Theme of Dalmatia
| Theme of Dalmatia Θέμα Δελματίας |
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| Theme of the Byzantine Empire | |||||
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| Capital | Zadar | ||||
| Historical era | Middle Ages | ||||
| • | Establishment as a theme. | c. 870 | |||
| • | Collapse of Byzantine control. | 1060s | |||
The Theme of Dalmatia (Greek: θέμα Δαλματίας/Δελματίας, thema Dalmatias/Delmatias) was a Byzantine theme (a military-civilian province) on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea in Southeastern Europe, headquartered at Jadera (later called Zara and now Zadar).
Dalmatia first came under Byzantine control in the 530s, when the generals of Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) seized it from the Ostrogoths in the Gothic War. The invasions of the Avars and Slavs in the 7th century destroyed the main cities and overran much of the hinterland, with Byzantine control limited to the islands and certain new coastal cities -with local autonomy and called Dalmatian City-States- such as Spalatum and Ragusium, while Jadera became the local episcopal and administrative center, under an archon. These coastal cities were the refuge of the autochthonous Dalmatian neolatins, who created the original eight Dalmatian city-states (Vecla, Crespa, Arba, Jadera, Tragurium, Spalatum, Ragusium and Cattaro).
At the turn of the 8th to 9th century, Dalmatia was seized by Charlemagne (r. 768–814), but he returned it to the Byzantines in 812, after the so-called "Pax Nicephori". It is unclear whether the region was under actual rather than nominal Byzantine authority after that; the local Latin cities appear to have been virtually independent. Nevertheless, an archon of Dalmatia is mentioned in the 842/843 Taktikon Uspensky, and a seal of a "strategos of Dalmatia" dated to the first half of the century may indicate the existence of a Dalmatian theme, at least for a short time.
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