Anatolia in the context of "History of Islam"

In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman civilisation from the founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (509‍–‍27 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC – 476 AD) until the fall of the western empire.

Ancient Rome began as an Italic settlement, traditionally dated to 753 BC, beside the River Tiber in the Italian Peninsula. The settlement grew into the city and polity of Rome, and came to control its neighbours through a combination of treaties and military strength. It eventually controlled the Italian Peninsula, assimilating the Greek culture of southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and the Etruscan culture, and then became the dominant power in the Mediterranean region and parts of Europe. At its height it controlled the North African coast, Egypt, Southern Europe, and most of Western Europe, the Balkans, Crimea, and much of the Middle East, including Anatolia, the Levant, and parts of Mesopotamia and Arabia. That empire was among the largest empires in the ancient world, covering around 5 million square kilometres (1.9 million square miles) in AD 117, with an estimated 50 to 90 million inhabitants, roughly 20% of the world's population at the time. The Roman state evolved from an elective monarchy to a classical republic and then to an increasingly autocratic military dictatorship during the Empire.

Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran to the east; Iraq, Syria, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south; and the Aegean Sea, Greece, and Bulgaria to the west. Turkey is home to over 85 million people; most are ethnic Turks, while Kurds are the largest ethnic minority. Officially a secular state, Turkey has a Muslim-majority population. Ankara is Turkey's capital and second-largest city. Istanbul is its largest city and economic center. Other major cities include İzmir, Bursa, and Antalya.

First inhabited by modern humans during the Late Paleolithic, present-day Turkey was home to various ancient peoples. The Hattians were assimilated by the Hittites and other Anatolian peoples. Classical Anatolia transitioned into cultural Hellenization after Alexander the Great's conquests, and later Romanization during the Roman and Byzantine eras. The Seljuk Turks began migrating into Anatolia in the 11th century, starting the Turkification process. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rum ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, when it disintegrated into Turkish principalities. Beginning in 1299, the Ottomans united the principalities and expanded. Mehmed II conquered Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) in 1453. During the reigns of Selim I and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire became a global power. From 1789 onwards, the empire saw major changes, reforms, centralization, and rising nationalism while its territory declined.

The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some 215,000 km (83,000 sq mi). In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn connects to the Black Sea, by the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, respectively. The Aegean Islands are located within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes. The sea reaches a maximum depth of 2,639 m (8,658 ft) to the west of Karpathos. The Thracian Sea and the Sea of Crete are main subdivisions of the Aegean Sea.

The Aegean Islands can be divided into several island groups, including the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, the Sporades, the Saronic islands and the North Aegean Islands, as well as Crete and its surrounding islands. The Dodecanese, located to the southeast, includes the islands of Rhodes, Kos, and Patmos; the islands of Delos and Naxos are within the Cyclades to the south of the sea. Lesbos is part of the North Aegean Islands. Euboea, the second-largest island in Greece, is located in the Aegean, despite being administered as part of Central Greece. Nine out of twelve of the Administrative regions of Greece border the sea, along with the Turkish provinces of Edirne, Çanakkale, Balıkesir, İzmir, Aydın and Muğla to the east of the sea. Various Turkish islands in the sea are Imbros, Tenedos, Cunda Island, and the Foça Islands.

The Mediterranean Sea (/ˌmɛdɪtəˈreɪniən/ MED-ih-tə-RAY-nee-ən) is an intercontinental sea situated between Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Europe, and on the south by North Africa. To its west it is connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Gibraltar that separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa by only 14 km (9 mi); additionally, it is connected to the Black Sea through the Bosporus strait that intersects Turkey in the northeast and the Red Sea via the Suez Canal in the southeast.

The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about 2,500,000 km (970,000 sq mi), representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface; it includes fifteen marginal seas, including the Aegean, Adriatic, Tyrrhenian, and Marmara. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.

Ancient Greek mathematics refers to the history of mathematical ideas and texts in Ancient Greece during classical and late antiquity, mostly from the 5th century BC to the 6th century AD. Greek mathematicians lived in cities spread around the shores of the ancient Mediterranean, from Anatolia to Italy and North Africa, but were united by Greek culture and the Greek language. The development of mathematics as a theoretical discipline and the use of deductive reasoning in proofs is an important difference between Greek mathematics and those of preceding civilizations.

The early history of Greek mathematics is obscure, and traditional narratives of mathematical theorems found before the fifth century BC are regarded as later inventions. It is now generally accepted that treatises of deductive mathematics written in Greek began circulating around the mid-fifth century BC, but the earliest complete work on the subject is Euclid's Elements, written during the Hellenistic period. The works of renown mathematicians Archimedes and Apollonius, as well as of the astronomer Hipparchus, also belong to this period. In the Imperial Roman era, Ptolemy used trigonometry to determine the positions of stars in the sky, while Nicomachus and other ancient philosophers revived ancient number theory and harmonics. During late antiquity, Pappus of Alexandria wrote his Collection, summarizing the work of his predecessors, while Diophantus' Arithmetica dealt with the solution of arithmetic problems by way of pre-modern algebra. Later authors such as Theon of Alexandria, his daughter Hypatia, and Eutocius of Ascalon wrote commentaries on the authors making up the ancient Greek mathematical corpus.

The Black Sea is a marginal sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The Black Sea is supplied by major rivers, principally the Danube, Dnieper and Dniester. Consequently, while six countries have a coastline on the sea, its drainage basin includes parts of 24 countries in Europe.

The Black Sea, not including the Sea of Azov, covers 436,400 km (168,500 sq mi), has a maximum depth of 2,212 m (7,257 ft), and a volume of 547,000 km (131,000 cu mi).Most of its coasts ascend rapidly.These rises are the Pontic Mountains to the south, bar the southwest-facing peninsulas, the Caucasus Mountains to the east, and the Crimean Mountains to the mid-north.In the west, the coast is generally small floodplains below foothills such as the Strandzha; Cape Emine, a dwindling of the east end of the Balkan Mountains; and the Dobruja Plateau considerably farther north. The longest east–west extent is about 1,175 km (730 mi). Important cities along the coast include (clockwise from the Bosporus) the northern suburbs of Istanbul, Burgas, Varna, Constanța, Odesa, Yalta, Kerch, Yevpatoria, Sevastopol, Novorossiysk, Sochi, Poti, Batumi, Rize, Trabzon, Ordu, Simferopol, Samsun and Zonguldak.

The Near East (Arabic: الشرق الأدنى) is a transcontinental region around the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the historical Fertile Crescent, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, the Balkans, Mesopotamia, and coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula. The term was invented in the 20th century by modern Western geographers and was originally applied to the Ottoman Empire, but today has varying definitions within different academic circles. The term Near East was used in conjunction with the Middle East and the Far East (China and beyond), together known as the "three Easts"; it was a separate term from the Middle East during earlier times and official British usage. As of 2024, both terms are used interchangeably by politicians and news reporters to refer to the same region. Near East and Middle East are both Eurocentric terms.

According to the National Geographic Society, the terms Near East and Middle East denote the same territories and are "generally accepted as comprising the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Syria, and Turkey". Also, Afghanistan is often included.

The olive (botanical name Olea europaea, "European olive") is a species of subtropical evergreen tree in the family Oleaceae. Originating in Asia Minor, it is abundant throughout the Mediterranean Basin, with wild subspecies in Africa and western Asia; modern cultivars are traced primarily to the Near East, Aegean Sea, and Strait of Gibraltar. The olive is the type species for its genus, Olea, and lends its name to the Oleaceae plant family, which includes lilac, jasmine, forsythia, and ash. The olive fruit is classed botanically as a drupe, similar in structure and function to the cherry or peach. The term oil—now used to describe any viscous water-insoluble liquid—was originally synonymous with olive oil, the liquid fat derived from olives.

The olive has deep historical, economic, and cultural significance in the Mediterranean. It is among the oldest fruit trees domesticated by humans, being first cultivated in the Eastern Mediterranean between 6,000 and 4,000 BC, most likely in the Levant. The olive gradually disseminated throughout the Mediterranean via trade and human migration starting in the 16th century BC; it took root in Crete around 3500 BC and reached Iberia by about 1050 BC. Olive cultivation was vital to the growth and prosperity of various Mediterranean civilizations, from the Minoans and Myceneans of the Bronze Age to the Greeks and Romans of classical antiquity.

The Delian League was a confederacy of Greek city-states, numbering between 150 and 330, founded in 478 BC under the leadership (hegemony) of Athens, whose purpose was to continue fighting the Persian Empire after the Greek victory in the Battle of Plataea at the end of the Second Persian invasion of Greece. The League functioned as a dual—offensive and defensive—alliance (symmachia) of autonomous states, similar to its rival association, the Peloponnesian League. The League's modern name derives from its official meeting place, the island of Delos, where congresses were held within the sanctuary of the Temple of Apollo; contemporary authors referred to the organization simply as "the Athenians and their Allies".

While Sparta excelled as Greece's greatest power on land, Athens turned to the seas, becoming the dominant naval power of the Greek world. Following Sparta's withdrawal from the conflict with Persia, Athens took the lead of the Hellenic alliance accompanied by several states around the Aegean and the Anatolian coast. The Delian League was formed as an anti-Persian defensive association of equal city-states seeking protection under Athens, as the latter wished to extend its support towards the Ionian Greek colonies of Anatolia. The alliance held an assembly of representatives in order to shape its policy, while members swore an oath of loyalty to the coalition. By the mid-fifth century BC, it had developed into a naval imperial power, conventionally called the Athenian Empire, where Athens established complete dominion and the allies became increasingly less autonomous. The League successfully accomplished its principal strategic goal by decisively expelling the remaining Persian forces from the Aegean. As a result, Persia would cease to pose a major threat to Greece for the following fifty years.