Ghost Empire
Page 46
*Stalin, at the end of World War II, controlled a similarly vast swathe of territory, with similar borders to Attila’s empire. It’s tempting to see the Great Soviet Leader – a man born in the Caucasus on the edge of the steppe – as the latest iteration in a line of spectacularly successful Central Asian warlords – Attila, Alp Arslan, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane – whose empires fall apart a generation or two after their deaths.
*Giving rise to the term ‘vandalism’.
*The modern-day town of Nusaybin, now located on the equally fraught border between Syria and Turkey.
*The construction of Notre Dame, by comparison, required more than a century.
*The likely culprit was an eruption, half a world away, from Krakatoa, which would have thrown up vast amounts of dust and debris into the atmosphere.
*China was known as ‘Serica’ by the Romans, taking the name from seres, the Latin word for ‘silk’.
*‘The Blue Mosque’ is a colloquial name inspired by its shimmering blue tiles; its official title is the Sultanahmet Mosque.
*Beşiktaş was once the site of the waterfront pleasure palace of Michael III (r. 842–67), the playboy emperor. Michael is said to have enjoyed parading through the streets with a group of friends dressed as bishops, in a parody of an Orthodox procession. The role of Patriarch was played by a man known as Theophilos the Pig, who was said to have a talent for blowing out candles by breaking wind on them.
*The Lombards gave their name to the region known today as Lombardy. The word derives from the Latin longobardus or ‘long-beard’.
*Today the Great Arch is the only visible remnant of the palace, located near the Iraqi town of Salman Pak.
*Ohrmazd, also known as ‘Ahura Mazda’, inspired the name of the Japanese car manufacturer.
*18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains to be exact. Such an amount would form a heap of grains bigger than Mount Everest.
*The Arab name for Gabriel.
*Taken from the Arabic khalīfah, meaning ‘successor’.
*Roughly the same size as the Statue of Liberty.
*The site of modern-day Sevastopol.
*How a prosthetic nose might be mounted on the face isn’t clear, and some historians have cast doubt on whether Justinian ever did wear a golden nose. It may have been part of a golden mask; such things were often worn by high-born leprosy sufferers.
*‘Gibraltar’ is derived from the original Arabic name Jabal Ţāriq: ‘Mountain of Tariq’, after Tariq ibn-Ziyad, the Umayyad general who spearheaded the Muslim invasion into Spain.
*Now known as the Turkish city of Maraş, famous for its production of salep and Turkish ice-cream.
*Sulayman’s tomb in the Syrian town of Dabiq was demolished in 2014 by ISIS fighters.
*In another version, Leo persuades Maslama to hand over his grain supplies to him.
*Not to be confused with the exiled former Empress Theophano.
*‘Varangian’ was the Greek name for Viking.
*Skade or Skaði, the Norse goddess of winter.
*The Alexiad, 13:10.
*‘Prester’ comes from ‘Presbyter’, meaning ‘priest’.
*Gylo, Morrha, Byzo, Marmaro, Petasia, Pelagia, Bordona, Apleto, Chomodracaena, Anabardalaea, Psychoanaspastria, Paedopniktria and Strigla.
*Fulk of Neuilly travelled around France like a modern-day televangelist, using his imposing physical presence to preach the virtue of poverty and simplicity, even as he was collecting large sums of gold for the Crusade. But Fulk was unable to bring himself to hand over the cash. James of Vitry, more in sorrow than in anger, recorded that Fulk, ‘through avarice or other base motive, did not make these payments . . . His wealth grew, but the fear and respect he had commanded fell away’. Fulk’s reputation was badly dented by these charges of embezzlement and he died in disgrace a few years later.
*Geoffrey de Villehardouin’s account of this awkward episode is titled First Starting of the Pilgrims for Venice, and of Some Who Went Not Hither. For indeed, hither some of them went not.
*Present-day Zadar in Croatia.
*The pawnbroker sold the Crown of Thorns to the King of France, who built a special chapel to house it. Today the relic is kept within the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, where it is put on display once a month. In the summer of 2015 I came to Notre Dame on its viewing day, hoping to see it, but was defeated by a long, snaking queue of what seemed to be ten thousand tourists.