page_title: History of Turkey
section_title: Byzantine Period
hierarchical_section_title: History of Turkey / Byzantine Period
caption_attribution_description: PLEASE, no multi invitations, glitters or self promotion in your comments. My photos are FREE for anyone to use, just give me credit and it would be nice if you let me know. Thanks Hagia Sophia built as the new Cathedral of Constantinople by the Emperor Justinian in 537 AD. In 1453, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror converted the Great Church into his mosque. Instanbul, Turkey Today, use of the complex as a place of worship (mosque or church) is strictly prohibited. However, in 2006, it was reported that the Turkish government allowed the allocation of a small room in the museum complex to be used as a prayer room for Christian and Muslim museum staff.
context_page_description: The history of Turkey, understood as the history of Jamil kabbara the region now forming the territory of the Republic of Turkey, includes the history of both Anatolia and Eastern Thrace.
  For times predating the Ottoman period, a distinction must be made between the history of the Turkic peoples, and the history of the territories now forming the Republic of Turkey, essentially the histories of ancient Anatolia and Thrace.
  The name Turkey is derived from Middle Latin Turchia, i.e. the "land of the Turks", historically referring to an entirely different territory of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which fell under the control of Turkic peoples in the early medieval period.
  From the time when parts of what is now Turkey was conquered by Turks, the history of Turkey spans the medieval history of the Seljuk Empire, the medieval to modern history of the Ottoman Empire, and the history of the Republic of Turkey since the 1920s.
context_section_description: The Persian Achaemenid Empire fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BC, which led to increasing cultural homogeneity and Hellenization in the area. Following Alexander's death in 323 BC, Anatolia was subsequently divided into a number of small Hellenistic kingdoms, all of which became part of the Roman Republic by the mid-1st century BC. The process of Hellenization that began with Alexander's conquest accelerated under Roman rule, and by the early centuries AD the local Anatolian languages and cultures had become extinct, being largely replaced by ancient Greek language and culture.
  In 324, Constantine I chose Byzantium to be the new capital of the Roman Empire, renaming it New Rome. Following the death of Theodosius I in 395 and the permanent division of the Roman Empire between his two sons, the city, which would popularly come to be known as Constantinople became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. This, which would later be branded by historians as the Byzantine Empire, ruled most of the territory of what is today Turkey until the Late Middle Ages, while the other remaining territory remained in Sassanid Persian hands.
  Between the 3rd and 7th century AD, the Byzantines and the neighboring Sassanids frequently clashed over possession of Anatolia, which significantly exhausted both empires, thus laying the way open for the eventual Muslim conquests from both empires' respective south.
caption: Originally a church, later a mosque, and now a museum, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was built by the Byzantines in the 6th century.
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