Language and identity

Kekaumenos and the Vlachs of Thessaly: the Tax Revolt of 1066

In 1066, Vlachs, Bulgarians and people from Larisa and Trikala rose against new tax burdens. Kekaumenos’s account is the fullest eleventh-century description of communities explicitly called Vlachs. What kind of communities does it describe? Not herders without settlements on the margins of the empire, but people with leaders, notables with property and urban ties, and organised transhumance, integrated into the Byzantine Empire.