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Dardania (Albanian: Dardania; Serbian and Macedonian: Дарданија, Dardanija, Template:Lang-el) was an ancient country encompassing southern parts of present-day Serbia and Kosovo and mostly, but not entirely, northern and western parts of the present-day Republic of Macedonia including Skopje, and parts of present-day north-eastern Albania.
Dardani
Main article: Dardani | It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article titled Dardani. (Discuss) |
Name
Beginning with Johann Georg von Hahn in 1854, 19th century historical linguistics speculated that Dardanoi and Dardania may be related to a proto-Albanian word meaning pear tree (dardhë in modern Albanian). Opinions differ whether the ultimate etymon of this word in Proto-Indo-European was *g'hord- (which would make it related also to Greek achrás 'wild pear'), or *dheregh-.. Robert Graves connected Greek δάρδανος "burned up" (from the verb δαρδάπτω dardapto "to wear, to slay, to burn up"..
History
The Dardani were an Thraco-Illyrian tribe. They seem to have often been a threat to the Greeks in the kingdom of Macedon. Dardania's largest towns were those of Naissus (Niš), Therranda (Prizren), Vicianum (Vučitrn), Skopi (Stoc, Skopje), and its capital was Damastioni.
During the ancient times, the Dardanians were made from two larger groups: Galabri and Thunaki.
List of the rulers of Dardania:
- Bardyllis,king,4th century BC
- Longarus, king, 3rd century BC
- Bato, king, 3rd and 2nd century BC
- Monunius, king, 3rd century BC
Roman period
Main article: Moesia | It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article titled Moesia. (Discuss) |
The region took its name from the Moesi, a Thracian tribe that lived there before the Roman conquest 75 BC-c. 29 BC and formally became a Roman province of that name some years later (by 6 AD), bordering on Macedonia. In ancient geographical sources, Moesia was bounded to the south by the Balkans (Haemus) and Šar (Scardus, Scordus, Scodrus) mountains, to the west by the Drina river (Drinus), on the north by the Danube and on the east by the Euxine (Black Sea). The region was inhabited chiefly by Thracian and Illyrian peoples.
Moesia was re-organized personally by the Emperor Domitian in 87 AD into two provinces: Moesia Superior - Upper Moesia, (meaning up river) and Moesia Inferior - Lower Moesia, (from the Danube river's mouth and then upstream) during relief efforts for the province after the Dacian cross-Danube raids of 86 and early 87 AD). Emperor Diocletian later c. 284 made Dardania into a separate province with its capital at Naissus (Niš).
Emperor Constantine the Great was a native of Dardania. Christianity was spread in the country in its initial phases, while individuals like Niketas Dardani, authored the early Christian hymnals.
Byzantine period
Justinian I, who assumed the throne in 527, oversaw a period of Byzantine expansion into former Roman territories. Justinian may already have exerted effective control during the reign of his uncle, Justin I (518–527). He is often referred to by historians as the last "Roman" emperor because Latin was his native tongue and because he was the last emperor to make a serious attempt to reunite the Latin-speaking West with the East.
Following the Slavic migrations between the 5th and 8th century, the Albanian language was marginalized to the mountainous areas of Dardania. The area remained part of the Byzantine empire until the 9th century, when it was conquered by the First Bulgarian Empire. Later it was briefly returned to the Byzantines, before it was absorbed into Serbia in the late 12th century.
References
- Elsie, Robert (1998): "Dendronymica Albanica: A survey of Albanian tree and shrub names". Zeitschrift für Balkanologie 34: 163-200 online paper
- The Greek Myths by Robert Graves, ISBN 0140171991
- Strabo: Books 1‑7, 15‑17 in English translation, ed. H. L. Jones (1924), at LacusCurtius
- "Byzantine Empire". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
* Evans, Justinian (AD 527–565) - Baker, George Philip: Justinian: The Last Roman Emperor, Cooper Square Press, 2002, ISBN 0815412177
Literature
- Grace Harriet Macurdy. The Wanderings of Dardanus and the Dardani, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 46 (1915), pp. 119-128