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أعظم الناس:ما سر عظمتهم!!..وهل لليتم دور في العظمة؟
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02-13-2012, 10:12 AM
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Sep 2009
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الاسكندر الاكبر
Legacy
Alexander's legacy extended beyond his military conquests. His campaigns greatly increased contacts and trade between East and West, and vast areas to the east were significantly exposed to Greek civilization and influence.
[13]
Some of the cities he founded became major cultural centers, many surviving into the twenty-first century. His chroniclers recorded valuable information about the areas through which he marched, while the Greeks themselves got a sense of belonging to a world beyond the
]
Hellenistic kingdoms
Alexander's most immediate legacy was the introduction of Macedonian rule to huge new swathes of Asia. At the time of his death, Alexander's empire covered some 5,200,000 km2 (2,000,000 sq mi),
[195]
and was the largest state of its time. Many of these areas remained in Macedonian hands or under Greek influence for the next 200–300 years. The
successor states
that emerged were, at least initially, dominant forces, and these 300 years are often referred to as the
Hellenistic period
.
[196]
The eastern borders of Alexander's empire began to collapse even during his lifetime.
[153]
However, the power vacuum he left in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent directly gave rise to one of the most powerful Indian dynasties in history. Taking advantage of this,
Chandragupta Maurya
(referred to in Greek sources as "Sandrokottos"), of relatively humble origin, took control of the
Punjab
, and with that power base proceeded to conquer the
Nanda Empire
.
[197]
Founding of cities
Over the course of his conquests, Alexander founded some
twenty cities that bore his name
, most of them east of the
Tigris
.
]
The first, and greatest, was
Alexandria
in Egypt, which would become one of the leading Mediterranean cities.
[103]
The cities locations' reflected trade routes as well as defensive positions. At first the cities must have been inhospitable, little more than defensive garrisons.
[103]
Following Alexander's death, many Greeks who had settled there tried to return to Greece. However, a century or so after Alexander's death, many of the Alexandrias were thriving, with elaborate public buildings and substantial populations that included both Greek and local peoples.
[103]
Hellenization
Hellenization
was coined by the German historian
Johann Gustav Droysen
to denote the spread of Greek language, culture, and population into the former Persian empire after Alexander's conquest.
[196]
That this export took place is undoubted, and can be seen in the great Hellenistic cities of, for instance,
Alexandria
,
Antioch
[199]
and
Seleucia
(south of modern
Baghdad
).
[200]
Alexander sought to insert Greek elements into
Persian culture
and attempted to hybridize Greek and Persian culture. This culminated in his aspiration to homogenize the populations of Asia and Europe. However, his successors explicitly rejected such policies. Nevertheless, Hellenization occurred throughout the region, accompanied by a distinct and opposite 'Orientalization' of the Successor states.
[
]
The core of Hellenistic culture was essentially
Athenian
.[ The close association of men from across Greece in Alexander's army directly led to the emergence of the largely
Attic
-based "
koine
", or "common" Greek dialect.
[203]
Koine spread throughout the Hellenistic world, becoming the
lingua franca
of Hellenistic lands and eventually the ancestor of
modern Greek
.
[203]
Furthermore,
town planning
, education, local government, and art current in the Hellenistic period were all based on Classical Greek ideals, evolving into distinct new forms commonly grouped as Hellenistic.
[199]
Aspects of Hellenistic culture were still evident in the traditions of the Byzantine Empire in the mid-15th century.[
]
Some of the most unusual effects of Hellenization can be seen in India, in the region of the relatively late-arising
Indo-Greek kingdoms
.
[206]
There, isolated from Europe, Greek culture apparently hybridized with Indian, and especially
Buddhist
, influences. The first realistic portrayals of the
Buddha
appeared at this time; they were modeled on Greek statues of
Apollo
.
[206]
Several Buddhist traditions may have been influenced by the
ancient Greek religion
: the concept of
Boddhisatvas
is reminiscent of Greek divine heroes,
[207]
and some
Mahayana
ceremonial practices
(burning
incense
, gifts of flowers, and food placed on altars) are similar to those practiced by the ancient Greeks.
Zen Buddhism
draws in part on the ideas of Greek
stoics
, such as
Zeno
.
[208]
One Greek king,
Menander I
, probably became Buddhist, and was immortalized in
Buddhist literature
as 'Milinda'.
[206]
The process of Hellenization extended to the sciences, where ideas from
Greek astronomy
filtered eastward and had profoundly influenced
Indian astronomy
by the early centuries AD.
[209]
For example, Greek astronomical instruments dating to the 3rd century BC were found in the
Greco-Bactrian
city of
Ai Khanoum
in modern-day
Afghanistan
,
[210]
while the Greek concept of a
spherical earth
surrounded by the spheres of planets was adopted in India and eventually supplanted the long-standing Indian cosmological belief into a flat and circular earth
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