Aerial view of Constantinople: Urban planning

A fine representation of Constantinople (aerial view). I do not know the creator, although I’m thinking of a French artist who is an expert on this topic. Felicitations to the creator for his work.

Αγία Σοφία, Κωνσταντινούπολη: Δομικό σύστημα του ναού (διάγραμμα)

Διάγραμμα του δομικού συστήματος του ιερού ναού της Αγίας Σοφίας από το έργο του R. Mainstone: Hagia Sophia (1988) (copyright: R. Mainstone).

‘Modern’ Byzantine Architecture: Design by S. Calatrava for St. Nicholas Church at the World Trade Center, New York

 

This is a design by the renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava for St. Nicholas Orthodox Church at the World Trade Center, New York (credit: Santiago Calatrava LLC, Zurich). Calatrava is one of my favourite architects.

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.

Book Review: The Byzantine Wars by John Haldon, History Press, 2008

 

At times I receive emails with which my readers ask me to suggest to them some studies, treatises, sourcebooks etc for specific issues of history, military history and engineering/architecture. Due to the unfortunate fact that I do not have the time to answer to each one separately (which is why I also had to disable the comments on the posts), I decided to write some reviews on books that I’ve studied on such topics. The Greek readers know that I’ve written two historical novels on Antiquity, so some readers ask me which my favorite historical novels are; thereby from time to time I’ll also suggest some of these works for the English-speaking and German-speaking readers, especially recent ones and some older.
I will start this new section with a military study that is a work by the well known Byzantinologist John Haldon: The Byzantine Wars.          The Byzantine Empire during her very long history, faced a multitude of enemy states, peoples and nomadic hordes, thus developing the characteristic Byzantine warfare, one of the most advanced of its time concerning the entire planet. Her geographical position at the “crossroads of civilizations”, her weighty heritage from both the Roman and the ancient Greek armies and her confrontation with particularly dangerous enemies in all her borders, led her to always maintain a vigorous and well-organized army, an army of the real “imperial” kind.