Mesopotamia (Province)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mesopotamia were called two different provinces of the Roman Empire that comprised parts of Mesopotamia . A first, very short-lived province emerged under Emperor Trajan at the beginning of the 2nd century AD. The second, much smaller province was established around 199 under Emperor Septimius Severus and existed until the 7th century .

The provinces lay between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris , bordered in the north on the province of Armenia and reached in the south under Trajan (officially) to Babylonia , while under Septimius Severus only northern Mesopotamia was occupied. In the times when this province did not exist, the Euphrates was the border between the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire .

Trajan Province

Roman Empire in 117 with the province of Mesopotamia highlighted

After the attempts of Marcus Licinius Crassus and Marcus Antonius to wage a war of conquest against the Parthians had failed catastrophically in the late Republic , Augustus recognized in 20 BC. The Euphrates as the border between the Romans and the Arsacids . Only Trajan took more than 130 years later, again an attempt at expansion in this region. During his initially very successful Parthian campaign (114–117), in addition to Armenia, the rich Mesopotamia was conquered via Seleukia-Ctesiphon up to and including Babylon and declared a province as early as 115. The population was immediately recorded in Roman tax lists and used to finance the ongoing war. Because of this, this province was very restless and there was considerable resistance to the Roman occupation. In addition, the Parthians were not decisively defeated, but started a counterattack. The important city of Hatra was besieged by Trajan in vain; therefore the Romans did not succeed in actually getting Mesopotamia under their control. Trajan began to clear the area, and his successor Hadrian gave up the province again in 117 and moved the border back to the Euphrates. The area was therefore part of the Roman Empire for a maximum of 19 months (for comparison: Germania had been occupied under Augustus for around 25 years up to the Elbe).

The Parthian War of Lucius Verus

The next attempt to expand Roman influence was made by Lucius Verus 161–166 in his Parthian War . This time it was probably actually possible to establish long-term imperial influence east of the Euphrates. However, no province of its own was established, and the conquests made mainly in the north and along the Euphrates - reaching south to Dura Europos , which lay on the right bank of the Euphrates - were placed under the governor of Syria . The occupied territory did not extend as far as the Tigris, but the Romans were content to exert only indirect influence east of the Euphrates in order to dispute the control of northern Mesopotamia with the Parthians.

Province of the Severians

When Septimius Severus began to be militarily active east of the Euphrates in 195, the Parthian great king Vologaeses V (IV) did not tolerate it . The actions subsequently carried out by the Parthians against Roman territories were punished in 197 with a great Roman offensive, which again led to the Tigris and the Parthian capital city of Ctesiphon. The emperor, who urgently needed foreign policy success, then decided to permanently annex part of the occupied territory. Mesopotamia became a Roman province again around 199, although not to the same extent as under Trajan, but permanently. According to some researchers, the Arsacid dynasty that ruled the Parthian Empire was so weakened that the Parthian Empire was soon taken over by the Sassanids . Other scholars, on the other hand, see no connection between the lost war against Septimius Severus and the fall of the Arsacids, which took place 25 years later, and were able to repel yet another Roman attack under Caracalla and Macrinus .

Sassanid attempts at reconquest

The Sassanids regarded themselves as the successors of the Arsacids and did not recognize the Roman conquests of the Severan period. Whether they laid claim to the whole of the Middle East and Asia Minor , as Herodian claims, is a matter of dispute; What is certain is that they began massive attacks on Roman northern Mesopotamia around 230. After failed negotiations, Emperor Severus Alexander prepared a large army that moved in 232 against the Sassanids. For reasons that were not clear, the army marching in three separate army columns could not unite in time, so that the numerically inferior Roman legions of one army column were defeated by the Sassanids under Ardashir I and the others then withdrew. It is possible that the Sassanids succeeded in taking Nisibis temporarily .

Late antiquity

Overall, despite several attempts, the Sassanids did not succeed in permanently driving the Romans out of Mesopotamia. In 298 Galerius was even able to expand the Roman territory. In 363, however , Emperor Jovian had to give up important territories and the strategically important city of Nisibis. From then on, the border in northern Mesopotamia remained largely stable for a long time. From 603 the Sassanids conquered Mesopotamia under Chosrau II . In 630 the area fell back to Herakleios , but in the course of the Islamic expansion it was already lost to the Arabs in 636.

literature

  • Peter Edwell: Between Rome and Persia. The Middle Euphrates, Mesopotamia, and Palmyra under Roman Control. London 2008.
  • Karl-Heinz Ziegler: Relations between Rome and the Parthian Empire. Wiesbaden 1964.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eckhard Meyer-Zwiffelhoffer : Imperium Romanum. CH Beck Wissen, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-56267-9 , p. 31.
  2. ↑ Armin Eich : The Roman Empire. CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-66012-2 , p. 123.
  3. ↑ a b Klaus Bringmann : Roman history. 10th edition, CH Beck Wissen, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-44812-6 , p. 71.
  4. ↑ Armin Eich: The Roman Empire. CH Beck, Munich 2014, p. 187 f.
  5. ↑ a b Armin Eich: The Roman Empire. CH Beck, Munich 2014, p. 215.
  6. ↑ Armin Eich: The Roman Empire. CH Beck, Munich 2014, p. 257.
  7. ^ Eckhard Meyer-Zwiffelhoffer: Imperium Romanum. CH Beck Wissen, Munich 2009, p. 32.
  8. ↑ Armin Eich: The Roman Empire. CH Beck, Munich 2014, p. 227.