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The Alexiad
The ''Alexiad'' () is a medieval historical and biographical text written around the year 1148, by the Byzantine princess Anna Komnene, daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. It was written in a form of artificial Attic Greek. Anna described the political and military history of the Byzantine Empire during the reign of her father, thus providing a significant account on the Byzantium of the High Middle Ages. Among other topics, the ''Alexiad'' documents the Byzantine Empire's interaction with the Crusades and highlights the conflicting perceptions of the East and West in the early 12th century. It does not mention the schism of 1054 – a topic which is very common in contemporary writing. It documents firsthand the decline of Byzantine cultural influence in eastern and western Europe, particularly in the West's increasing involvement in its geographic sphere. The ''Alexiad'' was paraphrased in vernacular medieval Greek in mid-14th century to increase its readability, which tes ...
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Anna Komnene
Anna Komnene (; 1 December 1083 – 1153), commonly Latinized as Anna Comnena, was a Byzantine Greek historian. She is the author of the '' Alexiad'', an account of the reign of her father, Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Her work constitutes the most important primary source of Byzantine history of the late 11th and early 12th centuries, as well as of the early Crusades. Although she is best known as the author of the ''Alexiad'', Anna played an important part in the politics of the time and attempted to depose her brother John II Komnenos as emperor in favour of her husband, Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger.Hanawalt 1982, p. 303. At birth, Anna was betrothed to Constantine Doukas,Hanawalt 1982, p. 303. and she grew up in his mother's household.Neville 2016, p. 2. She was well-educated in "Greek literature and history, philosophy, theology, mathematics, and medicine." Anna and Constantine were next in the line to throne until Anna's younger brother, John II Komnenos, be ...
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Robert Guiscard
Robert Guiscard ( , ; – 17 July 1085), also referred to as Robert de Hauteville, was a Normans, Norman adventurer remembered for his Norman conquest of southern Italy, conquest of southern Italy and Sicily in the 11th century. Robert was born into the Hauteville family in Normandy, the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville, Tancred de Hauteville and his wife Fressenda. He inherited the County of Apulia and Calabria from his brother in 1057, and in 1059 he was made Duke of Apulia and Calabria and County of Sicily, Lord of Sicily by Pope Pope Nicholas II, Nicholas II. He was also briefly Prince of Benevento (1078–1081), before returning the title to the papacy. Name Robert's sobriquet, "Guiscard" (in contemporary Latin and Old French , closely related to the English archaism mwod:wiseacre, wiseacre) is often rendered as "the Resourceful", "the Cunning", "the Wily", "the Fox", or "the Weasel". In Italian sources he is known as ''Roberto il Guiscardo'' or ''Roberto d'Altavilla'' ( ...
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Hagiography
A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies might consist of a biography or ' (from Latin ''vita'', life, which begins the title of most medieval biographies), a description of the saint's deeds or miracles, an account of the saint's martyrdom (called a ), or be a combination of these. Christian hagiographies focus on the lives, and notably the miracles, ascribed to men and women canonized by the Roman Catholic church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox churches, and the Church of the East. Other religious traditions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, Sikhism and Jainism also create and maintain hagiographical texts (such as the Sikh Janamsakhis) concerning saints, gurus and other individuals believed to be imbued with sacred power. However ...
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Peter Frankopan
Peter Frankopan (born 22 March 1971) is a British historian, writer, and hotelier. He is a professor of global history at Worcester College, Oxford, and the Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. He is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. He is best known for his 2015 book '' The Silk Roads''. Early life and education Frankopan is the second of five children born to Croatian Louis Doimi de Frankopan (1939–2018) and Swedish-born barrister and professor of international law Ingrid Detter. His elder sister is Lady Nicholas Windsor. His father is Louis Doimi de Lupis, who claimed to be a member of the Frankopan family. He attended Eton College and then received a degree in Byzantine history from Jesus College, Cambridge, before getting his D.Phil at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is a senior research fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, and director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. His areas of focus are the history of the Byzantine Empire, ...
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Panegyric
A panegyric ( or ) is a formal public speech or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing. The original panegyrics were speeches delivered at public events in ancient Athens. Etymology The word originated as a compound of - 'all' (the form taken by the word πᾶν, neuter of πᾶς 'all', when that is used as a prefix) and the word 'assembly' (an Aeolic dialect form, corresponding to the Attic or Ionic form ). Compounded, these gave 'general or national assembly, especially a festival in honour of a god' and the derived adjective 'of or for a public assembly or festival'. In Hellenistic Greek the noun came also to mean 'a festal oration, laudatory speech', and the adjective 'of or relating to a eulogy, flattering'. The noun had been borrowed into Classical Latin by around the second century CE, as ''panēgyris'' 'festival' (in post-Classical usage also 'general assembly'). Correspondingly, Classical Latin also included the adjective ''panēgyricus'', whi ...
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Historiography
Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic by using particular sources, techniques of research, and theoretical approaches to the interpretation of documentary sources. Scholars discuss historiography by topic—such as the historiography of the United Kingdom, of historiography of World War II, WWII, of the Pre-Columbian era, pre-Columbian Americas, of early historiography of early Islam, Islam, and of Chinese historiography, China—and different approaches to the work and the genres of history, such as political history and social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the development of academic history produced a great corpus of historiographic literature. The extent to which historians are influence ...
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Odysseus
In Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology, Odysseus ( ; , ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; ), is a legendary Greeks, Greek king of Homeric Ithaca, Ithaca and the hero of Homer's Epic poetry, epic poem, the ''Odyssey''. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's ''Iliad'' and other works in that same epic cycle. As the son of Laertes (father of Odysseus), Laërtes and Anticlea, husband of Penelope, and father of Telemachus, Acusilaus, and Telegonus (son of Odysseus), Telegonus, Odysseus is renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility (''polytropos''), and he is thus known by the epithet Odysseus the Cunning (). He is most famous for his ''nostos'', or "homecoming", which took him ten eventful years after the decade-long Trojan War. Name, etymology, and epithets The form ''Odys(s)eus'' is used starting in the epic period and through the classical period, but various other forms are also found. In vase inscriptions, there are the varian ...
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Bohemond I Of Antioch
Bohemond I of Antioch ( 1054 – 5 or 7 March 1111), also known as Bohemond of Taranto or Bohemond of Hauteville, was the prince of Taranto from 1089 to 1111 and the prince of Antioch from 1098 to 1111. He was a leader of the First Crusade, leading a contingent of Normans on the quest eastward. Knowledgeable about the Byzantine Empire through earlier campaigns with his father, he was the most experienced military leader of the crusade. Early life Childhood and youth Bohemond was the son of Robert Guiscard, Count of Apulia and Calabria, and his first wife, Alberada of Buonalbergo. He was born between 1050 and 1058—in 1054 according to historian John Julius Norwich. He was baptised Mark, possibly because he was born at his father's castle at San Marco Argentano in Calabria. His parents were related within the degree of kinship that made Impediment (Catholic canon law)#Impediments to marriage, their marriage invalid under canon law. In 1058, Pope Nicholas II strengthened existin ...
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Bogomils
Bogomilism (; ; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", bogumilstvo, богумилство) was a Christian neo-Gnostic, dualist sect founded in the First Bulgarian Empire by the priest Bogomil during the reign of Tsar Peter I in the 10th century. It most probably arose in the region of Kutmichevitsa, today part of the region of Macedonia. The Bogomils were dualists or Gnostics in that they believed in a world within the body and a world outside the body. They did not use the Christian cross, nor build churches, as they revered their gifted form and considered their body to be the temple. This gave rise to many forms of practice to cleanse oneself through fasting or dancing. The Bogomils rejected the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Their primary political tendencies were resistance to the state and church authorities. This helped the movement spread quickly in the Balkans, gradually expanding throughout the Byzantine Empire and later reaching Kievan Rus', Dalmatia, Serbia, Bosnia, It ...
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First Crusade
The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the Middle Ages. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Muslim conquest of the Levant, Islamic rule. While Jerusalem had been under Muslim rule for hundreds of years, by the 11th century the Seljuk Empire, Seljuk takeover of the region threatened local Christian populations, pilgrimages from the West, and the Byzantine Empire itself. The earliest initiative for the First Crusade began in 1095 when List of Byzantine emperors, Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested military support from the Council of Piacenza in the empire's conflict with the Seljuk-led Turks. This was followed later in the year by the Council of Clermont, during which Pope Urban II supported the Byzantine request for military assistance and also urged faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This call was met ...
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Nikephoros Diogenes
Nikephoros Diogenes (), Latinized as Nicephorus Diogenes, was presumably a junior Byzantine emperor around 1069–1071. He was born 1069 to Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes and Empress Eudokia Makrembolitissa. He was elevated to junior emperor in 1070, although he lost this position when his father was overthrown in 1071. Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, after overthrowing Nikephoros III, made Nikephoros Diogenes '' doux'' of Crete. Nikephoros conspired against him in 1094, involving numerous confidants and relatives of Alexios, including Alexios' brother, Adrianos. For this conspiracy, he was blinded, in accordance with Byzantine traditions. After this, he retired to his estates, and spent the last years of his life studying classical literature. History Nikephoros was born 1069 to Romanos IV Diogenes and Eudokia Makrembolitissa, who married and were crowned on 1 January 1068. Nikephoros was presumably elevated to junior emperor shortly after alongside his brother (and possibly twin ...
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Tzachas
Chaka Bey (),"Tzachas" is the Hellenized form of a Turkish name which does not appear in any historical documents, but was likely "Chaka", "Chagha", or "Chaqan". The name "Chaka", in the modern Turkish alphabet "Çaka", prevailed especially in modern Turkey, after Akdes Nimet Kurat used it in his work ''Çaka: Orta Zamanda İzmir ve Yakınındaki Adaların Türk Hakimi'', Istanbul, 1936, ''... yüksek siyasî ve askerî görüş sahibi olarak büyük önem taşıyan bu bey'in adının gerçek söylenişi henüz tamamen kesinliğe kavuşmuş değildir. Bu hususta şimdiye kadar üç ihtimal ileri sürülmüştür: Çaka, Çağa, Çakan. AN Kurat'ın bunu "Çaka" kabûl ederek eserini de "Çaka Bey" diye adlandırması, özellikle memleketimizde Çaka şeklinin yaygınlaşmasına yol açmıştır denebilir.'' (''Tarih Dergisi'', Cilt 20, İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi, İbrahim Horoz Basımevi, 1983p. 56. was an 11th-century Seljuk Oghuz Turk military commander wh ...
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