Mixobarbaroi

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Mixobarbaroi (

oikoumene, and had qualities of both the civilized peoples and the barbarians, as seen in the works of Euripides, Plato and Xenophon.[1]
It would later come to describe mixed Greeks or other people mixed with "barbarians" in the Greek lands of cultural plurality.

In the

Asia Minor, who were allies to Athens
, as "mixobarbaroi", meaning those who were bound to treaties with Athens but were not Athenian.

After the

Constantine I
, the term is used to denote non-Romans of Christian faith living in the frontiers bound by treaties to the emperor, thus being of half-barbarian stock opposed to ordinary "barbarians" who were either non-civilized, pagan or not living in the frontiers.

In

Anna Comnena refers to the people of Paristrion
as "mixobarbaroi", distinguished from the Scythians whom they nevertheless shared language with. The term also came to be used by many contemporary authors in the aftermath of the Turkish Invasions of Anatolia, primarily in reference to the offspring of Turkish men with native Christian women. Speros Vryonis has commented that the 'Mixovarvaroi' were considerable in number by the early 12th century and, whilst evidence suggests that these offspring often spoke Greek as well as Turkish, the majority were of the Muslim faith and considered themselves to be Turks. Over time this phenomenon played a part in the reduction of the Christian population and the Islamification and Turkification of Anatolia:

"In the long run their (mixovarvaroi) appearance in Anatolia resulted in a process that favoured the growth of the Muslim population at the expense of the Christian population, because Muslim society dominated politically and militarily. It is interesting, but unprofitable, to speculate about what would have happened to the Anatolian mixovarvaroi under different political circumstances."[3]

The term mixo-barbarous refers to the writing language of Modern Greek that was characterized with Hellenic phrases, ancient syntax and overall ancient mimic but combined with modern and foreign etymology applied to the vulgar dialect used by Greeks during and after the fall of Constantinople.[4]

References

  1. ^ Byzantium's Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900–1204, p. 110, at Google Books
  2. ISBN 978-0-19-504652-6
  3. ^ Vyronis, Speros (1971). The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 176.
  4. ^ Researches in Greece at Google Books


Stub icon

This article about the Ancient Greek language is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mixobarbaroi&oldid=1188007062"