Slave lines

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South Slavic peoples and tribes (orange) in the Balkans in the 7th century; the border of the nominal Byzantine dominion area is marked purple, the area populated by the Roman or Greek provincial population is green.

Sklavinien ( gr. Σκλαβινίαι Sklaviniai ; as: "Slavs machinations", "field of Sklavinen ") is the name for the various Slavic communities on the ground or on the borders of the Byzantine Empire , which in the beginning of the early Middle Ages had formed.

The exact period of the " Slavic conquest " in Greece is controversial in research due to the problematic sources: The beginning of this process is partly in the late 6th century (e.g. in the reign of Emperor Maurikios ), in more recent research, however, rather in the early 7th century Relocated to the century. The term Sklaviniai (or modifications thereof) has been documented in Byzantine sources since the late 8th century. Later this term was also used to denote the regions (at least partially) ruled or settled by Slavs.

These local rulers were largely shaped by tribal rule, although this can also be used to describe the Bulgarian Empire . The Sklaviniai often had no clearly defined borders and were partly tolerated by Byzantium or even sometimes - at least temporarily - accepted. But the focus of Byzantine politics was above all the regaining of the former Byzantine territories in the Balkans (for the loss of these territories see also the Balkan campaigns of Maurikios and the Chronicle of Monemvasia ).

When the Byzantine army went on the offensive in this area again from the late 8th century, most of the smaller Slavic communities in Thrace and Greece were wiped out, if some could hold out for centuries. The Slavic population mostly withdrew in mountainous regions and was then largely Hellenized, which in the 19th century led Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer to the heavily controversial assumption that today's Greeks are exclusively Hellenized Slavs, which recent research has rejected becomes. In fact, many cities and coastal regions had never been conquered by the Slavs, and the Byzantines also settled many Greeks from Asia Minor in Hellas in the 9th century. There is no doubt, however, that the 200 years of Slavic dominance in Greece marked a significant turning point - with their “conquest” the Slavs there sealed the end of antiquity around 600 .

literature

  • Florin Curta : Still waiting for the barbarians? The making of the Slavs in "Dark-Age" Greece. In: Florin Curta (Ed.): Neglected Barbarians. Brepols, Turnhout 2010, pp. 403-478.
  • Florin Curta: The Making of the Slavs. History and Archeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500-700. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2001, p. 110 ff. (With partly controversial reinterpretation regarding the “origin” of the Slavs; Curta assumes that the Byzantines simply introduced a collective name for the new groups on their border, but this had not yet developed their own identity).
  • Johannes Koder : slave lines . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 7, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7608-8907-7 , Sp. 1988.
  • Franz Georg Maier (ed.): Byzanz (= Fischer Weltgeschichte . Volume 13). Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1973, pp. 139 ff.
  • Alexander Sarantis: Justinian's Balkan Wars. Campaigning, Diplomacy and Development in Illyricum, Thace and the Northern World AD 527-65. Francis Cairns, Prenton 2016.

Remarks

  1. Cf. Florin Curta: Still waiting for the barbarians? The making of the Slavs in "Dark-Age" Greece. In: Florin Curta (Ed.): Neglected Barbarians. Turnhout 2010, here p. 411ff.
  2. On this also politically charged debate, cf. Florin Curta: Still waiting for the barbarians? The making of the Slavs in "Dark-Age" Greece. In: Florin Curta (Ed.): Neglected Barbarians. Turnhout 2010, here p. 404ff .; Franz Georg Maier (Ed.): Byzanz. Frankfurt a. M. 1973, p. 142.
  3. See also Florin Curta: The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, c. 500 to 1050. The Early Middle Ages. Edinburgh 2011, pp. 97ff.