 | Cyprus in the Middle Ages: Encyclopedia II - Cyprus in the Middle Ages - Byzantine period and Arab Condominium
Cyprus in the Middle Ages - Byzantine period and Arab Condominium
The cities of Cyprus were destroyed by two successive earthquakes in 332 and 342 AD and this marked the end of an era and at the same time the beginning of a new one, very much connected with modern life in Cyprus. Most of the cities were not rebuilt, save Salamis which was rebuilt on a smaller scale and renamed Constantia after the Roman Emperor Constantius II, son of Constantine the Great, residing in Constantinople.
The new city was now the capital of the island. It was mainly Christian and due to this some alterations were made during the rebuilding. The palaestra was turned into a meeting place and many architectural elements were used to erect spacious churches decorated with murals, mosaics and coloured marbles.
After the division of the Roman Empire into an eastern half and a western half, Cyprus came under the rule of Byzantium.The main event in Cyprus in comparison to older times was the spreading of the Christian faith that created a new attitude towards life since its morality was different to that of paganism. At that time, its bishop, while still subject to the Church, was made autocephalous by the Council of Ephesus.
The political history of the island is one of tranquillity until 649 AD when we have the first Arab invasion. Until then people were engaged very much in matters of faith, especially fighting the effort of the Patriarch of Antioch to put the Church of Cyprus under his control. They were finally successful in 488 AD when Archbishop Anthemius guided by a dream discovered the tomb of St Barnabas with the Saint's body lying in a coffin and on his chest a copy of the Gospel by St Matthew in Barnabas' own writing. Having the relics with him, Anthemius dashed to Constantinople and presented them to Emperor Zeno. The latter was very much impressed and he not only confirmed the independence of the Church of Cyprus but he also gave to the Archbishop in perpetuity three privileges that are as much alive today as they were then, namely to carry a sceptre instead of a pastoral staff, to sign with red ink and to wear a purple cloak during services.
By the beginning of the 7th century, the patriarch of Alexandria was St. John the Merciful from Amathus. Another important cypriot of the time is the church writer Leontios of Neapolis.
In 649 AD Arabs sailed with a big armada under the leadership of Muawiya against Cyprus. They conquered and sacked the capital Salamis - Constantia after a brief siege and pillaged the rest of the island. In the course of this expedition a relative of the Prophet, Umm-Haram fell from her mule near the Salt Lake at Larnaca and was killed. She was buried in that spot and much later in 1816 the Hala Sultan Tekke was built there by the Turks.
In 654 AD the second Arab invasion took place that devastated the island again. This time, however, a garrison of 12,000 men was left in Cyprus, an indication of their intentions to incorporate it into the Moslem world.
When the Arabs invaded Cyprus in 688, the emperor Justinian II and the caliph Abd al-Malik reached an unprecedented agreement. For the next 300 years, Cyprus was ruled jointly by both the Arabs and the Byzantines as a condominium, despite the nearly constant warfare between the two parties on the mainland and the collected taxes were divided among the Arabs and the Emperor. Isolation of Cyprus from the rest of the greek speaking world assisted the formation of a separate Cypriot dialect.
This period lasted until the year 965, when a resurgent Byzantium emperor Nicephorus Phocas conquered the island. In 1185, the last Byzantine governor of Cyprus, Isaac Comnenus of Cyprus from a minor line of the Imperial house, rose in rebellion and attempted to seize the throne. His attempted coup was unsuccessful, but Comnenos was able to retain control of the island.
Byzantine actions against Comnenos failed because he enjoyed the support of William II of Sicily. The Emperor had agreed with the sultan of Egypt to close Cypriot harbours to the Crusaders. Isaac Comnenos was displaced by Richard I Plantagenet in 1192 and kept prisoner till his death in 1194 or 1195.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Byzantine period and Arab Condominium", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
