Ethnarch

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Ethnarch

Ethnarch (????????) refers generally to political leadership over a common ethnic group or heterogeneous kingdom. The word is derived from the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
words for "nation" and "leader" ("?????

Ethnos

Ethnos may refer to:*Ethnic group*Ethnos ...
" and "?????

Archon

Archon is a Greek language word that means "ruler", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ???-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy and anarchism....
").

generic title (not a formal style) of ethnarch was used in the Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
East to refer to rulers of vassal kingdoms who did not rise to the level of kings. The Romans used the terms natio and gens for a people as a genetic and cultural entity, regardless of political statehood.

The best-known is probably Herod Archelaus

Herod Archelaus

Herod Archelaus was the ethnarch of Samaria, Judea, and Edom from 4 BC to 6 AD. He was the son of Herod the Great and Malthace, the brother of Herod Antipas, and the half-brother of Herod Philip I....
, son of Herod the Great

Herod the Great

Herod , also known as Herod I or Herod the Great , was a Roman Empire client state of Israel. Herod is known for his colossal building projects in Jerusalem and other parts of the ancient world, including the rebuilding of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, sometimes referred to as Herod's Temple....
, who was ethnarch of the chief part, Samaria

Samaria

Samaria, or the Shomron is a term used for the mountainous region in northern Israel roughly corresponding to the northern part of the West Bank....
, Judea

Judea

Judea or Jud?a is the name given to the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel , an area now divided between Israel and the West Bank ....
and Idumea

Edom

Edom is a name given to Esau in the Hebrew Bible, as well as to the nation descending from him. The nation's name in Assyrian language was Udumi; in Syriac language, ????; in Greek language, ?d???a?a ; in Latin, Idum?a or Idumea....
, from the death of his father in 4 BC to AD 6

Year 6 was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar....
.

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Encyclopedia

Ethnarch (????????) refers generally to political leadership over a common ethnic group or heterogeneous kingdom. The word is derived from the Greek

Greek language

Ethnos

Ethnos may refer to:*Ethnic group*Ethnos ...
" and "?????

Archon

Antiquity

The generic title (not a formal style) of ethnarch was used in the Roman

Ancient Rome

Herod Archelaus

Herod the Great

Samaria

Samaria, or the Shomron is a term used for the mountainous region in northern Israel roughly corresponding to the northern part of the West Bank....
, Judea

Judea

Judea or Jud?a is the name given to the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel , an area now divided between Israel and the West Bank ....
and Idumea

Edom

Year 6 was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar....
. His brother Philip received the north-east of the realm and was styled Tetrarch

Tetrarch

Tetrarch is a Greek language term for a holder of Roman Emperor office under a Tetrarchy. It was applied earlier to rulers of minor principalities owing allegiance to Rome....
(circa 'ruler of a quarter'); and Galilee was given to Herod Antipas

Herod Antipas

Herod Antipas After inheriting his territories when the kingdom of his father Herod the Great was divided upon his death in 4 BC, Antipas ruled them as a client state of the Roman Empire....
, who bore the same title, so Archelaus' title singled him out as the senior ruler, higher in rank than the tetrarchs, so the chief of the Jewish nation; these three sovereignties were reunited under Herod Agrippa from A.D. 41 to 44.

Previously, Hyrcanus II

Hyrcanus II

Hyrcanus II, a member of the Hasmonean dynasty, was the Jewish Kohen Gadol and King of Judea in the 1st century BCE....
, one of the later Hasmonean

Hasmonean

The Hasmoneans were the ruling dynasty of the Hasmonean Kingdom of Israel , an independent Jewish state. The Hasmonean dynasty was established under the leadership of Simon Maccabaeus, two decades after his brother Judas Maccabeus defeated the Seleucid army during the Maccabean Revolt in 165 BCE....
rulers of Judea, had also held the title of Ethnarch, as well as that of High Priest.

Byzantine

Ethnarches was the military title of a commander of foreign troops that were serving the Greek

Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
Emperor; recruiting mercenaries by nationality was not uncommon in Classical Antiquity, nor in the feudal age.

Ottoman

Rather different was the case of minority community ethnarchs, especially within the Islamic Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299?1923. It was Treaty of Lausanne by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923....
(political successor to Byzantium

Byzantium

Byzantium was an Ancient Greece city, which was founded by Greeks colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas or Byzantas ....
) that were recognized as legitimate entities (millet

Millet (Ottoman Empire)

Millet is an Ottoman Turkish language term for a confessional community in the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, with the Tanzimat reforms, the term started to refer to legally protected religious minority groups, other than the ruling Sunni....
) and thus allowed to be heard by the government through an officially acknowledged representative, though without political persona.

When the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II decided to give such dialogue a more formal nature, the logical choice for the major Christian communities was the (Greek Orthodox) Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. For the far smaller, but also influential Jewish diaspora, a similar position was granted to the Hakham Bashi

Hakham Bashi

Hakham Bashi is the Turkish name for the Chief rabbi of the nation's Jewish community....
, i.e. Chief rabbi.

Sources and references

Flavius Josephus
The New Testament