Gerisa
Gerisa, also called Ghirza, was an ancient city of Roman Libya near the Limes Tripolitanus. It was a small village of 300 inhabitants on the pre-desert zone of Tripolitania. History Even if there was a small local settlement, it was only when Roman legionnaires arrived in Tripolitania that the city of Gerisa was created and developed. Initially its population was mainly local berbers, but some Roman merchants settled there during late Augustus times. The Limes Tripolitanus was expanded under emperors Hadrian and Septimius Severus, in particular under the legatus Quintus Anicius Faustus in 197-201 AD. Anicius Faustus was appointed legatus of the Legio III Augusta and built several defensive forts of the Limes Tripolitanus in Tripolitania, among which Garbia and Golaia (Bu Ngem) in order to protect the province from the raids of nomadic tribes. He fulfilled his task quickly and successfully. As a consequence the Roman city of Gaerisa, situated away from the coast and south of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gurzil
Gurzil was an important ancient Berber deity. He is known from two sources, the Latin poem ''Iohannis'' by the 6th-century Christian Roman poet Corippus and a Neo-Punic inscription from Lepcis Magna.A. F. Elmayer, "The Libyan God Gurzil in a Neo-Punic Inscription from Tripolitania", ''Libyan Studies'' 13 (1982), pp. 49–50. According to Corippus, the Laguatan of Tripolitania carried a representation of Gurzil in the form of a bull into battle against the Romans when they revolted along with the Austurii in AD 546. They regarded Gurzil as the offspring of Amun, presumably the Amun whose temple was at Siwa, and a cow. Corippus also mentions idols of wood and metal, presumably also images of Gurzil. After several battles the Laguatan and their allies were defeated. Ierna, the chief and high priest of the Laguatan, was killed while trying to rescue the image of Gurzil. The image was destroyed. The combination of royal and priestly functions in Ierna is not otherwise attested ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Limes Tripolitanus
The ''Limes Tripolitanus'' was a frontier zone of defence of the Roman Empire, built in the south of what is now Tunisia and the northwest of Libya. It was primarily intended as a protection for the tripolitanian cities of Leptis Magna, Sabratha and Oea in Roman Libya. History The ''Limes Tripolitanus'' was built after Augustus. It was related mainly to the Garamantes menace. Septimius Flaccus in 50 AD did a military expedition that reached the actual Fezzan and further south. The Romans did not conquer the Garamantes so much as they seduced them with the benefits of trade and discouraged them with the threat of war. The last Garamantes foray to the coast was in AD 69, when they joined with the people of Oea (modern Tripoli) in battle against Leptis Magna. The Romans, in order to defend the main Roman cities of Tripolitania ( Oea, Sabratha and Leptis Magna), intervened and marched south. According to Edward Bovill, author of the book ''The Golden Trade of the Moors'', th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Libya
Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest. Libya is made of three historical regions: Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica. With an area of almost 700,000 square miles (1.8 million km2), it is the fourth-largest country in Africa and the Arab world, and the 16th-largest in the world. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves in the world. The largest city and capital, Tripoli, is located in western Libya and contains over three million of Libya's seven million people. Libya has been inhabited by Berbers since the late Bronze Age as descendants from Iberomaurusian and Capsian cultures. In ancient times, the Phoenicians established city-states and tr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leptis Magna
Leptis or Lepcis Magna, also known by other names in antiquity, was a prominent city of the Carthaginian Empire and Roman Libya at the mouth of the Wadi Lebda in the Mediterranean. Originally a 7th-centuryBC Phoenician foundation, it was greatly expanded under Roman Emperor Septimius Severus (), who was born in the city. The 3rd Augustan Legion was stationed here to defend the city against Berber incursions. After the legion's dissolution under in 238, the city was increasingly open to raids in the later part of the 3rd century. Diocletian reinstated the city as provincial capital, and it grew again in prosperity until it fell to the Vandals in 439. It was reincorporated into the Eastern Empire in 533 but continued to be plagued by Berber raids and never recovered its former importance. It fell to the Muslim invasion in and was subsequently abandoned. Its ruins are within present-day Khoms, Libya, east of Tripoli. They are among the best-preserved Roman sites in the M ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Justinian
Justinian I (; la, Iustinianus, ; grc-gre, Ἰουστινιανός ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565. His reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized '' renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was expressed by the partial recovery of the territories of the defunct Western Roman Empire. His general, Belisarius, swiftly conquered the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa. Subsequently, Belisarius, Narses, and other generals conquered the Ostrogothic kingdom, restoring Dalmatia, Sicily, Italy, and Rome to the empire after more than half a century of rule by the Ostrogoths. The praetorian prefect Liberius reclaimed the south of the Iberian peninsula, establishing the province of Spania. These campaigns re-established Roman control over the western Mediterranean, increasing the Empire's annual revenue by over a million ''solidi''. During his reign, Justinian also subdued t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 R ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Limitanei
The ''līmitāneī'' (Latin, also called ''rīpēnsēs''), meaning respectively "the soldiers in frontier districts" (from the Latin phrase līmēs, meaning a military district of a frontier province) or "the soldiers on the riverbank" (from the Rhine and Danube), were an important part of the late Roman and early Byzantine army after the reorganizations of the late 3rd and early 4th centuries. The limitanei, unlike the comitātēnsēs, palātīnī, and scholæ, garrisoned fortifications along the borders of the Roman Empire and were not normally expected to fight far from their fortifications. The līmitāneī were lower-status and lower-paid than the comitātēnsēs and palātīnī,Treadgold 1995, pp. 149–157. and the distinction in role and status between scolae, palatini, comitatenses, and limitanei had largely replaced the older one between praetorians, legionaries, and auxiliaries. The limitanei and palatini both included legionary units alongside auxiliary units. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Diocletian
Diocletian (; la, Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus, grc, Διοκλητιανός, Diokletianós; c. 242/245 – 311/312), nicknamed ''Iovius'', was Roman emperor from 284 until his abdication in 305. He was born Gaius Valerius Diocles to a family of low status in the Roman province of Dalmatia (Roman province), Dalmatia. Diocles rose through the ranks of the military early in his career, eventually becoming a Roman cavalry, cavalry commander for the army of Emperor Carus. After the deaths of Carus and his son Numerian on a campaign in Persia, Diocles was proclaimed emperor by the troops, taking the name Diocletianus. The title was also claimed by Carus's surviving son, Carinus, but Diocletian defeated him in the Battle of the Margus. Diocletian's reign stabilized the empire and ended the Crisis of the Third Century. He appointed fellow officer Maximian as ''Augustus (title), Augustus'', co-emperor, in 286. Diocletian reigned in the Byzantine Empire, Eastern Empire, and M ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early Early may refer to: History * The beginning or oldest part of a defined historical period, as opposed to middle or late periods, e.g.: ** Early Christianity ** Early modern Europe Places in the United States * Early, Iowa * Early, Texas * Early ..., High Middle Ages, High, and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, the collapse of centralized authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in late antiquity, continued i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Centenaria
A centenarium is a type of Ancient Roman fortified farmhouse in the Limes Tripolitanus. It is called even in the plural ''centenaria'', because in the Limes Tripolitanus there were more than 2000 of these "fortifications", connected to create a defensive system against desert tribe raids. History The first ''centenaria'' were built during the reign of Trajan and during Septimius Severus expansions of Roman Libya and Africa Proconsularis, when the Limes Tripolitanus was established. From around the time of disbandment of the Legio III Augusta in 238 AD, legionaries built around two thousand ''centenaria'' in the areas around Leptis Magna and Sabratha. Examples remain at Gherait esh-Shergia and Gasr Banat. Some were characterized by the presence of paleochristian churches. Indeed, Leptis Magna, the main city in Roman Tripolitania, prospered mainly because Rome stopped bandits from plundering the countryside. But even because the Roman Empire – mainly under Trajan and Septimius Se ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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René Basset
René Basset (24July 18554January 1924) was a French orientalist, specialist of the Berber language and the Arabic language. Biography René Basset was the first director of the "École des lettres d'Alger" created in 1879 during the French colonisation of Algeria. A member of the société Asiatique of Paris as well as those of Leipzig and Florence, he collaborated with the ''Journal Asiatique'' and studied Chinese Islam. André Basset and Henri Basset were his sons. Publications *''Étude sur la zenatia du Mzab'' '' *''Notes de lexicographie berbère'', 1887. sur le site Archive *''La Religion des Berbères'' de l’antiquité jusqu’à l'islam, Les Belles Lettres *''Prières des musulmans chinois'', Éditions , 1878 *''Les Manuscrits arabes de la Zaouia d'El Hamel'', Etablissement typographique Florentin, 1897 *''Recherches sur la religion des Berbères'', 1910. *Son anthologie ''Mille et un contes, récits et légendes arabes'' a été rééditée ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Berber Mythology
The traditional Berber religion is the ancient and native set of beliefs and deities adhered to by the Berbers ( Amazigh autochthones) of North Africa. Many ancient Amazigh beliefs were developed locally, whereas others were influenced over time through contact with others like ancient Egyptian religion, or borrowed during antiquity from the Punic religion, Judaism, Iberian mythology, and the Hellenistic religion. The most recent influence came from Islam and religion in pre-Islamic Arabia during the medieval period. Some of the ancient Amazigh beliefs still exist today subtly within the Amazigh popular culture and tradition. Syncretic influences from the traditional Amazigh religion can also be found in certain other faiths. Funerary practices Archaeological research on prehistoric tombs in the Maghreb shows that the bodies of the dead were painted with ochre. While this practice was known to the Iberomaurusians, this culture seems to have been primarily a Capsian industry. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |