What type of government did byzantium have

The Byzantine Empire on the other hand was a monotheistic society. This meant that they believed in only one god. Over the next hundred years or so, Rome would be reunited, split into three parts, and split in two again. The Byzantine Empire fell in The immediate cause of its fall was pressure by the Ottoman Turks. The Ottomans had been fighting the Byzantines for over years by this time. In , Constantinople finally fell to them and their conquest of the Byzantine Empire was complete.

What made the Byzantine Empire rich and successful for so long, and why did it finally crumble? Constantinople sat in the middle of a trade route,sea and land.

Its wealth came from trade and its strong military. Constantinople remained secure and prosperous while cities in western Roman empire crumbles. The first cause of the decline of the Byzantine Empire was the Arab Wars.

In the west side of Byzantium, conflicts rose and began to cause trouble for the Empire. Italian city-states such as Venice and Genoa were lost to Arabs. This conflict lasted over years. The Byzantines knew that enemies would have to take the Golden Horn to have a chance of sacking the city so they placed a m long chain to protect it. There were also various sea walls built and they only failed the city once; during the Fourth Crusade.

Combined with a lack of mass Germanic migration into their territories, the Eastern Roman Empire was thus in a much better position to survive the collapse of the Empire. The only way that Byzantium could have survived was by abandoning Constantinople. They should have moved their capital to Thessaloniki who was an equally important city. They should also abandon all their claims to be an empire and try to create nationalism amongst the Greeks. If the Byzantine empire never fell, the myriad of differences in the world today would probably be extreme.

Rome never fell, it kind of atrophied over time, and the western roman empire also never fell except in northern Europe. If the Roman Empire had never fallen, never split, and never had to cede territory, then the world would be quite different. There would be less diversity of language. After Manzikert, collapse of the empire was inevitable, diplomacy prolonged its existence later on.

If the Byzantine won the Battle of Manzikert, then the Seljuks would not get Anatolia in their empire. They would lose control of Anatolia. Many great monuments of the empire would be built under Justinian, including the spectacular domed Church of Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia. Justinian also reformed and codified Roman law, establishing a Byzantine legal code that would endure for centuries and help shape the modern concept of the state. Debts incurred through war had left the empire in dire financial straits, however, and his successors were forced to heavily tax Byzantine citizens in order to keep the empire afloat.

During the seventh and eighth centuries, attacks from the Persian Empire and from Slavs, combined with internal political instability and economic regression, threatened the vast empire. A new, even more serious threat arose in the form of Islam , founded by the prophet Muhammad in Mecca in In , Muslim armies began their assault on the Byzantine Empire by storming into Syria. During the eighth and early ninth centuries, Byzantine emperors beginning with Leo III in spearheaded a movement that denied the holiness of icons, or religious images, and prohibited their worship or veneration.

Though it stretched over less territory, Byzantium had more control over trade, more wealth and more international prestige than under Justinian. The strong imperial government patronized Byzantine art, including now-cherished Byzantine mosaics.

Rulers also began restoring churches, palaces and other cultural institutions and promoting the study of ancient Greek history and literature. Greek became the official language of the state, and a flourishing culture of monasticism was centered on Mount Athos in northeastern Greece. Monks administered many institutions orphanages, schools, hospitals in everyday life, and Byzantine missionaries won many converts to Christianity among the Slavic peoples of the central and eastern Balkans including Bulgaria and Serbia and Russia.

The end of the 11th century saw the beginning of the Crusades , the series of holy wars waged by European Christians against Muslims in the Near East from to As armies from France, Germany and Italy poured into Byzantium, Alexius tried to force their leaders to swear an oath of loyalty to him in order to guarantee that land regained from the Turks would be restored to his empire.

After Western and Byzantine forces recaptured Nicaea in Asia Minor from the Turks, Alexius and his army retreated, drawing accusations of betrayal from the Crusaders. During the subsequent Crusades, animosity continued to build between Byzantium and the West, culminating in the conquest and looting of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in Many refugees from Constantinople fled to Nicaea, site of a Byzantine government-in-exile that would retake the capital and overthrow Latin rule in During the rule of the Palaiologan emperors, beginning with Michael VIII in , the economy of the once-mighty Byzantine state was crippled, and never regained its former stature.

In , Emperor John V unsuccessfully sought financial help from the West to confront the growing Turkish threat, but he was arrested as an insolvent debtor in Venice. Four years later, he was forced—like the Serbian princes and the ruler of Bulgaria—to become a vassal of the mighty Turks. As a vassal state, Byzantium paid tribute to the sultan and provided him with military support.

Murad revoked all privileges given to the Byzantines and laid siege to Constantinople; his successor, Mehmed II, completed this process when he launched the final attack on the city. The fall of Constantinople marked the end of a glorious era for the Byzantine Empire. In the centuries leading up to the final Ottoman conquest in , the culture of the Byzantine Empire—including literature, art, architecture, law and theology—flourished even as the empire itself faltered.

Byzantine culture would exert a great influence on the Western intellectual tradition, as scholars of the Italian Renaissance sought help from Byzantine scholars in translating Greek pagan and Christian writings. This process would continue after , when many of these scholars fled from Constantinople to Italy. Long after its end, Byzantine culture and civilization continued to exercise an influence on countries that practiced its Eastern Orthodox religion, including Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece, among others.

Start your free trial today. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The Persian Empire is the name given to a series of dynasties centered in modern-day Iran that spanned several centuries—from the sixth century B.

The Ottoman Empire was one of the mightiest and longest-lasting dynasties in world history. The chief leader, known as the Sultan, was given absolute For them, Byzantium was a continuation of the Roman The Goths were a nomadic Germanic people who fought against Roman rule in the late s and early s A. The ascendancy of the Goths is said to have marked the Beginning in the eighth century B. Among the many legacies