I.

Introduction

Byzantine Empire, eastern part of the Roman Empire, which survived after the breakup of the Western Empire in the 5th century ad. Its capital was Constantinople (now İstanbul, Turkey).

Constantinople became a capital of the Roman Empire in 330 after Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, refounded the city of Byzantium and named it after himself. Only gradually did it develop into the true capital of the eastern Roman provinces—those areas of the empire in southeastern Europe, southwestern Asia, and the northeast corner of Africa, which included the present-day countries of the Balkan Peninsula, and Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, Egypt, and the eastern part of Libya. Scholars have called the empire Byzantine after the ancient name of its capital, Byzantium, or the Eastern Roman Empire, but to contemporaries and in official terminology of the time, it was simply Roman, and its subjects were Romans (Rhomaioi). Its predominant language was Greek, although some of its subjects spoke Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and other local languages during its long (330-1453) history. Its emperors regarded the one-time geographical limits of the Roman Empire as theirs, and they looked to Rome for their traditions, symbols, and institutions. The empire, ruled by an emperor (basileus) without any formal constitution, slowly formed a synthesis of late Roman institutions, orthodox Christianity, and Greek language and culture.