Hagia Sophia was “famously completed in just 5 years and 10 months…a lightning-fast project compared with the speed of construction of other monumental churches, such as Notre Dame de Paris, which took almost 200 years.”

It became “likely the largest building in the world.” 🧵 “In contemporary praise Justinian had surpassed every ruler, for he built ‘a universal temple for all the nations of the earth.’”

To this day his legacy is quite enhanced by the building, even if it no longer performs its original intended function.

The equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome is famous. However, the statue of Justinian in Constantinople dwarfed it!

“The horseman could have weighed more than 4425kg” whereas “the equestrian monument of Marcus Aurelius weighs ~2500kg.”

But, moving it was a challenge! 🧵 The scale was an issue when it came to moving it, and mounting it atop a column. The statue originally was of Theodosius, placed in the Forum of Theodosius.

This statue was reappropriated for use by Justinian. But, putting it atop a tall column was the biggest challenge.

The Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus (“Little Hagia Sophia”) is distinguished by its splendid interior, especially its carved decoration.

Though I saw no mosaics when I went, and the outside wasn’t the most stunning, the beautiful interior details captivate the viewer!

🧵🧵 The columns and carved details combine rather elegantly in this building

In the year 1200, the last recorded foreign visit to Constantinople with good details prior to the Fourth Crusade occurred.

St Anthony of Novgorod gives us priceless details as he described countless relics and treasures of the Hagia Sophia, many of which were lost in 1204! 🧵🧵 He recorded seeing the “chariot of Constantine and Helena, made of silver; there are gold plates, enriched with pearls and little jewels, and numerous others of silver, which are used for services on Sundays and feast days: there is water also…coming out of a well by pipes.”

Emperor John Tzimiskes “was one of the best military strategists in the empire’s history”

He impressively defeated a Rus-Bulgarian coalition, winning a “titanic war”

He deserves to be mentioned alongside Nikephoros Phokas or Basil II for the pinnacle of Eastern Roman power 🧵 The Rus invasion was a huge threat - not just an ordinary sea raid which could be dealt with using Greek fire. King Sviatoslav had greatly expanded his lands “with an army that included Magyars and Pechenegs, by early 970 he had overrun all of eastern Bulgaria to Philippopolis.”

The “longest water supply line from the ancient world” was that made for Constantinople!

It was “at least 2.5x the length of the longest recorded Roman aqueducts.” Constantinople was strategically perfectly located, but water was lacking and required engineering solutions 🧵🧵 It is an under-noticed Roman achievement: “At over 250km it is the longest water supply line known from the ancient world and it remains one of the greatest achievements of hydraulic engineering.”

The cisterns get a lot of attention, but the aqueduct deserves admiration!

The Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) is a legendary, spectacular, and inspiring building. It’s the greatest representation of the Eastern Roman legacy.

But there are actually several other churches with the same name.

Here is a thread of beautiful Hagia Sophias! 🧵🧵 The Hagia Sophia of Nicaea, in modern-day Iznik, Turkey. It’s an active mosque currently.

So many people incorrectly pretend as if Europeans invented conquest and imperialism. That’s the most Eurocentric view I’ve ever heard.

Conquest and exploitation is part of GLOBAL HUMAN history!

Here are 28 Examples of non-European empires 🧵🧵 Those who naively and incorrectly act like Europe is the only place or group of cultures that made empires and sought to conquer and exploit others are just factually wrong.

The rest of the world has their own very interesting history as well, maybe go learn about it!

The Roman Empire continued in the East, but in the West the barbarians had to fight to establish a new order.

The Franks would be a key player in medieval Europe, a defining moment was the battle of Vouille (507) where King Clovis pushed the Visigoths out of southern France!🧵 In 507AD Clovis, after consulting the magnates within his realm, decided to make war with the Visigoths. They were his main rival in the fragmented lands of what a century ago had been the Western Roman Empire.

A look at the map shows just how powerful the Visigoths were!

The Restorer of the World

Aurelian was an Emperor who only ruled 5 years but managed to put back together a fractured Roman world in that time.

He faced entrenched rebels in East and West, but in the end paraded his enemies Zenobia and Tetricus through the streets of Rome 🧵🧵 At the beginning of Aurelian’s reign in 270 he faced a situation where two rival Roman states had become established prior to his reign.

Zenobia of Palmyra ruled in the East, and in the Gallic Empire there was an Emperor named Tetricus who succeeded Victorinus in 271.

A prelude to the destruction of Constantinople in 1204 was the Norman sack of Thessaloniki in 1185AD.

Both Niketas Choniates and Eustathios of Thessaloniki recount the horrors the great Roman city endured.

It is a barbaric tale full of misdeeds, suffering, and humiliation 🧵🧵 The Norman invasion came at a time of immense imperial dysfunction in 1185. The Normans marched to Thessaloniki without challenge and besieged it on August 6.

David Komnenos mounted a bad defense, and the city fell on August 24.

Thousands would die.

Many underestimate how important military affairs were in Eastern Roman civilization, it was a society constantly at war!

The army wasn’t just a small part of Eastern Roman society - it was arguably the main focus and most important constituency of the emperor.

🧵🧵 It was “acclamation by the army, not coronation or inheritance” that “made a man emperor…Over eight centuries, despite losing a surprising number of battles, the army succeeded in preserving both itself and Byzantium.”

Much of the state existed to fund and maintain the army.

Allegedly the first king to embark on a crusade was King Sigurd of Norway who led his army by sea to Jerusalem, then Constantinople, and back by land all the way home in a remarkable journey.

Many of his men even joined the Varangians!

But how much of it is legend?

🧵🧵 An Anglo-Norman source known as the Gesta Regime Anglorum is the earliest source, from around 1125: The “king of Norway, in his early years comparable to the bravest heroes, having entered on a voyage to Jerusalem, and asking the king’s permission, wintered in England.”

Within a century of Justinian’s reign “much of the Eastern Roman Empire had unravelled. The issue that historians have long debated is whether Justinian…was in some sense responsible.”

“Had the emperor’s western forays led to a dangerous overexpansion?” 🧵🧵 It is a commonly debated topic. Justinian had brought the Eastern Roman Empire to its highpoint in retaking some of the Western provinces. However, “By the 580’s the empire had lost control over much of the Balkan Peninsula”

On May 8, 1058AD a group of barbarians suddenly burst into a church outside Constantinople, arrested the Patriarch Michael Keroularios during a service dedicated to the Feast of the Holy Archangels, and took him to Blachernae.

These were Varangians sent by the angry Emperor🧵🧵 Isaac I Komnenos had sent them. But why?

The Patriarch was challenging his authority “especially as Michael had made it amply clear that he regarded himself as a maker of Emperors at his own will; 'I have built you, stove, & I can pull you down if I like'” is attributed to him

“The church of the Mother of God in Athens was about to be recognized by the most powerful and victorious ruler in the Christian world.”

The Parthenon in Athens was a church for around a millennium!

It was special enough to attract the mighty Basil II who visited in 1018AD 🧵🧵 “The historian Ioannes Skylitzes…tells us that Athens was the destination of Basileios’ tour of Greece…the pace of this march was apparently leisurely, with time to admire the sites associated with the past generation of warfare…”

The Failure of Manuel Komnenos:

Instead of following up on victories, he let the divided Turks in Anatolia become united under his “ally” Kilij Arslan!

This complacency resulted in him being defeated at Myriokephalon in 1176 and led to territorial losses after his reign. 🧵🧵 “After Kilij Arslan II’s accession in 1156 there were no fewer than 5 Turkish states in central Anatolia: The sultanate of Rum itself, the Danishmend emirates of Sebasteia, Caesarea, and Melitene, and the appanage of Shahinshah.”

It had been a Roman policy to keep them divided.

When success threatens the Emperor, a weak Emperor punishes victory!

At the beginning of the 13th century the loss of Roman Anatolia was far from inevitable. Andronikos II Palaiologos bears much responsibility for it.

When a successful general won battles they were removed! 🧵 Instead of helping to defend his empire, Andronikos was a hindrance who limited success!

First, in a trip to Anatolia to deal with the increasingly bad military conditions there, he removed two of the most important men in the defenses!

After the success of Belisarius the Goths even offered him Ravenna and all Italy to rule as a new Western Roman Emperor

The ultimate test!

The Goths gave away their defensible capital of Ravenna, Belisarius stayed loyal, and the Gothic treasury was shipped to Constantinople 🧵 In 539 the war in Italy was being decisively won by the Roman armies sent to liberate it from the Goths. Rome was Roman again! The Goths were seemingly soon to be defeated. Witigis, King of the Goths, had sent diplomats east to get the Persians to attack the Romans in the east.

The Romans developed a comprehensive underdog defensive strategy to deal with the superpower that was the Caliphate.

This was their most dangerous enemy, they always had to watch the horizon for what could be an existential threat coming.

Survival was no guarantee 🧵🧵 “The period up to the middle of the 10th century saw a style of frontier fighting and skirmishing, of guerrilla tactics and raiding, that had developed over the centuries from the period when the frontiers became more or less table in the first part of the 8th century.”

Some Italian renaissance scholars like Petrarch welcomed the knowledge and scholarship from the Eastern Roman world, and coveted their ancient texts - but also viewed them with contempt and looked down on them as lesser!

A thread on the hostile undertones between East and West🧵 “I desire to see that infamous empire, that seat of error, destroyed at your hands, if by chance Christ has chosen you avengers of their wrongs, if He assigned to you that vengeance which all Catholic people have unfortunately deferred”

Petrarch, in a letter to the Doge of Genoa