The Byzantine Empire first appeared around A.D.

400 and lasted for more than

one thousand years. The Byzantine Empire was completely broken up by 1453.
Many factors played a role in the growth and the decline of this empire. The
most important factor was the Byzantine Empire’s geographic location. Where
do you think the Byzantine Empire was located?

The Byzantine Empire was located on the western border of the Middle East
and the eastern border of Europe. In present day geography, the heart of the
Empire (which was called Constantinople and is now known as Istanbul) is
located in Turkey

The geographic location of the Empire was both a positive and a negative
factor. Can you think of reasons why its location would be both a positive and a
negative factor?

Positive

Let's begin with the reasons the location of the Byzantine Empire would be a positive factor.

• Trade: Since the Byzantine Empire had contact with people and nations in both the
Middle East and Europe, it had a greater market to trade with. Also, as Europeans
began trading with Asia there were only two ways to get there, either by land (which
would take the trader through the Byzantine Empire) or by sea.

Negative

The negative aspects of the empire's location included the following:

• Wars: If some other nation wanted to expand its territory it would inevitably look at
going to war with the Byzantine Empire. The empire was always defending itself against
attacks from other nations because of its location and its wealth

1. List two pros about the location of the Byzantine Empire

Two advantages: The Byzantine Empire was in a great location for trade
with both Europe and the Middle East and the Empire had developed a lot of
technology

2. List two cons about the location of the Byzantine Empire

Two disadvantages: The Byzantine Empire was always at war and the people did not know if
they belonged to Europe or the Middle East.

Use the map at the end of the lesson to verify that you can identify the Byzantine Empire.

The Defense of the Byzantine Empire

Those negative aspects might explain some things about the empire’s capital which, one again,
was called Constantinople. The city was built like a triangle with two sides facing water and only
one entrance on the third side. Why did they build the city that way?

Defense is the answer. If you brought an army to Constantinople to attack it, you could only
enter the city from one direction. At that entrance you would find a single arch with a great gate
that could be closed in such cases. Conquering the city would be very difficult. It was built in the
same manner as a castle that had one entrance that could be closed at any time.

The leaders of the Byzantine Empire were obviously aware of this dilemma and
they took various steps to avoid the destruction of the empire. If you had been
in charge and were faced with the problems that the Byzantines had, what
would you have done? Explain why you would have done the things you wrote
down.

The Byzantines took many smart steps to guarantee their existence.

• First, they developed an extensive spy network. Why would spies help guarantee the
empire would be safe? The spies could warn the Byzantine leaders if an attack was
coming their way

Problems Faced by the Byzantine Empire

I want to add one other difficulty faced by the Byzantine Empire that they were able to
overcome. Constantinople had a population of roughly one million people. What kind of
problems does such a large population present?

There are many problems with a city of a million people.

• How do you feed all those people every day?

• How do you keep the city clean?
• How do you house all those people?

All of these concerns were addressed by the Byzantines. That is not to suggest
that everyone was happy in the empire. Who do you think were the unhappy
people of the empire?
The poor people within the Byzantine Empire were not happy.

It would be like working for a king, hearing him bad-mouth the poor, and then going home to
your hut and having a half a loaf of bread to eat. You would begin to resent the fact that you
were so poor and others had so much money. Many times over the one thousand years of the
empire's existence the poor people revolted. When people revolt within an empire, it is
considered a civil war or civil conflict.

With all of these problems from within the empire and without, one has to
wonder how the Byzantines survived for as long as they did. What do you think
the answer is?

The main reasons the empire lasted for so long were

• Good leadership
• Able civil servants
• A strong army

A bad king or president can destroy a nation quickly. That type of leader never came to power in
the Byzantine Empire. Civil servants are the people who see to the daily actions of the nation or
empire. For the Byzantines, the civil servants did a good job and worked hard. Finally, the
Byzantine army could defend the empire if called upon to do so.

The Fall of the Byzantine Empire

So, why did the Byzantine Empire fall? To answer that question we have to ask and answer
another question first. When the empire first began to grow, what was happening in Europe?

Europe was going through the Middle Ages. Without going into much detail on
the Middle Ages, there was very little growth in Europe at the time. The
continent as a whole was very weak. Consequently, the Byzantine Empire had
little trouble establishing its borders; it faced no opposition from Europe. By the
time the Byzantine Empire began to fall, Europe was experiencing the
Renaissance, a time of much growth

A second reason the empire fell concerned religion. Why would a Christian
nation attack another Christian nation? There are many reasons. But, if you
were to ask a European from A.D. 1200 about Christians in the Byzantine
Empire, he or she would not think too highly of them. Why? Even though both
Europeans and Byzantines professed to be Catholics, there were some major
differences in the way that the two sides practiced their religion. First, people in
the Byzantine Empire did not accept the pope as their religious leader. Who do
you think they accepted?
Hopefully, you put down that people in the Byzantine Empire accepted their king as their
religious leader also. That proved to be a major difference. Consequently, European nations had
no problems in attacking the Byzantine Empire. The religious differences are now distinguished
in two different types of Catholicism: Roman Orthodox (those who accept the pope) and Eastern
Orthodox (those who don't accept the pope).

3. Explain how the Byzantine Empire fell

The Byzantine Empire fell because Europe grew in strength and began to dominate the region.

4. Describe what the Byzantine Empire did to protect itself.

The Byzantine Empire maintained only one entrance into Constantinople,

maintained a strong army, and developed technologies that would aide in
their defense of the empire

4. Explain what the Byzantine Empire did to avoid war.

The Byzantines did not want to fight other countries, so they made friends with other countries
and used spies to know what other countries were doing.

5. Explain the uses of spies, civil servants, and the army in the Byzantine
Empire

Civil servants — ran the empire on a daily basis. Spies — were used to
monitor the actions of other countries. Army — was used to defend the
empire

6. Distinguish between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches.

Roman Catholics accepted the pope as their spiritual leader while the Orthodox Catholics did
not.

7. Identify three ways the Byzantine Empire influence Europe

1. The Byzantine Empire introduced new ideas from the Middle East to Europe.
2. The Byzantine Empire preserved ancient texts that would have been lost otherwise.
3. The Byzantine Empire defended Europe when it could not defend itself.
At first very few believed Muhammad’s message. In fact, the people of Mecca
hated his message and even tried to kill him because of it. Why do you think the
people of Mecca would want to kill Muhammad because of the message that he
preached?

The answer is that they felt threatened by Muhammad’s message. If there was
only one God, what would happen to Mecca and its shrine? The people of
Mecca felt that their city would die because other people would stop coming to
the shrine with all of the idols

They did not kill Muhammad, but the prophet did have to flee to another city
called Medina. Here Muhammad raised an army for the purpose of taking back
Mecca. Muhammad did exactly that, and the first thing that he did upon entering
the city of his birth was to enter the shrine with all the idols and destroy all but
one. Why do you think he destroyed all those idols?

If there is only one God and Allah is that God, then what value do the idols
have? In Muhammad’s eyes, they had no value, so he destroyed them. The one
idol he did not destroy was a black stone that he felt was from God. Because of
that stone Mecca remained, and is still today, a religious city that people travel
to every year.

8. Identify who the founder of Islam is

Muhammad was the founder of Islam.

9. Explain the five pillars, or basic beliefs of Islam.

The five pillars of Islam are

1. pray towards the East (Mecca)

2. fasting for one month while the sun is up,
3. there is one God (named Allah — which means God in Arabic),
4. people are to be kind or charitable towards others,
5. each follower is to make one pilgrimage to Mecca.

10. What is the title of the Arab leaders after Mohammed?

The title given to the leaders of Islam after the death of Muhammad was/is caliph.
Eventually the Islamic Empire fell. The time line for the empire starts with the
birth of Muhammad in A.D. 570, then the unification of the Arabian Peninsula by
A.D. 630. By A.D. 750, the empire was as large as it ever got. And by A.D.
1250, the empire lost most of its power and each nation within it became
independent. So the question is, how could such a powerful empire ever
collapse?

I see the strengths all being centered around one fact: Islam. Because of Islam, the people who
lived under the rule of the Empire were united. This is not to suggest that every person who
lived in the Islamic Empire was a Muslim, because that was not the case. Nor did Islam frown
upon people who were not Muslim. As you already know, Islam taught its followers to respect
other religious groups who had a book of scriptures. If you lived within the Islamic kingdom and
were not Muslim, the only way you were treated differently was you had to pay a tax because of
your religion.

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Another strength that the Islamic Empire had was its military power. Islam has a teaching that all
soldiers killed in battle will go directly to heaven. If that was the case and you believed in Islam,
would you have any problem enlisting to fight in a war? I don’t think so. The final strength was
its location, which allowed the empire to thrive economically. The Islamic Empire could
capitalize on trade with Africa, Asia, and Europe without too much difficulty.

One of the weaknesses of the empire was its size. I do not care how efficient the government is,
when you have an empire that large, it is going to be very tough to govern. As governing
becomes more inefficient, problems arise.

But that is not the reason the Islamic Empire fell. That brings me back to my original question:
How could an empire so powerful ever fall? What do you think the answer is?

The answer is poor leadership

Muslims also did a lot of work in math. Can you guess two branches of math that Arabs
advanced?

11.