Seleucia (theme)
theme of the Byzantine Empire
The Theme of Seleucia (Greek: θέμα Σελευκείας, thema Seleukeias) was a Byzantine theme (a military-civilian province) in the southern coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), headquartered at Seleucia (modern Silifke).
History
In Late Antiquity, the port of Seleucia was the chief city of the Roman province of Isauria and seat of the comes Isauriae. In the 8th century, it is attested as a subordinate command, first under a tourmarches and then under a droungarios, of the naval theme of the Cibyrrhaeots. In the early 9th century, however, it appears as a small kleisoura (a fortified frontier command) sandwiched between the larger Byzantine themes of the Cibyrrhaeots, the Anatolics, and Cappadocia and the sea, and bordering on the Abbasid Caliphate's domains in Cilicia along the river Lamos. According to the Arab geographers Qudamah ibn Ja'far and Ibn Khordadbeh, in the 9th century the kleisoura comprised Seleucia as capital and ten other fortresses, with 5,000 men, out of which 500 were cavalry.
The kleisoura was raised to the status of a full theme sometime in the reign of Romanos I Lekapenos (r. 920–944), most likely c. 927–934. According to the De Thematibus of Emperor Constantine VII (r. 913–959), the theme was divided in two commands, one for the hinterland and a coastal/maritime one.
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This entry incorporates text from “Seleucia (theme)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.