

Zuccabar was constituted as a Roman colony (''Colonia Iulia Augusta Zucchabar'') under the Emperor

Augustus Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...

. Indeed, actual

correspondsMiliana ville historique
to the town of

Punic The Punic people, or western Phoenicians, were a Semitic people in the Western Mediterranean who migrated from Tyre, Phoenicia to North Africa during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' – the Latin equivalent of t ...

origin known in

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

times as "Zucchabar" (or even "Succhabar"). Under

, it was given the rank of '' colonia'' and was thus referred to as ''Colonia Iulia Augusta Zucchabar''. The

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

form of the name used by the geographer

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...

was Ζουχάββαρι (Zuchabbari).

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ' ...

calls it "the colony of Augusta, also called Succabar",Pliny, Natural Histories, book 5, chapter 1
/ref> and

Ammianus Marcellinus Ammianus Marcellinus (occasionally anglicised as Ammian) (born , died 400) was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity (preceding Procopius). His work, known as the ''Res Gestae ...

gives it the name Sugabarri or (in adjectival form) Sugabarritanum. Zuccabar belonged to the

and was located 70 km south of the capital Caesarea, with a population of nearly 5,000 inhabitants (mostly

romanised Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...

berbers , image = File:Berber_flag.svg , caption = The Berber ethnic flag , population = 36 million , region1 = Morocco , pop1 = 14 million to 18 million , region2 = Algeria , pop2 ...

). Zucchabar became a Christian

episcopal see An episcopal see is, in a practical use of the phrase, the area of a bishop's ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Phrases concerning actions occurring within or outside an episcopal see are indicative of the geographical significance of the term, mak ...

in the fourth century. The names of two of its Catholic bishops and one Donatist are recorded: *Maximianus, who attended the Conference of Carthage (411); **Germanus, the

Donatist Donatism was a Christian sect leading to a schism in the Church, in the region of the Church of Carthage, from the fourth to the sixth centuries. Donatists argued that Christian clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and the ...

bishop who attended the same conference; *Stephanus, one of the Catholic bishops whom

Huneric Huneric, Hunneric or Honeric (died December 23, 484) was King of the (North African) Vandal Kingdom (477–484) and the oldest son of Gaiseric. He abandoned the imperial politics of his father and concentrated mainly on internal affairs. He was m ...

summoned to a meeting in Carthage in February 484 and then exiled. The bishopric is included in the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

's list of

titular see A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular metropolitan" (highest rank), "titular archbi ...

s. In late antiquity it was an

that has been "born again" as a

of the Roman Catholic Church since 1967. Miliana was (re)founded in the 10th century by

Buluggin ibn Ziri Buluggin ibn Ziri, often transliterated Bologhine, in full ʾAbū al Futūḥ Sayf ad Dawlah Bulukīn ibn Zīrī ibn Manād aṣ Ṣanhājī ( ar, أبو الفتوح سيف الدولة بلكين بن زيري بن مناد الصنهاجي; die ...

on the site of the ancient

city of Zuccabar (or "Succhabar").

Trivia

In the movie ''

Gladiator A gladiator ( la, gladiator, "swordsman", from , "sword") was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gla ...

'' by

Ridley Scott Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is a British film director and producer. Directing, among others, science fiction films, his work is known for its atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style. Scott has received many accolades th ...

, Zucchabar is fictitiously introduced as the name of a Roman province (rather than a town), when Maximus is brought south of his homeland

Hispania Hispania ( la, Hispānia , ; nearly identically pronounced in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian) was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces. Under the Roman Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hi ...

into an arid and desert land, after having been enslaved by merchants. It is also in this province that he meets Proximo.

Notes

Bibliography

* Lawless, R. ''Mauretania Caesartiensis: archeological and geographical survey''. Durham University. Durham, 196
Zuccabar
* Lepelley, Claude. ''Rome et l'intégration de l'Empire, 44 av. J.-C. – 260 ap.'', T. 2, « Approches régionales du Haut-Empire romain », Nouvelles Clio, 1998 * Prevost, Virginie. ''Les dernières communautés chrétiennes autochthones d'Afrique du Nord". Armand Colin ed. (p. 461-483) * Smith Reid, James. ''The Municipalities of the Roman Empire'' The University of Michigan Press. Chicago, 1913

History

Trivia

Notes

Bibliography

See also