Nisibis
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Location of the city of Nisibis in Turkey |
Nisibis ( Akkadian Naṣībīna , in Hellenism temporarily Antioch in Mygdonia , Syrian-Aramaic ܨܘܒܐ, Ṣōbā, Armenian Medzpine ) is an ancient city in upper Mesopotamia in today's Nusaybin district of the Turkish province of Mardin on the Turkish-Syrian border . The modern name is Nusaybin (for modern history see there).
history
The city of Nisibis has been around since the 10th century BC. Occupied. 901 BC The Assyrian king Adad-nirari II went to the field against the Temanite Nūr-Adad of Nisibis. From the middle of the 9th century BC BC to 612 BC It is documented as the Assyrian provincial capital. According to Strabo , the Mygdonians lived in the area of Nisibis. According to Strabo, Nisibis was at the feet of Mons Masius .
Under the Seleucids , Nisibis was called Antioch in Mygdonia , but it fell out of use again when the city began in 141 BC. First part of the Kingdom of Adiabene , which was under Parthian rule , then became part of Armenia . From about 36/38 AD Nisibis belonged to the Parthian Empire.
The city came under Roman rule during the Parthian War of Septimius Severus at the end of the 2nd century AD and was fiercely contested between Rome and the Sassanid Empire in late antiquity due to its favorable location and economic and military importance . The city changed hands repeatedly. In 298, during the Peace of Nisibis, important parts of northern Mesopotamia became Roman, including Nisibis, and the city was designated as one of three locations in which trade between the two great powers was to take place. From 309 to 338 Jacob of Nisibis was Bishop of the Christians of Nisibis. He had the church built, which was later named after him and in the ruins of which is his grave. The Persian king Shapur II besieged the city three times in vain in the fourth century (338, 346 and 350), but after the failed Persian campaign of the emperor Julian , his successor Jovian Nisibis had to leave the Sassanids in the subsequent peace treaty of 363 . Most of the Roman residents had to leave the city, including the Doctor of the Church Ephraem the Syrians , and were replaced by Persian families who were settled in Nisibis; this disgrace remained unforgotten in Rome for a very long time. More than 120 years later, the East Romans were to demand the return of the place, and in the 6th century imperial troops tried in vain at least twice (543 and 572) to conquer Nisibis. The place was very close to Roman territory, represented one of the strongest, largest and most important Persian fortresses and housed a garrison of several thousand men. In order to be able to counter the threat posed by Nisibis, the Eastern Romans built Dara-Anastasiupolis, not far from the city on the other side of the border, as a counter-fortress and also stationed strong troops there. By the peace treaty of 591 Nisibis came back under Roman control and was again fiercely contested at the time of Chosraus II .
Nisibis was already the seat of a metropolitan in the early 5th century ; a little later this became Nestorian . Nestorian Christians and other religious minorities persecuted in the Roman Empire settled in large numbers in Nisibis. The city was thus also a very important religious and - since the move of the famous school from Edessa to Nisibis in 489 (see School of Nisibis ) - academic center. It was probably conquered by the Arabs in 639/640 in the course of the Islamic expansion and, apart from a few brief episodes, was subsequently controlled by Muslims.
Nisibis was probably one of the places where the knowledge of Greco-Roman antiquity was passed on particularly intensively to the Arab conquerors. Since a severe earthquake in 717, the city, which had already suffered from the loss of border trade between the Romans and Persians, has lost a lot of its importance. From 1515 the Ottomans ruled the city (see Nusaybin ).
reception
In memory of the work of Jakob von Nisibis and Ephräm the Syrian in the city and in particular the local school of Nisibis, the NISIBIN - Research Center for Aramaic Studies at the University of Konstanz was named after the ancient city.
sons and daughters of the town
- Ephraem the Syrian , Doctor of the Church
- Elias of Nisibis (975-1046) bishop
literature
- Adam H. Becker: Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2013, ISBN 978-0-8122-0120-8 .
- Michael Sommer : Rome's oriental border. Palmyra - Edessa - Dura Europos - Hatra. A cultural history from Pompey to Diocletian , series Oriens et Occidens - studies on ancient cultural contacts and their afterlife, volume 9; Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-515-08724-9 .
- Hendrik JW Drijvers: Nisibis . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie 24 (1994), pp. 573-576.
- J.-M. Fiey: Nisibe, métropole syriaque orientale et ses suffragants des origines à nos jours ( CSCO 388). Louvain 1977.
- Arthur Vööbus : History of the School of Nisibis . Louvain 1965.
Web links
- Jonah Lendering: Nisibis (Nusaybin) . In: Livius.org (English)
- Nisibis in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Strabon , Geographika 16, 1, 23; Pliny , Naturalis historia 6, 42; Stephanos of Byzantium sv Ἀντιόχεια No. 3.
- ^ JG Taylor: Travels in Kurdistan, with Notices of the Sources of the Eastern and Western Tigris, and ancient Ruins in their Neighborhood . In: Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 35, 1865, 53.
- ↑ Strabon, Geographika 16, 1.