Great Vlachia

Great Vlachia or Great Wallachia (Aromanian: Vlãhia Mari; Greek: Μεγάλη Βλαχία, romanized: Megálē Vlachía), also simply known as Vlachia (Aromanian: Vlãhia; Greek: Βλαχία, romanized: Vlachía), was a province and region in southeastern Thessaly in the late 12th century, and was used to denote the entire region of Thessaly in the 13th and 14th centuries.

The name derives from the Aromanians or Vlachs, a chiefly transhumant ethnic group that lives in several mountainous areas of the Balkans, descended from ancient Romance-speaking populations mixed with the people from the Barbarian Invasions of Late Antiquity.

[2] In the broadest sense, both Greek and Western sources of the later Middle Ages—like the French, Italian, and Aragonese versions of the Chronicle of the Morea, or the chroniclers Ramon Muntaner and Marino Sanudo Torsello—used "Vlachia" or similar names (Blaquie, Blaquia, Val[l]achia) to refer to all of Thessaly, from the Pindus mountains in the west to the Aegean Sea in the east, and from the area of Mount Olympus and Servia in the north to the towns of Zetouni (Lamia) and Neopatras (Ypati) in the south.

[7] The term 'Vlachia' first appears in the 12th century, when the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela, who toured the area in 1166, recorded that the town of Zetouni (Lamia) was "situated at the foots of the hills of Vlachia".

According to the Byzantinist George C. Soulis, from this information it appears that this late 12th-century Byzantine province of Vlachia "was situated in the Mount Othrys region, occupying the area lying between the towns of Lamia, Domokos and Halmyros".

[18] Afterwards, Stefan Dushan claimed the titles, in Latin, of imperator Raxie et Romanie, dispotus Lartae et Blachie comes ("Emperor of Rascia and Romania [Byzantine Empire], Despot of Arta and Count of Vlachia").