72-420: Gabras or Gavras ( Greek : Γαβρᾶς , Turkish : Kavraz ) feminine form Gabraina (Γάβραινα), is the name of an important Byzantine aristocratic family which became especially prominent in the late 11th and early 12th centuries as the semi-independent and quasi-hereditary rulers of Chaldia . The Gabrades are attested for the first time in the late 10th century, when Constantine Gabras participated in
144-458: A pronoia estate at Kalamaria before 1347. Other Gabrades were serfs ( paroikoi ), attached to large estates: Michael Gabras at Leros ca. 1263; Demetrios and his sons Michael and Philotheos, as well as a probably related Basil Gabras, as paroikoi of the Esphigmenou monastery at Rentina (Thessaloniki) ca. 1300; finally, Demetrios Gabras Chrito[u]s and George Gabras were paroikoi of
216-504: A Taronitissa ), Theodore had a son, Gregory Gabras , who was kept as a hostage in Constantinople , where he was initially betrothed to one of the daughters of the sebastokrator Isaac Komnenos and later to Maria Komnene, daughter of Alexios I. Theodore tried to kidnap him in 1091, but failed. Nothing further is known of Gregory Gabras, but he may be identical to Gregory Taronites , who as doux of Chaldia in 1103–1106 also led
288-587: A Michael Gabras was one of the leaders of a failed aristocratic conspiracy against the Domestic of the Schools Constantine, a brother of Emperor Michael IV (r. 1034–1041). He too was blinded along with his fellow conspirators. The first important member of the family was Theodore Gabras . A native of Chaldia, he was an energetic and valiant man. He recaptured Trebizond from the Turks in 1075, and
360-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
432-651: A brother John, who wrote a theological treatise against the doctrines of Gregory Palamas . A few Gabrades also remained in the Pontus, where they entered the service of the Empire of Trebizond , established by the exiled Komnenoi shortly before the dissolution of the Byzantine Empire by the Fourth Crusade in 1204: most notably, a member of the family was governor of Sinope during the brief period when it
504-619: A daughter of Alexios, Maria of Gothia , became in 1426 the first wife of the last Trapezuntine emperor, David . After the disappearance of Olubei from the scene ca. 1458, no princes are known by name until Isaac in 1465, possibly Olubei's son. Isaac was overthrown in 1475 by his brother Alexander due to his pro-Ottoman stance. His reign was brief, as the Ottoman Empire laid siege and conquered Theodoro itself in December. Alexander and his family were taken captive to Constantinople, where
576-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
648-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
720-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near
792-411: A modern work drawing from other medieval sources. The Gabrades' success in creating a more or less autonomous domain is not surprising: northeastern Asia Minor , including Chaldia, had had a long history of disaffection with the central Byzantine government in the 11th century, helped by its mixed Greek and Armenian population—the latter introduced in the early 11th century and quickly coming to dominate
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#1732780562386864-531: A monastery in 1300/1; other members of the family are occasionally mentioned in legal documents, epigrams or correspondence as active in Constantinople and Macedonian cities like Serres or Veroia . Gabras Komnenos, of unknown first name, held the post of "judge of the army" ( krites tou phossatou ) and is recorded by Manuel Philes as a "slayer of the barbarians"; a John Gabras Kaballarios was hetaireiarches at Serres ca. 1348; another family member held
936-451: A rebellion against Alexios. Another member of the family, Constantine Gabras , whose exact relation to Theodore is unknown, was also appointed doux of Chaldia by John II Komnenos (r. 1118–1143) ca. 1119. He ruled it practically independently from 1126 until 1140, when John II subdued him. His exploits also formed part of an extensive oral tradition in the Pontus, but the so-called "Song of Gabras", written down ca. 1900, has been shown to be
1008-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout
1080-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system
1152-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During
1224-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to
1296-946: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Domestic of the Schools Too Many Requests If you report this error to
1368-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around
1440-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
1512-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with
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#17327805623861584-644: The pansebastos sebastos Michael Gabras was a general of Manuel I Komnenos, who fought against the Hungarians and the Seljuks, and became related to the imperial dynasty as a son-in-law of Andronikos Komnenos . The surname of Gabras is still attested in the Byzantine world during the 13th and 14th centuries, but the family had lost its prestige. Some of the Gabrades of this period were peasants who adopted
1656-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It
1728-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
1800-641: The Principality of Theodoro in the Crimea . The Gabras family first appears in the northeastern corner of the Byzantine world, the province of Chaldia , centred on Trebizond . The family's ethnic origin is unknown. There have been many speculations regarding their origin, most of them being based on the etymology of the family's name and on the location that they first appeared. Alexander Vasiliev and Alexander Kazhdan suggested an Armenian origin for
1872-501: The Simonov Monastery there. The Russian noble families of Khovrin and Golovin claimed descent from them. Stephen's son, Alexios I, ruled Gothia after his father's departure until 1444/5 or 1447. He was succeeded briefly by John, possibly his son. John's son Alexios died young ca. 1446/7, and his epitaph was composed by John Eugenikos . Another son of Alexios, Olubei, succeeded as prince ca. 1447 and ruled until ca. 1458, while
1944-604: The Xeropotamou monastery at Rebenikeia in the early 14th century. The most famous of the Palaiologan-era Gabrades, however, is Michael Gabras , a sakellarios of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and "the most prolific of all Byzantine letter writers" (A. Bryer), whose correspondence spans the period 1305–1341 and includes most of the major political and literary figures of his day. He also had
2016-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in
2088-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into
2160-516: The Gabrades are remembered as gallant foes in Turkoman heroic poetry. Following the collapse of their independent power, many of the Gabrades came to serve under the new Seljuk Sultanate at Konya , while others went to serve the Komnenoi emperors at Constantinople and mostly lost their ties to the Pontus. Already in the 1140s, a nameless member of the family fought on the side of the Seljuks and
2232-509: The Gabrades as being " Greco - Laz ". Bryer later revised his view and wrote that the Gabrades were most likely simply native Chaldians, as Inner Chaldia, their native region, was beyond the areas of either Greek, Laz or Armenian settlement. Inner Chaldia was a region with its own distinct identity: a mountainous area , it was scarcely affected by Hellenization and preserved a traditional and archaic societal structure, with tiny lordships centred on mountain strong-holds. The first known member of
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2304-548: The Gabras family is commonly identified by scholars with the family known from Russian sources as "Khovra". This family ruled the small Principality of Theodoro , which was founded in the mid-14th century in the southwestern Crimea (in the area of " Gothia ") and survived until conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1475. The southern Crimea had been part of the Byzantine Empire until the late 12th century, and then came under
2376-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
2448-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than
2520-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
2592-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow
2664-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
2736-637: The Patriarchate in 1604. Other family members are attested in Crete and the Aegean islands. Thus an unnamed Gabras held lands in Santorini in the early 17th century; and numerous Gabrades are to be found at Chios and in Crete, especially around Siteia , until the early 19th century. For Crete in particular, it has been often supposed, although with no definitive evidence, that the local Gabrades came directly from
2808-604: The Pontic hinterland. Already before the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the renegade Frankish mercenary Robert Crispin had made the fortress of Koloneia the centre of a separate domain, and was succeeded in 1073 by Roussel de Bailleul . Thus, when Theodore Gabras appeared at Trebizond in 1075 and again in 1081, he was seen as a native leader for the Pontic Greeks of the coastlands, and his regime relied on local forces, i.e.
2880-638: The Pontus. In the Black Sea Region of Turkey, People whose surnames are Kavraz directly comes from Gabras family with no definitive evidence. From the Fall of Trebizond until the 20th century, members of the family were also emigrating in Jerusalem and Buenos Aires . Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
2952-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
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3024-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of
3096-505: The control of the Empire of Trebizond for a generation, but retained close links with the Pontic coast long after. While several hypotheses have been put forward as to how, when, and which branch of the Gabrades relocated there, none can be conclusively proven. The first Gabras of Theodoro to be mentioned is 'Stephen of Theodoro' ("Stepan Vasilyevich Khovra"), Prince of Gothia , who emigrated to Moscow in 1391 or 1402 along with his son Gregory. The two became monks, and Gregory later founded
3168-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of
3240-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute
3312-525: The family entered service with the Seljuk Turks in the 12th and 13th centuries, and in the 14th century, several Gabrades are attested in administrative positions in Byzantium, most notably the official and scholar Michael Gabras , known for his extensive correspondence with the main Byzantine literary and political figures of his day, and his brother John. A branch of the family also became rulers of
3384-536: The family's surname, as a "convenient solution", but the surname "Gabras" is most likely not Armenian. Greek , Pontic Greek , Persian and Laz origins for the name have also been suggested, but these possibilities, too, are considered quite implausible. More likely interpretations include Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer 's opinion that the name was derived from the Aramaic-Syriac formula "g-b-r", indicating "hero" or "man" and Konstantinos Amantos 's suggestion that
3456-538: The family, Constantine Gabras, participated in the 976–979 revolt of Bardas Skleros , and was killed in battle in 979. A patrikios Gabras appears in 1018, who was blinded for plotting along with the Bulgarian Elemag to restore the recently subdued Bulgarian Empire ; it is unclear, however, what his relation with the Chaldian Gabrades is, or whether he might be a Bulgarian noble. In 1040,
3528-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in
3600-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn
3672-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
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#17327805623863744-517: The latter's relative, the pansebastos sebastos Stephen Gabras, was active near Ohrid ; a John Gabras sold land near Miletus in 1236; and a Constantine Gabras was protopapas ("senior priest") of the Metropolis of Miletus ca. 1250. In the Palaiologan period , the pansebastos sebastos Christopher Gabras died as a monk ca. 1264/5; Manuel Doukas Komnenos Gavras is attested as benefactor of
3816-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek
3888-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and
3960-481: The name is a corruption/hypocoristic of the name " Gabriel " (i.e. man of God), which comes from the same root. Historian Anthony Bryer considers that the name is a cognate of the Arabic kafir , Persian gabr or Turkish gavur , terms meaning "infidel" or "unbeliever", which is appropriate for the Christian–Muslim borderlands where the Gabrades first appear. Some historians, including Bryer, characterized
4032-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks
4104-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It
4176-670: The old thematic levies of the province. The Gabrades' Turkish counterpart and main rivals were the Danishmendid emirs of Neokaisareia and Sebasteia . On the other hand, as Bryer comments, "although rivals, the Gabrades and the Danishmendids probably had more in common with each other than they had with the Komnenoi of Constantinople or the Seljuks of Konya "; the two often allied with each other, especially against efforts by their respective suzerains to bring them to heel, and
4248-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
4320-710: The prince was beheaded, his son was forcibly converted to Islam, and his wife and daughters became part of the Sultan's harem . The name "Gabras" survived as "Gavrasov" or "Gavradov" among the Greeks in the Sea of Azov and as "Gabras" in Trapezuntine Chaldea. The last notable members of the family are mentioned in Constantinople during the early centuries of the Ottoman Empire, as with Michael or Mozalos Gabras, active ca. 1555–65, or Cyril Gabras, megas skeuophylax of
4392-417: The revolt of Bardas Skleros . The general Theodore Gabras captured Trebizond and ruled it and the theme of Chaldia as a virtually autonomous state (ca. 1081–1098). He was celebrated for his martial exploits, and was later venerated as a saint in the region. His son, Constantine Gabras , also became governor of Chaldia (ca. 1119–1140) and ended up ruling it as a quasi-independent prince. Several members of
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#17327805623864464-404: The son of the doux Constantine, who "betrayed" the emperor while on a diplomatic mission in 1162/3; an unnamed Gabras who was accused of poisoning Kilij Arslan II in 1192; John Gabras ("Giovanni de Gabra"), who was sent to a diplomatic mission in Europe on behalf of Sultan Kayqubad I in 1234–1236; and a Michael ("Mikhail bar Gavras") who was a physician at Malatya ca. 1256. On the other hand,
4536-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
4608-402: The surname of their masters, and most of the family members attested in government service were lowly officials. Under the Empire of Nicaea , the Gabrades appear in Macedonia and western Asia Minor. A pansebastos sebastos Ioannakios or Ioannikios Gabras is mentioned in the ca. 1216; a megaloepiphanestatos Gregory Gabras is mentioned as governor of a village near Prilep in the 1220s, and
4680-515: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
4752-423: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of
4824-442: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
4896-418: Was appointed governor ( doux ) of Chaldia by Alexios I Komnenos in 1081. Gabras ruled Chaldia as a virtually independent ruler, and until his death in battle in 1098, he fought with success against the Danishmend Turks and the Georgians . He became a heroic figure in both Pontic Greek and Turkoman poetry, and was recognized by the Orthodox Church as a martyr and saint. By his first wife, Irene (possibly
4968-459: Was captured and executed by Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143–1180) in 1146. Another Gabras, possibly the son of the former, defected from Byzantium to Kilij Arslan II (r. 1155–1192) and became one of his leading advisors. He may be identical with, or the father of, Kilij Arslan's vizier during the last part of his reign (ca. 1180–1192), Ikhtiyar al-Din Hasan ibn Ghafras . Other members of the family in Seljuk service include Constantine Gabras, possibly
5040-434: Was reclaimed from the Turks by Trebizond (ca. 1254 or 1258/9 – 1265 or 1267/8). Other family members are mentioned as landholders, mostly in the bandon (province) of Matzouka , south of Trebizond: Andronikos Gavras, probably in the 13th century; a George Gabras ca. 1344/5; Kosmas, a military leader ( polemarchos ) in the bandon of Matzouka ca. 1378; and Theodore Gabras in Gemora in the early 15th century. A branch of
5112-453: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
5184-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
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