 |
Kenneth Rainsbury Dark FSA (born in Brixton, London in 1961) is a British archaeologist who works on the 1st millennium AD in Europe (including Roman and immediately post-Roman Britain) and the Roman and Byzantine Middle East, on the archaeology of religion (especially early Christian archaeology), archaeological theory and methods, and on the relationship between the study of the past and contemporary global political, cultural and economic issues.
He received a BA in archaeology from the University of York in 1982 [1] and after taking his PhD in archaeology and history at the University of Cambridge taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Reading. Since 2001 he has been Director of the Research Centre for Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at the University of Reading and, since 1996, Chair of the Late Antiquity Research Group. He holds honorary professorships from several European and American universities, has written numerous books and academic articles and has directed and co-directed many excavations and survey projects, both in Britain and the Middle East including in Istanbul (Turkey) – where since 2004 he has co-directed a new archaeological study of the famous Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia and its environs – and in and around Nazareth (Israel). [2] He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Royal Historical Society, and the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs - the only person ever elected to all four of these learned societies.
Byzantium or Byzantion was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today. The Greek name Byzantion and its Latinization Byzantium continued to be used as a name of Constantinople sporadically and to varying degrees during the thousand-year existence of the Eastern Roman Empire, which also became known by the former name of the city as the Byzantine Empire. Byzantium was colonized by Greeks from Megara in the 7th century BC and remained primarily Greek-speaking until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in AD 1453.
Constantinople was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman empires between its consecration in 330 until 1930, when it was renamed to Istanbul. Initially as New Rome, Constantinople was founded in 324 during the reign of Constantine the Great on the site of the existing settlement of Byzantium, and shortly thereafter in 330 became the capital of the Roman Empire. Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, Constantinople remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453–1922). Following the Turkish War of Independence, the Turkish capital then moved to Ankara. Officially renamed Istanbul in 1930, the city is today the largest city in Europe, straddling the Bosporus strait and lying in both Europe and Asia, and the financial center of Turkey.
Hagia Sophia, officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque,(Turkish: Ayasofya-i Kebir Cami-i Şerifi; Greek: Μεγάλο Τζαμί της Αγίας Σοφίας), is a mosque and former church serving as a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. The last of three church buildings to be successively erected on the site by the Eastern Roman Empire, it was completed in AD 537, becoming the world's largest interior space and among the first to employ a fully pendentive dome. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have "changed the history of architecture". The site was an Eastern rite church from AD 360 to 1453, except for a brief time as a Latin Catholic church between the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and 1261. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, it served as a mosque until 1935, when it became an interfaith museum, until being controversially reclassified solely as a mosque in 2020.
Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire, or Eastern Roman Empire, usually dated from 330 AD, when Constantine the Great established a new Roman capital in Byzantium, which became Constantinople, until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. There was initially no hard line between the Byzantine and Roman Empires, and early Byzantine architecture is stylistically and structurally indistinguishable from late Roman architecture. The style continued to be based on arches, vaults and domes, often on a large scale. Wall mosaics with gold backgrounds became standard for the grandest buildings, with frescos a cheaper alternative.
The Hippodrome of Constantinople, was a circus that was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today it is a square in Istanbul, Turkey, known as Sultanahmet Square.
Byzantine art comprises the body of artistic products of the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as the nations and states that inherited culturally from the empire. Though the empire itself emerged from the decline of western Rome and lasted until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the start date of the Byzantine period is rather clearer in art history than in political history, if still imprecise. Many Eastern Orthodox states in Eastern Europe, as well as to some degree the Islamic states of the eastern Mediterranean, preserved many aspects of the empire's culture and art for centuries afterward.
The Church of the Holy Apostles, also known as the Imperial Polyandrion, was a Byzantine Eastern Orthodox church in Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The first structure dated to the 4th century, though future emperors would add to and improve upon it. It was second in size and importance only to the Hagia Sophia among the great churches of the capital.
Hagia Irene or Hagia Eirene, sometimes known also as Saint Irene, is an Eastern Orthodox church located in the outer courtyard of Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. It is the oldest known church structure in the city and one of the only Byzantine churches in Istanbul that was never converted into a mosque, alongside the Church of Saint Mary of the Mongols, as it was used as an arsenal for storing weapons until the 19th century. The Hagia Irene today operates as a museum and concert hall.
The Great Palace of Constantinople, also known as the Sacred Palace, was the large imperial Byzantine palace complex located in the south-eastern end of the peninsula today making up the Fatih district of Istanbul, in modern Turkey. It served as the main imperial residence of the Eastern Roman emperors until 1081 and was the centre of imperial administration for over 690 years. Only a few remnants and fragments of its foundations have survived into the present day.
Cyril Alexander Mango was a British scholar of the history, art, and architecture of the Byzantine Empire. He is celebrated as one of the leading Byzantinists of the 20th century.
The Little Hagia Sophia mosque, formerly the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, is a former Greek Orthodox church dedicated to Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople, built between 532 and 536, and converted into a mosque during the Ottoman Empire.
Neolithic artifacts, uncovered by archeologists at the beginning of the 21st century, indicate that Istanbul's historic peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE. That early settlement, important in the spread of the Neolithic Revolution from the Near East to Europe, lasted for almost a millennium before being inundated by rising water levels. The first human settlement on the Asian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500 to 3500 BCE. In the European side, near the point of the peninsula (Sarayburnu) there was a settlement during the early 1st millennium BCE. Modern authors have linked it to the possible Thracian toponym Lygos, mentioned by Pliny the Elder as an earlier name for the site of Byzantium.
The Milion was a marker from which all distances across the Roman Empire were measured. Erected by Septimius Severus in the 3rd century AD in the city of Byzantium, it became the zero-mile marker for the empire upon the re-founding of the city as Constantinople in 330 AD. Thereafter, it would serve as the starting-place for the measurement of distances for all the roads leading to the cities of the Eastern Roman Empire. It thus served the same function as the Golden Milestone in Rome's forum, erected by Augustus. The domed building of the Milion rested on four large arches and, over the centuries, it was expanded and decorated with several statues and paintings. Though it had survived the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, it disappeared by the start of the 16th century in the Ottoman era. During excavations in the 1960s, some partial fragments of the Milion were discovered under houses in the area.
The Church of St. Polyeuctus was an ancient Byzantine church in Constantinople built by the noblewoman Anicia Juliana and dedicated to Saint Polyeuctus. Intended as an assertion of Juliana's own imperial lineage, it was a lavishly decorated building, and the largest church of the city before the construction of the Hagia Sophia. It introduced the large-scale use of Sassanid Persian decorative elements, and may have inaugurated the new architectural type of domed basilica, perfected in the later Hagia Sophia.
Verd antique, also called verde antique, marmor thessalicum, or Ophite, is a serpentinite breccia popular since ancient times as a decorative facing stone. It is a dark, dull green, white-mottled serpentine, mixed with calcite, dolomite, or magnesite, which takes a high polish. The term verd antique has been documented in English texts as early as 1745.
Liz James FBA is a British art historian who studies the art of the Byzantine Empire. She is Professor of the History of Art at the University of Sussex.
The Cistern of Aspar or Great Cistern, known in Turkish as Sultan Selim Çukurbostanı, was a Byzantine open-air water reservoir in the city of Constantinople.
Domes were a characteristic element of the architecture of Ancient Rome and of its medieval continuation, the Byzantine Empire. They had widespread influence on contemporary and later styles, from Russian and Ottoman architecture to the Italian Renaissance and modern revivals. The domes were customarily hemispherical, although octagonal and segmented shapes are also known, and they developed in form, use, and structure over the centuries. Early examples rested directly on the rotunda walls of round rooms and featured a central oculus for ventilation and light. Pendentives became common in the Byzantine period, provided support for domes over square spaces.
John Frederick Haldon FBA is a British historian, and Shelby Cullom Davis '30 Professor of European History emeritus, professor of Byzantine history and Hellenic Studies emeritus, as well as former director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University.
In the Byzantine Empire, cities were centers of economic and cultural life. A significant part of the cities were founded during the period of Greek and Roman antiquity. The largest of them were Constantinople, Alexandria, Thessaloniki and Antioch, with a population of several hundred thousand people. Large provincial centers had a population of up to 50,000. Although the spread of Christianity negatively affected urban institutions, in general, late antique cities continued to develop continuously. Byzantium remained an empire of cities, although the urban space had changed a lot. If the Greco-Roman city was a place of pagan worship and sports events, theatrical performances and chariot races, the residence of officials and judges, then the Byzantine city was primarily a religious center where the bishop's residence was located.
