Wallachia was situated north of the Danube and south of the Carpathian Mountains. Its neighbors were Bulgaria, after that the Ottoman Empire to the south, Transylvania to the north-west and Moldavia to the north-east. The name is most likely derived from the Carp, a Dacian tribe, until 381 as living on the Eastern Carpathian slopes. The inhabitants of this district are considered as belonging to the Thracian stock.
| Great Wallachia in Thessaly was a medieval state (12th and 13th century) of the Aromanian (Vlach) shepherds, which included the Thessaly region of Greece, the southern and central ranges of Pindus and extending over part of Macedonia. Thessaly is one of the thirteen peripheries of Greece, further subdivided into four prefectures: Karditsa, Larissa, Magnesia, Trikala. Anna Comnena in the second half of the 11th century was the first author to write about the Vlach settlements of the mountains of Thessaly. Many Vlachs (Romanians) were shepherds in the medieval times, driving their sheep through the mountains of Southeastern Europe. After the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, Great Wallachia was included in the enlarged despotate of Epirus, but it soon reappeared as an independent principality under its old name. |  |
Muntenia or Greater Wallachia is a historical province of Romania, usually considered Wallachia-proper "Muntenia", "Tara Româneasca", and the seldom used "Valahia" are synonyms in Romanian. It is situated between the Danube (south and east), the Carpathian Mountains (the Transylvanian Alps branch) and Moldavia (both north), and the Olt River to the west. The latter river is the border between Muntenia and Oltenia, or Lesser Wallachia. Some of the traditional border between Wallachia/Muntenia and Moldavia was formed by the Milcov River.
The Daco-Thracia 2000-560 BC comprising the regions known as: Susudava, Selidava, Costobocia, Pannonia, Maramabista, Tiragaetia, Masagaetia, Crisia, Moldadava, Arutela, Tauro-Thracia, Sigynia, Gaetia, Moesia, Thracia, Macedonia, Phrygia, Bithynia and Pont. Much of the area of modern Romania had post Roman populations with elements of Goths, Dacians, and Sarmatian peoples know as the Mures-Cerneahov culture followed by waves of migratory tribes.
The nomad and farming Sarmatians (Sauromatae) related to the Scythians were closely connected with farming Meotians in the Kuban region for an appreciable length of time, from about 1st century B.C. - 2nd century A.D. In 328 the Romans built a bridge between Sucidava (Celei) and Oescus (Gigen) which indicates that there was a significant trade with the peoples north of the Danube. The Goths attacked the Roman Empire south of the Danube in 332 AD, settling north of the Danube then later to the south. The period of Goth rule ended when the Huns arrived in the area of modern Hungary and under Attila they attacked and destroyed some 170 settlements on both sides of the Danube. The city Drobeta-Turnu Severin, which was originally called Drobetae by the Romans, took its later name of Turnu Severin, or the Northern Tower, from a tower on the north bank of the Danube built by the Byzantines which stood on a small hill surrounded by a deep fosse. This was built to commemorate a victory over the Gauls and Marcomanni by the Roman emperor Severus (222-235). He was one of the early Africans in history to gain fame outside of his native continent, undertook reconstruction of Hadrian's Wall. Severus, a Roman general, consul, was born at Leptis Magna southeast of Carthage, on the north coast of Africa, and died at Eboracum (York), in the province of Britannia.
Severin is a village in Croatia. After the retreat of the Roman administration from Dacia, the city (Drobeta-Turnu Severin) in Oltenia was preserved under Roman occupation as a bridgehead on the north bank of the Danube (IV-VI centuries). Destroyed by Huns in the 5th century, the city was rebuilt by Justinian I (527-565). It was in the Middle Ages that the city changed its name to Turnu Severin and became the political center of the Banat of Severin (XIII-th century). The city was claimed and possessed successively by the Magyar king and the Wallachian voivode, and was seized by the Ottoman Empire in 1524.
MOLDAVIA (Romanian: Moldova, Turkish: Bogdan Iflak or simply Bogdan) was a medieval principality on the lower Danube river which, along with Wallachia, formed the basis for the modern Romanian state. Its name originates from the Moldova River. The principality in its greatest extent stretched from Transylvania in the west to the Dniester River in the east, but had its nucleus in the northwestern part, the Tara de Sus (Upper Land), which later became known as Bukovina. This area contained Suceava, the capital of the principality from 1359-1565. Iasi was the capital from 1565-1859. The political entity known as Moldavia was founded in the mid-14th century by the Romanian leader Dragos of Maramures, who had been ordered by the Hungarian king to establish a defense line for the Kingdom of Hungary against the Tatars. Bogdan I became the first independent prince of Moldavia when he rejected Hungarian authority in 1359. In 1387 it became a vassal of Poland.
In 1389, much of the Balkan Peninsula came under Ottoman rule. The Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, bringing to an end the 1100-year-rule of the Byzantine Empire. Next the Ottomans gained control of Mamluk Egypt in 1517, followed by Algiers and most of present-day Hungary by 1529, all of Persia in 1638, and most of the region between the Black and Caspian Seas by the 1650s.
Drobeta-Turnu Severin (Hungarian: Szörényvár) is a city in Mehedinti County, Oltenia, Romania, on the left bank of the Danube, below the Iron Gates of the Danube between Romania in the north and Serbia in the south. At this point, the river separates the southern Carpathian Mountains from the northwestern foothills of the Balkan Mountains. The Orsova valley is the last broad section before the river reaches the plains of Wallachia at the last gorge, the Sip gorge. At its head, there is a medieval fort at Golubac, on the Serbian bank. The isle of Ada Kaleh downstream from Orsova was walled: the Austrians built a fort there in 1669 to defend it from the Turks, and that fort would remain a bone of contention for the two empires. In 1699 the island came under Turkish control, from 1716 to 1718 it was Austrian, after a four month siege in 1738 it was Turkish again, followed by the Austrians reconquering it in 1789, only to have to yield it to the Turks in the trailing peace treaty and was built on the site of an earlier Franciscan monastery.