Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the eastern continuation of the Roman Empire, which endured for more than a thousand years after the western half collapsed.

Its conventional starting point is 330 CE, when Constantine the Great dedicated a new imperial capital, Constantinople, on the site of the old Greek city of Byzantium, strategically positioned on the straits between Europe and Asia. Although its inhabitants always called themselves Romans, the state gradually became distinct in character: Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian, and centred on the eastern Mediterranean. After the fall of the West in 476, the eastern empire preserved Roman law, administration, and learning. Under Justinian I in the sixth century it reached a territorial peak, reconquering Italy, North Africa, and parts of Spain, codifying Roman law in the influential Corpus Juris Civilis, and building the great church of Hagia Sophia. From the seventh century the empire was transformed by the loss of Syria, Egypt, and North Africa to the Arab Muslim conquests, reorganising around a system of military provinces (themes) and fighting for survival against Arabs, Slavs, and Bulgars. A second flowering came under the Macedonian dynasty (867–1056), culminating with Basil II, who shattered the Bulgarian state and restored imperial power across the Balkans and the east. Byzantium was a beacon of culture, transmitting classical Greek scholarship, developing a magnificent tradition of art and architecture, and spreading Orthodox Christianity and the Cyrillic alphabet to the Slavic world. Decline set in after the catastrophic defeat by the Seljuk Turks at Manzikert in 1071, which opened Anatolia to Turkish settlement. The empire was gravely wounded when the armies of the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204 and partitioned its territory; though a restored Byzantine state recovered the capital in 1261, it was thereafter a shadow of its former self, squeezed between Latin powers and the rising Ottoman Turks. Reduced finally to little more than the capital itself, the empire fell when Sultan Mehmed II captured Constantinople on 29 May 1453, killing the last emperor, Constantine XI, in the fighting. The fall ended the Roman political tradition that had lasted nearly two millennia and is often taken to mark the close of the Middle Ages.

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