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Abstract

The paper deals with the history of the Bucellarian Theme, which was the military-civilian province of the Byzantine Empire in the central part of Asia Minor. The main sources used in paper are the geographical treatises of Arabic and Persian writers of the 9th –10th centuries and also the Greek administrative documents (lead seals) mentioning the officials of this Theme. The main attention focused on the 8th – the fi rst half of the 9th centuries. The most essential issue posed by the author is when precisely the regional army under the title of the Bucellarians was transformed into the Theme of the Bucellarians, i.e. military-civilian province, where this army was settled. The author proves that the term “Bucellarian” in the geographical treatises of Islamic writers of the 9th –10th centuries means the theme, but one of them, al-Masudi, gave the evidence from the earlier period, when the Bucellarians still were only the army, but not the Theme. The author concludes that this period covered the 8th century: some Greek inscriptions, seals and the narrative sources (the “Chronicle” of Theophanes the Confessor) allow supposing that the Bucellarian Theme was fi rstly established in the first half of the 9th century. This conclusion disproves a point of view in recent studies that theme districts had already existed in Asia Minor during the fi rst half of the 8th century.

Keywords

Byzantine Empire, the Bucellarians, strategos, theme, geographical treatises, seals

Evgeniy A. Mekhamadiev

Saint-Petersburg University, Russia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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