Defending Byzantium

Al-Ahram ^ | 20 - 26 November 2008, Issue No. 923 | David Tresilian

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks. My pleasure. :’)

[SunkenCiv]

:’) There’s a quarter of the city called Stamboul (something like that), I’ve often wondered what the connection is.

[SunkenCiv]

Byzantium by Steve Lawhead

[neb52]

Their link is from the marriage of the “first” Tsar Ivan III or Ivan the Great. He married Sophia Paleologue who was the niece of Emperor Constantine XI, last Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. She eventually convinced Ivan to style his court after the Byzantium fashion and many of the palaces and government buildings still in use today were built by him.

[Scothia]

I read a great book, entitled, “Byzantium,” by Stephen Lawhead. If you enjoy historical fiction, I would recommend it.

One of my favorites! Think I'll read it again. Thanks for the reminder.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

If it wasn’t for the Later Roman (or Byzantine) Empire, it is a virtual certainty that Europe would have been absorbed into Islam. It took 400 years from the Arab invasion of the Holy land uintil the Muslims first pushed the Byzantines back into Asia Minor, and 300 more years until they first entered Eastern Europe. The final extinction of the Empire took another 150 years. If Islam had arrived in the Balkans at the same time as the Moors were entering France from Spain, Europe would have died before Charlemagne.