Battle of Sebastopolis | |||||||
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Part of the Arab–Byzantine Wars | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Umayyad Caliphate | Byzantine Empire | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Muhammad ibn Marwan | Leontius Neboulos |
The Battle of Sebastopolis was fought at Sebastopolis (mostly identified with Elaiussa Sebaste in Cilicia but also with modern Sulusaray) in 692 CE between the Byzantine Empire and the Umayyad Caliphate under Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. The battle ended the peace that had existed between the two powers since 680.
The Umayyad army was led by Muhammad ibn Marwan. The Byzantines were led by Leontios and included a "special army" of 30,000 Bulgars under their leader, Neboulos. The Umayyads, incensed at the breaking of the treaty, used copies of its texts in the place of a flag. [1] Though the battle seemed to be tilting to the Byzantine advantage, the defection of upwards of 20,000 Slavs ensured a Byzantine defeat. [2] [3] [4] One source states that the Emperor Justinian II massacred the remaining Slavs, including women and children, at the Gulf of Nicomedia, [3] but modern scholars do not consider it a reliable account. [4]
The 700s decade ran from January 1, 700, to December 31, 709.
The 690s decade ran from January 1, 690, to December 31, 699.
Year 692 (DCXCII) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 692 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Justinian II, nicknamed "the Slit-Nosed", was the last Byzantine emperor of the Heraclian dynasty, reigning from 685 to 695 and again from 705 to 711. Like his namesake, Justinian I, Justinian II was an ambitious and passionate ruler who was keen to restore the Roman Empire to its former glories. However, he responded brutally to any opposition to his will and lacked the finesse of his father, Constantine IV. Consequently, he generated enormous opposition to his reign, resulting in his deposition in 695 in a popular uprising. He only returned to the throne in 705 with the help of a Bulgar and Slav army. His second reign was even more despotic than the first, and in 711 he was killed by mutinous soldiers.
Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan ibn al-Hakam was the fifth Umayyad caliph, ruling from April 685 until his death in October 705. A member of the first generation of born Muslims, his early life in Medina was occupied with pious pursuits. He held administrative and military posts under Caliph Mu'awiya I, founder of the Umayyad Caliphate, and his own father, Caliph Marwan I. By the time of Abd al-Malik's accession, Umayyad authority had collapsed across the Caliphate as a result of the Second Fitna and had been reconstituted in Syria and Egypt during his father's reign.
Leontius was Byzantine emperor from 695 to 698. Little is known of his early life, other than that he was born in Isauria in Asia Minor. He was given the title of patrikios, and made strategos of the Anatolic Theme under Emperor Constantine IV. He led forces against the Umayyads during the early years of Justinian II's reign, securing victory and forcing the Umayyad caliph, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, to sue for peace.
Tiberius III, born Apsimar, was Byzantine emperor from 698 to 705. Little is known about his early life, other than that he was a droungarios, a mid-level commander, who served in the Cibyrrhaeot Theme. In 696, Tiberius was part of an army sent by Byzantine Emperor Leontius to retake the North African city of Carthage, which had been captured by the Arab Umayyads. After seizing the city, this army was pushed back by Umayyad reinforcements and retreated to the island of Crete. As they feared the wrath of Leontius, some officers killed their commander, John the Patrician, and declared Tiberius the emperor. Tiberius swiftly gathered a fleet and sailed for Constantinople, where he then deposed Leontius. Tiberius did not attempt to retake Byzantine Africa from the Umayyads, but campaigned against them along the eastern border with some success. In 705, former emperor Justinian II, who had been deposed by Leontius, led an army of Slavs and Bulgars from the First Bulgarian Empire to Constantinople, and after entering the city secretly, deposed Tiberius. Tiberius fled to Bithynia, but was captured a few months later and beheaded by Justinian between August 705 and February 706. His body was initially thrown into the sea, but was later recovered and buried in a church on the island of Prote.
The Ghassanids, also called the Jafnids, were an Arab tribe which founded a kingdom which was in place from the third century to the seventh century in the area of the Levant and northern Arabia. They emigrated from South Arabia in the early third century to the Levant. Some merged with Hellenized Christian communities, converting to Christianity in the first few centuries, while others may have already been Christians before emigrating north to escape religious persecution.
The hexagram was a large silver coin of the Byzantine Empire issued primarily during the 7th century AD.
The Arab–Byzantine wars were a series of wars between a number of Muslim Arab dynasties and the Byzantine Empire from the 7th to the 11th century. Conflict started during the initial Muslim conquests, under the expansionist Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs, in the 7th century and continued by their successors until the mid-11th century.
The first Arab siege of Constantinople in 674–678 was a major conflict of the Arab–Byzantine wars, and the first culmination of the Umayyad Caliphate's expansionist strategy towards the Byzantine Empire, led by Caliph Mu'awiya I. Mu'awiya, who had emerged in 661 as the ruler of the Muslim Arab empire following a civil war, renewed aggressive warfare against Byzantium after a lapse of some years and hoped to deliver a lethal blow by capturing the Byzantine capital of Constantinople.
Nummus is a Latin word for various coins that was borrowed from Doric Greek noummos. Originally referring to a specific style of coin used in Greek-speaking Southern Italy, the term nummus came to be used by the Late Republic for all coins generally and particularly as a synonym for the sestertius, then the standard unit of Roman accounting, and then in Late Antiquity as the formal name of the follis. It was used in this general sense in Early Modern English but is most commonly employed by modern numismatists as a catchall term for various low-value copper coins issued by the Roman and Byzantine empires during Late Antiquity.
Argyramoiboi were professional money-changers and assayers in ancient Greece and the Byzantine Empire. These often set their tables in public places with their business covering the purchase of foreign currency, paying deposit interest, and loans. They also served as pawnbrokers.
Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad ibn Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam was an Umayyad prince and one of the most important generals of the Umayyad Caliphate in the period 690–710, and the one who completed the Arab conquest of Armenia. He defeated the Byzantines and conquered their Armenian territories, crushed an Armenian rebellion in 704–705 and made the country into an Umayyad province. His son Marwan II was the last Umayyad caliph.
The Asia Minor Slavs were the historical South Slav communities relocated by the Byzantine Empire from the Balkans to Asia Minor (Anatolia). After Maurice's Balkan campaigns (582–602) and during the subduing of the Slavs in the Balkans in the 7th and the 8th centuries, large communities were forcefully relocated to Anatolia as military units to fight the Umayyad Caliphate.
Heraclius was the brother of the Byzantine emperor Tiberius III and the Byzantine Empire's leading general during his reign. He scored a number of victories against the Umayyads, but was unable to halt the Arab conquest of Armenia, nor able to prevent the deposition of his brother by Justinian II, who later captured and executed both Tiberius and Heraclius.
Neboulos was a South Slavic or Bulgar military commander in the service of the Byzantine emperor Justinian II, who defected with many of his men to the Arabs during the crucial Battle of Sebastopolis.
The East Roman or Byzantine Empire established and operated several mints throughout its history (330–1453). Aside from the main metropolitan mint in the capital, Constantinople, a varying number of provincial mints were also established in other urban centres, especially during the 6th century. Most provincial mints except for Syracuse were closed or lost to invasions by the mid-7th century. After the loss of Syracuse in 878, Constantinople became the sole mint for gold and silver coinage until the late 11th century, when major provincial mints began to re-appear. Many mints, both imperial and, as the Byzantine world fragmented, belonging to autonomous local rulers, were operated in the 12th to 14th centuries. Constantinople and Trebizond, the seat of the independent Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461), survived until their conquest by the Ottoman Turks in the mid-15th century.
The siege of Tyana was carried out by the Umayyad Caliphate in 707–708 or 708–709 in retaliation for a heavy defeat of an Umayyad army under Maimun the Mardaite by the Byzantine Empire in c. 706. The Arab army invaded Byzantine territory and laid siege to the city in summer 707 or 708. The date is uncertain, as virtually each of the extant Greek, Arabic, and Syriac parallel sources has in this respect a different date. Tyana initially withstood the siege with success, and the Arab army faced great hardship during the ensuing winter and was on the point of abandoning the siege in spring, when a relief army sent by Emperor Justinian II arrived. Quarrels among the Byzantine generals, as well as the inexperience of a large part of their army, contributed to a crushing Umayyad victory. Thereupon the inhabitants of the city were forced to surrender. Despite the agreement of terms, the city was plundered and largely destroyed, and according to Byzantine sources its people were made captive and deported, leaving the city deserted.
Arab rule in Georgia, natively known as Araboba refers to the period in the History of Georgia when parts of what is now Georgia came under Arab rule, starting with the first Arab incursions in the mid-7th century until the final defeat of the Emirate of Tbilisi at the hands of King David IV in 1122. Compared with other regions which endured Muslim conquests, Georgia's culture, and even political structure was not much affected by the Arab presence, as the people kept their faith, the nobles their fiefdoms, and the foreign rulers mostly insisted on the payment of tribute, which they could not always enforce. Still, repeated invasions and military campaigns by the Arabs devastated Georgia on many occasions, and the Caliphs retained suzerainty over significant parts of the country and exerted influence over the internal power dynamics during most of the period.