The Balearic Islands are an archipelago in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The archipelago forms a province and autonomous community of Spain. Palma de Mallorca is its capital and largest city.
Formerly part of the Kingdom of Majorca, the islands were made a Spanish province in the 19th century, and in 1983 received a Statute of Autonomy. In 2007, the islands were designated one of Spain's nationalities.Estatut d'Autonomia de les Illes Balears, Llei Orgànica 1/2007, article 1r The Balearic Islands' official languages are Catalan and Spanish.
The islands are grouped into the western Pityuses, the largest being Ibiza and Formentera, and the eastern Gymnesians, the largest being Mallorca and Menorca. Many of the minor islands and islets are close to the larger islands, including Cabrera, Dragonera, and S'Espalmador. It is the second-largest and most populous archipelago in Spain, after the Canary Islands.
The islands have a Mediterranean climate, and the four major islands are all popular tourist destinations. Ibiza, in particular, is known as an international party destination, attracting many of the world's most popular DJs to its nightclubs. Culture and cuisine are similar to those of the rest of Spain, with some distinctive features.
Etymology The islands are called in Catalan , and in Spanish .
The ancient Greeks usually used local place names, but they called the islands /. No record of the native name survives, but the Carthaginians called them , and the Romans .Plin.; Agathem.; Dion Cass. ap. Tzetz. ad Lycophr. 533; Eustath.
The term Balearic may derive from Greek (/ and /).Diod. v. 17, Eustath. ad Dion. 457; Baliareis – , Baliarides – , Steph. B.; Balearides – , Strabo; Balliarides – , Ptol. ii. 6. § 78; Baleariae – Agathem. In Latin, it was .
Classical sources give two theories for the origins of and . According to Lycophron's Alexandra verses, the islands were called / (/, meaning 'naked' in Greek) because the inhabitants were often nude in the balmy climate. But Strabo thought that probably referred to the light equipment used by Balearic troops /.
Most ancient Greek and Roman writers thought the name of the people, (/, from /, meaning 'to launch'), came from their skill as slingers, but Strabo thought the name was of Phoenician origin. He observed that it was the Phoenician word for lightly armoured soldiers, which the ancient Greeks called /.Strab. xiv. p. 654; Plin. l. c "The Rhodians, like the Baleares, were celebrated slingers" Sil. Ital. iii. 364, 365: "Jam cui Tlepolemus sator, et cui Lindus origo, Funda bella ferens Balearis et alite plumbo." The root suggests a Phoenician origin; in Volume III, Book XIV of his Geography, Strabo suggests that the name comes from the Phoenician .
Geography
The autonomous community's main islands are Mallorca/Majorca (Mallorca), Menorca/Minorca (Menorca), Ibiza (Eivissa/Ibiza), and Formentera, all popular tourist destinations. Among the minor islands is Cabrera, the location of the Cabrera Archipelago Maritime-Terrestrial National Park. The Balearic Islands are bordered by Algeria to the south, Spain's Catalonia and Valencian Community to the west, France to the north, and Corsica and Sardinia to the east. The province has the longest coastline of any in Spain, at 1,428 kilometres.
The Balearic Islands are on a raised undersea platform called the Balearic Promontory, and were formed by uplift. They are cut by a network of northwest-southeast faults.
The islands can be further grouped into Mallorca, Menorca, and Cabrera as the Gymnesian Islands (Illes Gimnèsies), and Ibiza and Formentera as the Pityusic Islands (Illes Pitiüses in Catalan, sometimes called the Pine Islands in English). Many minor islands or islets are close, such as Es Conills, Es Vedrà, Sa Conillera, Dragonera, S'Espalmador, S'Espardell, Ses Bledes, Santa Eulària, Plana, Foradada, Tagomago, Na Redona, Colom, and L'Aire.
The Balearic Front is a sea density regime north of the Balearic Islands on their shelf slope that is responsible for some of the surface-flow characteristics of the Balearic Sea.C. Michael Hogan. 2011. Balearic Sea. Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. P. Saundry & C. J. Cleveland. National Council for Science and the Environment. Washington D.C.
Climate The islands mostly have typical hot-summer Mediterranean climates (Köppen: Csa) with some high-altitude areas having a Warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csb). The semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSh and BSk) is also found, mostly on Ibiza and Formentera but also in southern Mallorca.
History Ancient history
The earliest known evidence of habitation of the Balearic Islands dates to the 3rd millennium BC (around 2500–2300 BC) from the Iberian Peninsula or southern France, by people associated with the Bell Beaker culture.
Little is recorded about the inhabitants of the islands during classical antiquity, though many legends exist. The story, preserved by Lycophron, that certain shipwrecked Greek Boeotians were cast nude on the islands, was evidently invented to account for the name Gymnesiae (). In addition, Diodorus Siculus writes that the Greeks called the islands Gymnesiae because the inhabitants were naked (γυμνοί) during summer. Also, a tradition holds that the islands were colonized by Rhodes after the Trojan War.
Some stories describe them as having unusual habits. For instance, some accounts state that the inhabitants lived in hollow rocks and artificial caves, that their men were remarkable for their love of women and would trade three or four men to ransom one woman, that they had no gold or silver coin, and forbade the importation of the precious metals—so that those of them who served as mercenaries took their pay in wine and women instead of money. The Roman Diodorus Siculus described their marriage and funeral customs (v. 18 book 6 chapter 5), noting that Roman observers found those customs peculiar.
In ancient times, the islanders of the Gymnesian Islands (Illes Gimnèsies) constructed talayots, and were famous for their skill with slings. As slingers, they served as mercenaries, first under the Carthaginians, and later under the Romans. They went into battle ungirt, with only a small buckler, and a javelin burnt at the end, and in some cases tipped with a small iron point; but their effective weapons were their slings, of which each man carried three, wound round his head (Strabo p. 168; Eustath.), or, as seen in other sources, one round the head, one round the body, and one in the hand. (Diodorus) The three slings were of different lengths, for stones of different sizes; the largest they hurled with as much force as if it were flung from a catapult; and they seldom missed their mark. To this exercise, they were trained from infancy, in order to earn their livelihood as mercenary soldiers. It is said that the mothers allowed their children to eat bread only when they had struck it off a post with the sling.Strabo; Diod.; Flor. iii. 8; Tzetzes ad Lycophron.
The Phoenicians took possession of the islands in very early times;Strabo iii. pp. 167, 168. a remarkable trace of their colonisation is preserved in the town of Mago (Mahón in Menorca). After the fall of Carthage in 146 BC, the islands seem to have been virtually independent. Notwithstanding their celebrity in war, the people were generally very quiet and inoffensive.Strabo; but Florus gives them a worse character, iii. 8. The Romans, however, easily found a pretext for charging them with complicity with the Mediterranean pirates, and they were conquered by Q. Caecilius Metellus, who was subsequently given the surname Balearicus, in 123 BC.Livy Epit. Ix.; Freinsh. Supp. lx. 37; Florus, Strabo ll. cc. Metellus settled 3,000 Roman and Hispanic colonists on the larger island, and founded the cities of Palma and Pollentia.Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder.
The islands belonged, under the Roman Empire, to the conventus of Carthago Nova (modern Cartagena), in the province of Hispania Tarraconensis, of which province they formed the fourth district, under the government of a praefectus pro legato. An inscription of the time of Nero mentions the PRAEF. PRAE LEGATO INSULAR. BALIARUM. (Orelli, No. 732, who, with Muratori, reads for .) They were afterwards made a separate province, called Hispania Balearica, probably in the division of the empire under Constantine.Notitia Dignitatum Occid. c. xx. vol. ii. p. 466, Böcking.
The two largest islands (the Balearic Islands, in their historical sense) had numerous excellent harbours, though rocky at their mouth, and requiring care in entering them (Strabo, Eustath.; Port Mahon is one of the finest harbours in the world). Both were extremely fertile, except for wine and olive oil production.Aristot. de Mir. Ausc. 89; Diodorus, but Pliny praises their wine as well as their corn, xiv. 6. s. 8, xviii. 7. s. 12: the two writers are speaking, in fact, of different periods. They were celebrated for their cattle, especially for the mules of the lesser island; they had an immense number of rabbits, and were free from all venomous reptiles.Strabo, Mela; Pliny l. c., viii. 58. s. 83, xxxv. 19. s. 59; Varro, R. R. iii. 12; Aelian, H. A. xiii. 15; Gaius Julius Solinus 26. Amongst the snails valued by the Romans as food was a species from the Balearic Isles called because they were bred in caves.Pliny xxx. 6. s. 15. Their chief mineral product was the red earth, called , which was used by painters.Pliny xxxv. 6. s. 13; Vitruv. vii. 7. Their resin and pitch are mentioned by Dioscorides.Materia Medica i. 92. Diodorus gives the population of the two islands as 30,000.
The part of the Mediterranean east of Spain, around the Balearic Isles, was called ,, Ptol. ii 4. § 3. or .Flor. iii. 6. § 9.
Medieval period Late Roman and early Islamic eras
The Vandals under Genseric conquered the islands sometime between 461 and 468 during their war on the Roman Empire. However, in late 533 or early 534, following the Battle of Ad Decimum, the troops of Belisarius reestablished control of the islands for the Romans. Imperial power declined rapidly in the western Mediterranean after the fall of Carthage and the Exarchate of Africa to the Umayyad Caliphate in 698, and in 707 the islands submitted to the terms of an Umayyad fleet, which allowed the residents to maintain their traditions and religion as well as a high degree of autonomy. Now nominally both Byzantine and Umayyad, the de facto independent islands occupied a strategic and profitable grey area between the competing religions and kingdoms of the western Mediterranean. The prosperous islands were thoroughly sacked by the Swedish Viking King Björn Ironside and his brother Hastein during their Mediterranean raid of 859–862.
The heavy use of the islands as a pirate base provoked the Emirate of Córdoba, nominally the island's overlords, to invade and incorporate the islands into their state. In 903, the Muslims under the Arab commander Issam al-Khawlani defeated the Franks and captured the Balearic Islands.
Later, the Cordoban emirate disintegrated in civil war and partition in the early eleventh century, breaking into smaller states called taifas. Mujahid al-Siqlabi, the ruler of the Taifa of Dénia, sent a fleet and seized control of the islands in 1015, using it as the base for subsequent expeditions to Sardinia and Pisa. In 1050, the islands' governor Abd Allah ibn Aglab rebelled and established the independent Taifa of Mallorca.
The Crusade against the Balearics