Posted on 11/26/2019 1:52:20 PM PST by Perseverando
A century after the Kings of Assyria carried away the ten Northern Tribes of Israel into captivity, on the other side of the Mediterranean, Greeks settled the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea in the 7th century BC.
One of their major cities was Epidamnos ( Dyrrhachium), founded in 625 BC, located in modern-day Albania.
It was there in 48 BC, that Caesar defeated Pompey at the Battle of Dyrrhachium.
Caesar Augustus began incorporating the area, known as the Balkan Peninsula, into the Roman Empire.
The Roman road, Via Egnatia, stretched from Dyrrhachium on the Adriatic Sea to Constantinople, Byzantium, on the Aegean Sea.
The Balkan Peninsula today includes the countries of: Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Romania, Greece, to the borders of Turkey.
When the western Roman Empire fell to barbarians in 476 AD, the Balkan Peninsula survived, resisting the siege of Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great in 481 AD.
In 840, the northern Balkan Peninsula became part of the Christian Bulgarian Empire, which included the area of Albania.
In 1190, Albania became a province in the Christian Byzantine Empire, with its major city of Dyrrhachion on the Adriatic Sea.
In the 1400s, the Ottoman Turkish army crossed the Bosporus and invaded west.
They attacked Constantinople, Serbia, Morea, Black Sea, Wallachia, Bosnia, Vienna, Karaman, Akkoyunlu, Moldavia, Crimea, and the Balkan Peninsula.
Albania was conquered in 1431, with the local nobility being killed and replaced with Muslim landowners, who imposed exorbitant taxes on the Christian population.
This was followed by periodic massacres of Albanians.
Ottomans led crusades against the Albanian people, with stories of forced conversions and Christian boys taken and forcibly indoctrinated into being Islamic soldiers, or used for pederasty.
Eastern European countries had brave leaders who resisted Islamic
(Excerpt) Read more at myemail.constantcontact.com ...
Corcyra/Corfu was traditionally founded by Corinth in 734 B.C., before the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Reportedly the Corinthian colonists expelled earlier colonists from Eretria. Corcyra was the mother city of Epidamnus (Dyrrhachium). Thucydides deals at length with an incident at Epidamnus which contributed to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, but has to explain to his readers where Epidamnus is located.
bkmk
14-minute video outlining Skenderbej’s tactics against the Ottoman Turks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Qelvsi_5E
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.