Chaldia

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Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R)
Map of the Byzantine Empire in 842. Chaldia is located in the north-easternmost corner of the Empire is evident.

Chaldia (चाल्डिया) was a historical region located in mountainous interior of the eastern Black Sea, northeast Anatolia (modern Turkey).

Variants

Origin

Its name was derived from a people called the Chaldoi (or Chalybes) that inhabited the region in antiquity. Chaldia was used throughout the Byzantine period and was established as a formal theme, known as the Theme of Chaldia (Greek: θέμα Χαλδίας), by 840.

Jat Gotras Namesake

History

During the Late Middle Ages, it formed the core of the Empire of Trebizond until its fall to the Ottoman Empire in 1461.

Anthony Bryer traces the origin of its name not to Chaldea, as Constantine VII had done, but to the Urartian language, for whose speakers Ḫaldi was the Sun God. Bryer notes at the time of his writing that a number of villages in the Of district were still known as "Halt".[1] Other scholars, however, reject the Urartian connection. Χάλυψ, the tribe's name in Greek, means "tempered iron, steel", a term that passed into Latin as chalybs, "steel". Sayce derived the Greek name Chalybe from Hittite Khaly-wa, "land of Halys".[2] More than an identifiable people or tribe, "Chalybes" was a generic Greek term for "peoples of the Black Sea coast who trade in iron".[3]

Byzantine sources provide evidence that the people of Chaldia and Tzanicha were descended from the indigenous inhabitants of the historical area of Chaldia. Strabo identifies them with the ancient people of Chalybia and describes them as rough and warlike.[4] The first local inhabitants, the Chalybes, were counted among the earliest ironsmith nations by Classical writers.[5] Indeed, the Greek name for steel is chalybas (Greek: χάλυβας), possibly deriving from them.[6] The first Greek colony was that of Trapezus, founded by Greek traders from Miletus, traditionally dated to 756 BC. Greek colonization was restricted to the coast, and in later ages Roman control remained likewise only nominal over the tribes of the interior.[7]

The coastal regions, however, belonged to the Roman province of Pontus Polemoniacus. Only during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) were the warlike tribes, the Sannoi or Tzannoi, subdued, Christianized, and brought under central rule.[8] Justinian included the entire region in the newly constituted province of Armenia I Magna with Trapezus as its capital (under Emperor Maurice, it was renamed Armenia III).

In the second half of the 7th century, with the establishment of the theme system, the region (Pontus Polemoniacus with the portion of Armenia I known as Keltzene) became part of the Armeniac Theme, initially as the tourma (division) of Chaldia, and later as a semi-distinct duchy (doukaton) or archontate. By 840, and perhaps as early as 824, it was constituted as a theme in its own right.[9]

Arab geographers of the 9th and 10th centuries report differently on the theme: Ibn Khordadbeh reports that it counted six fortified places, Qudama ibn Ja'far that its troops numbered 4,000, while Ibn al-Faqih writes that its governing strategos commanded 10,000 men (certainly exaggerated) and had two subordinate tourmarchai.[10] According to 10th-century documents, the strategos of Chaldia received twenty pounds of gold as an annual salary, of which half was paid by the state treasury and the rest came from the tax proceeds of his province, including the kommerkion tax on the important trade routes from the East that converged on Trapezus.[11] In the early 10th century, the theme's southern portion, the district of Keltzene, was detached and added to the newly established theme of Mesopotamia.[12]

Until the eastern gains in the latter 10th century, Chaldia remained the northeastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire. During the periods 1091/1095–1098 and 1126–1140, the theme was practically autonomous from the Byzantine government. During the first period, under its doux, Theodore Gabras, the region had been cut off from the remaining Byzantine territories by the Seljuk Turks, while during the second period, doux Constantine Gabras had rebelled against Emperor John II Komnenos. After the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by Latin crusaders, two Byzantine successor states were established: the Empire of Nicaea, and the Despotate of Epirus. A third, the Empire of Trebizond, was created after Alexios Komnenos, commanding the Georgian expedition in Chaldia a few weeks before the sack of Constantinople, found himself de facto emperor, and established himself in Trebizond.[13] Indeed, by the 14th century, the Empire was reduced practically to the territory of the old theme.[14] The Empire of Trebizond managed to survive through successive upheavals by a combination of its inaccessible location, a small but capable army, and a sound diplomacy based on marriage alliances, before finally falling to the Ottomans in 1461. Even thereafter, isolated fortresses in the interior continued to resist. Only in 1479 was the region subdued, when the castle of Golacha, the last remaining Christian stronghold in Asia Minor, fell. Significant numbers of Pontic Greeks remained in the region throughout the Ottoman period, until the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny [15] mentions .... Babylon, the capital of the nations of Chaldæa, long enjoyed the greatest celebrity of all cities throughout the whole world: and it is from this place that the remaining parts of Mesopotamia and Assyria received the name of Babylonia.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny[16] mentions Tigris....After this (Pasitigris), it receives the Choaspes17, which comes from Media; and then, as we have already stated,18 flowing between Seleucia and Ctesiphon, discharges itself into the Chaldæan Lakes, which it supplies for a distance of seventy miles. Escaping from them by a vast channel, it passes the city of Charax to the right, and empties itself into the Persian Sea, being ten miles in width at the mouth.

17 A river of Susiana, which, after passing Susa, flowed into the Tigris, below its junction with the Euphrates. The indistinctness of the ancient accounts has caused it to be confused with the Eulæus, which flows nearly parallel with it into the Tigris. It is pretty clear that they were not identical. Pliny here states that they were different rivers, but makes the mistake below, of saying that Susa was situate upon the Eulæus, instead of the Choaspes. These errors may be accounted for, it has been suggested, by the fact that there are two considerable rivers which unite at Bund-i- Kir, a little above Ahwaz, and form the ancient Pasitigris or modern Karun. It is supposed that the Karun represents the ancient Eulæus, and the Kerkhah the Choaspes.

18 In c. 26 of the present Book. The custom of the Persian kings drinking only of the waters of the Eulæus and Choaspes, is mentioned in B. xxxi. c. 21.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny[17] mentions Arabia....We have already mentioned8 its peoples, which extend from our sea as far as the deserts of Palmyrene, and we shall now proceed to a description of the remainder. The Scenitæ, as we have already stated,9 border upon the Nomades and the tribes that ravage the territories of Chaldæa, being themselves of wandering habits, and receiving their name from the tents which constitute their dwellings; these are made of goats' hair, and they pitch them wherever they please.

8 In B. v. c. 12 and 21.

9 In c. 30 of the present Book.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny[18] mentions....We next come to a city situate on the banks of the Pasitigris, Fora by name, and subject to the king of Charax: to this place people resort on their road from Petra, and sail thence to Charax, twelve miles distant, with the tide. If you are proceeding by water from the Parthian territories, you come to a village known as Teredon; and below the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris, you have the Chaldæi dwelling on the left side of the river, and the Nomadic tribes of the Scenitæ on the right.

शाल्मल द्वीप

शाल्मल द्वीप (AS, p.896): शाल्मल द्वीप पौराणिक भूगोल की संकल्पना के अनुसार पृथ्वी के सप्तद्वीपों में से एक है। विष्णु पुराण के अनुसार - 'जम्बूप्लक्षाहृदयौ द्वीपौ शाल्मलश्चापरो द्विज, कुश: क्रौंचस्तथा शाक: पुष्करश्चैव सप्तम:। विष्णु पुराण 2,2,5. ..... श्री नंदलाल डे के अनुसार यह असीरिया या चाल्डिया है।

External links

References

  1. ↑ Anthony Bryer, "Greeks and Türkmens: The Pontic Exception", Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 29 (1975), p. 116f
  2. ↑ The Greek Colonisation of the Black Sea Area p. 74
  3. ↑ I. M. Diakonoff The Pre-history of the Armenian People, Yerevan, 1968 (Delmar, New York, 1984) ISBN 9780882060392. "The Greeks evidently used the name Chalybes for all of the inhabitants of the Pontus who traded in iron ore (see Pauly, s.v. Chalybes); in some cases we might suspect that the Moschi (in Pontus) and/or the Chalybes were foreign designations for the Chaldians (Halitu, Xaghtik') who actually did live between the Tibareni in the west, the Mosynoeci in the north, and the Matieni in the southeast."
  4. ↑ Jones, H.L. (ed.), Strabo, Geography (Loeb, New York 1917-1932), 548.18, 549.19.
  5. ↑ http://mgu.bg/geoarchmin/naterials/49Kuparadze-et-al.pdf
  6. ↑ Smith, William (1854). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company. p. 602.
  7. ↑ Talbert, Richard J. A. (2000). Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World: Map-by-Map Directory. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-04945-8.p.1226
  8. ↑ Evans, James Allan Stewart (2000). The Age of Justinian: The Circumstances of Imperial Power. London, United Kingdom and New York, New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-23726-0.p.93
  9. ↑ Pertusi, A. (1952). Constantino Porfirogenito: De Thematibus (in Italian). Rome, Italy: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.p. 93.
  10. ↑ Pertusi 1952, pp. 138–139
  11. ↑ Pertusi 1952, p. 138
  12. ↑ Pertusi 1952, p. 139
  13. ↑ A. A. Vasiliev, "The Foundation of the Empire of Trebizond (1204–1222)", Speculum, 11 (1936), pp. 18f
  14. ↑ Treadgold, Warren (1997). A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-2630-2.p.817
  15. ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 30
  16. ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 31
  17. ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 32
  18. ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 32
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