History of The Aromanians - Byzantine Period

Byzantine Period

The history of the Vlachs is a long struggle for achieving own statehood and separateness and was marked by rebellions against foreign and imperial rule.

In 579 AD, two Byzantine chroniclers, Theophanes and Theophylact, provided accounts of the language of the Armani (Vlachs). The Slavic-derived exonym Vlachoi ("Vlachs") became a substitute for the term Armani when it was first used in 976. In 1020, Basil II specifically placed the "Vlachs of all Bulgaria" under the jurisdiction of the new Archbishop of Ochrida. In 1027 they are included in Western accounts (the Annales Barenses) of a Byzantine expedition to Italy.

Another Byzantine historian, Kekaumenos, mentions a revolt of Vlachs of Thessaly in 1066, and their ruler Verivoi. The Strategikon of Kekaumenos provides an account of the presence of numerous Vlach shepherds in Epirus and Thessaly, as well as in the Danube valley. It also describes their descent from ancient Thracian tribes. Because of their nomadic and migratory lifestyle, Kekaumenos writes, they enjoyed a bad reputation.

According to the 12th-century Byzantine historian Anna Comnena, the Vlachs founded the independent state of Great Walachia, which covered the Pindus Mountain ranges and part of Macedonia. The Vlachs of Thessaly and Macedonia appear regularly in Anna Comnena's Alexiad.

The rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, a Spanish Jew who traveled throughout South-Eastern Europe and the Middle East between 1159 and 1173 wrote about the Vlachs coming down from the mountains to attack the Greeks. He also described them as a group of rebels, who may have had Jewish origins. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela while traveling through Thessaly, describes the Vlachs as nimble mountaineers. Referring to the Vlachs of Macedonia he said that no Emperor can conquer them. De Tudela visited Constantinople, during the reign of Manuel Comnenus (1143-1180 AD), and wrote of the Emperor's special sympathy for the Vlachs because of his origins from that people.

After the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in the Fourth Crusade, the numerous Aromanians (Valachians) of Thessaly and the southern regions of Macedonia and Epirus established their own state, and the area was known as Great Wallachia(Vlahia).

Niketas Choniates wrote, between 1202 and 1214, that the Thessalian mountain region was called Great Wallachia. After the establishment of the Latin Empire at Constantinople in 1204, Great Wallachia was absorbed by the Greek Despotate of Epirus. Later it was annexed by the Serbs, and in 1393 it fell under the Ottoman Empire. Another Vlach region, called Little Walachia, was located in what is today known as Aetolia-Acarnania (a department in west central Greece).