Rise and Growth of Christianity: a map

A map on the rise and growth of Christianity. Starting from Palestine, the new faith was at first spread in parts of Asia Minor’s interior, in Corinth and Thessalonike (Greece) and in Naples and Rome (Italy).

Ancient Asia Minor early 1st century BC

A nice map in Italian of ancient Asia Minor in the early 1st century BC. Cilicia and “Asia” (that is West Asia Minor according to the ancient Greeks) are already Roman provinces. The Seleucid kingdom is no more an ’empire’. But most of all

Sanctuary of Nereidai in Xanthos, Lycia: Architecture

 

A modern representation of the Hellenistic Sanctuary of Nereidai in Xanthos, Lycia, Asia Minor.

Book Review: The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the 11th through the 15th Century by S. Vryonis, University of California Press

 

The loss of Asia Minor is often seen as the most decisive factor in the fall of the Byzantine Empire. Asia Minor was the territorial core of the empire during the Middle Byzantine Era. It was a wealthy and populous country of many millions of inhabitants, the main source of resources, raw materials, human resources, employees and soldiers for the Byzantine Empire. Its loss was, indeed, a major cause for the collapse of the Empire. However, this collapse was due to higher and wider political, social, economic, military, religious, ethnological and other negative parameters which in the first place led to the fall of Byzantine Asia Minor and then to the fall of the other imperial territories and eventually of the capital itself.

Post-Hittite “Little empires” in Asia Minor: Phrygia and Lydia

These are some political maps of the Phrygian and Lydian kingdoms at their greatest extent in the 8^th and 6^th centuries BC respectively. These two kdms were a kind of “Little empires” of the Anatolian Iron Age that appeared some centuries after the fall of the main Bronze Age empire of Asia Minor that is the Hittite Empire (the last map). The Phrygians were actually invaders from the Balkan Peninsula, kinsmen of the Thracians, the Greeks and possibly the Homeric Trojans. In the Balkans they were known as ‘Brygae’. They were actually a group of tribes, one of which was probably the Proto-Armenians. The main body of the Phrygians settled in an area that included the old Hittite heartland. Gordion and Midas city were their capital cities, and their main sanctuary was at Pessinus.