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I'm a bit confused about Charlemagne's rule in Europe. So I saw two names that were frequent in his biography in Wikipedia: Carolingian and Frankish. And I saw that the area of those empires were very similar. So is the Carolingian and Frankish Empire the same?

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    Suggest you read the wiki article on the Carolingian empire.
    – Lars Bosteen
    Feb 13, 2021 at 4:48
  • Why is this closed?
    – brewpixels
    Feb 13, 2021 at 22:31

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The Frankish Empire was ruled by two dynasties. The Merovingian (c. 5th century to 751) dynasty and Carolingian dynasty in (best known for imperial expansion under Charlemagne/Karl dem Großen) the Early Middle Ages.

  • The term "Carolingian empire" refers to when the Carolingian dynasty was ruling the Frankish empire, which commonly gets traced back to Charles Martel as its founder.
  • The Merovingian dynasty ruled the Frankish empire from the 5th-7th century
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  • Summary: Carolingian = dynasty. Frankish = the frank's state. The confusion arises because this state was an empire only during the carolingian dynasty, but not during the merovingians.
    – James
    Feb 24 at 12:32

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