>>5958372You got backwards. During the Byzantine period race and nationality started to lose ground in favour of identity based solely on Christianity. After the Muslim conquest of the Levant, a lot of Christians from there fled to Greece and subsequently intermarried with the locals. That's it. It happened again with Armenians, Georgians and Christianized Turks later on. Not to mention the massive Jewish emigration into the Byzantine Empire encouraged by the clergy and the monarchs. Thessalonica alone was like 50% Jewish at one point.
