Abyla

Coordinates: 35°53′18″N 5°18′56″W / 35.888333°N 5.315556°W / 35.888333; -5.315556
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Septem (Ceuta)
)
Ad Septem Fratres
Ruins of an early Christian basilica in Ceuta
Abyla is located in Spain
Abyla
Shown within Spain
Alternative nameSeptem, Abyla
LocationCeuta, Spain
Coordinates35°53′18″N 5°18′56″W / 35.888333°N 5.315556°W / 35.888333; -5.315556

Abyla was the pre-Roman name of Ad Septem Fratres (actual

northwest Africa
.

Names

The name Abyla is said to have been a Punic name ("Lofty Mountain"[1] or "Mountain of God") for Jebel Musa,[2] the southern Pillar of Hercules.[3] It appears in Greek variously as Abýla (Ἀβύλα), Abýlē (Ἀβύλη), Ablýx (Ἀβλύξ), and Abílē Stḗlē (Ἀβίλη Στήλη, "Pillar of Abyla")[3] and in Latin as Mount Abyla (Abyla Mons) or the Pillar of Abyla (Abyla Columna).

The settlement below Jebel Musa was later renamed for the seven hills around the site, collectively referred to as the "Seven Brothers"

Arabic
: سبتة) during the Middle Ages.

History

Punic

Phoenician ruins

The

Carthaginians
control maritime trade between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Mauretanian

After the

Punic culture continued to thrive in Septem, whose residents mostly continued to speak Punic into the reign of Augustus
.

Roman

Roman roads in Mauretania Tingitana
.

Rome began exerting increasing control over the region, though, first through traders and advisors and then—particularly after

colony, which gave Roman citizenship to its residents. Wealthy Romans from Claudius's and Nero
's reigns are attested in funerary inscriptions found around the Septem basilica.

Controlling commercial and military access to the

Roman roads also connected it over land with Tingis and Volubilis, increasing inland trade and security from Berber raiding. By the 2nd century, romanization was nearly complete and Latin appears in most surviving inscriptions. Alongside the Roman colonists, however, there remained a sizable community of romanized Berbers whose primary tongue continued to be local dialects mixed with Punic and Latin loanwords; this eventually became African Romance
.

Around AD 200, the

Septimus Severus included the town in some of the largesse with which he favored the region. The town's prosperity continued into the late 3rd century, after which production centers were abandoned and the use of money falls off.[8]

Septem was an important Christian center by the 4th century; one of the basilicas from this time has recently been rediscovered.[9]) In the late 4th century, under Theodosius I, the city still had 10,000 inhabitants, nearly all Christian and Latin-speaking.[10][11]

Vandal

Septem fell to the Vandals in 426.[12]

Byzantine

By the time of

Visigothic Spain
.

Muslim

There are no reliable contemporary histories concerning the end of the

Musa bin Nusayr fell afoul of a jealous caliph
, who stripped them of their wealth and titles.

After the death of Julian, sometimes also described as a king of the

Ghomara Berbers, Berber converts to Islam took direct control of Septa. It was then destroyed during their great revolt
against the Caliphate around 740.

Septa subsequently remained a small village of Muslims and Christians surrounded by ruins until its resettlement in the 9th century by Mâjakas, chief of the Majkasa Berber tribe, who started the short-lived Banu Isam dynasty.[13] The continuing existence of an embattled Christian community is attested by the martyrdom of St. Daniel Fasanella and his Franciscans in 1227;[14] it subsequently survived until the town's capture by the Portuguese reëstablished the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ceuta on 4 April 1417. The Ceuta Cathedral was then raised on the site of old Septem's 6th-century church.[15]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Cauvin & al. (1843).
  2. ^ Bonney & al. (1907), p. 26.
  3. ^ a b c Smith (1854).
  4. ^ a b Smedley & al. (1845), p. 49.
  5. Geography
    , IV.i.5.
  6. ^ In, e.g., Pomponius Mela.
  7. ^ Dyer (1873).
  8. ^ Cravioto, Enrique. "La circulación monetaria alto-imperial en el norte de la Mauretania Tingitana"
  9. ^ Roman basilica article, with related video
  10. ^ Theodore Mommsen. The Provinces of the Roman Empire, "Africa".
  11. ^ Christianity of Romanized Berbers
  12. ^ Maros Pérez, Alváro, Septem en la Tardoantigüedad (PDF), p. 23, archived from the original (PDF) on 22 April 2016
  13. ^ Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb; Johannes Hendrik Kramers; Bernard Lewis; Charles Pellat; Joseph Schacht (1994). "The Encyclopaedia of Islam". Brill. p. 690.
  14. ^ San Daniele Fasanella martyrdom (in Italian)
  15. ISBN 978-0-9543335-3-9
    . Retrieved 8 July 2013.

Bibliography
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