Exarchate (Byzantine Empire)

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The Exarchate was one of a Exarchs guided Byzantine administrative district and in some ways a precursor of the later issues .

Exarch ( Greek. Actually "superior") was in early Byzantine times, in the late late antiquity , the title of governor of the African ( Exarchate of Carthage ) and Italian ( Exarchate of Ravenna ) possessions of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, which were in their administrative area , the exarchate, exercised supreme military and civil power. By combining the two competencies in one hand, the late Roman practice of the clear separation of the two areas, which had been common for around 300 years, was broken.

The title Exarch originally referred to an officer in the late Roman army. The office in its new form was created by the Eastern Roman emperor Maurikios (582–602), who thereby strived to secure endangered outlying districts and at the same time to streamline the structure of the empire. Only in this way was it possible that the two areas of Africa (capital Carthage ) and Italy (capital Ravenna ), which were recaptured under Justinian, could initially continue to exist as parts of the empire, as the two exarchs could act relatively independently and flexibly while the attention of the central government had to apply to other fronts. All of this succeeded despite the dwindling power of Constantinople, whose forces were tied on all fronts at the same time: in the east against the Sassanids and later against the Arabs (see Islamic expansion ), in the Balkans against the Avars and Slavs , in Italy against the Lombards and later also against Arab pirates, in Africa also against the Berbers and Arabs. Sometimes, however, events in the exarchates also influenced the course of things in the capital: in 610 the overthrow of the emperor Phocas originated in a rebellion by the exarch of Carthage that had started two years earlier.

The exarchates disappeared in the early Middle Ages with the extensive collapse of Byzantine rule in the west: In 697/98 Carthage fell to the Arabs, and in 751 the Lombards conquered Ravenna.

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