On 1 April 1081, the Byzantine troops who had proclaimed Alexios I Komnenos
(1081–1118) emperor entered Constantinople; Nikephoros III was
deposed. By this time, Anatolia was a patchwork; Byzantine strongholds
held out side-by-side with areas under Turkish control. It was the revolt
of Nikephoros Melissenos against Nikephoros III in 1079–81 that gave
the Turks access to many Byzantine cities in Phrygia and Galatia (see
above, p. 610). The Byzantines still held the Mediterranean coastline of
Asia Minor, south of Phokaia.28 Similarly they still controlled the chief
cities in Paphlagonia, while Theodore Gabras had liberated Trebizond by
1081. It was around this time, certainly by June 1081, that Suleiman felt himself
strong enough to shake off nominal Byzantine suzerainty. He occupied
Nicaea and Nikomedeia and proclaimed himself sultan.
Meanwhile other parts of Asia Minor became subject to new lords:
the Danishmends in Sebasteia (Sivas), Caesarea (Kayseri) and Amaseia
(Amasya); the Mengucheks in Keltzene, Kamacha and Tephrike (Divriˇgi
on the upper Euphrates; and the Saltuqs in Theodosioupolis (Erzurum).Of
these, the emirate of theDanishmends was the mightiest. Rivalry, yet sometimes
unity, between the Seljuq sultans of Rum and the mighty Danishmends
characterised the internal politics of Turkish-dominated AsiaMinor
from the 1080s until the 1170s. Until the First Crusade, Alexios I’s strategy
in Asia Minor was to expel the Seljuq Turks from Bithynia; preserve the
Byzantine strongholds on the sea coast; and impose imperial authority or
at least overlordship, however tenuous, on the motley assortment of warlords
– Turkish, Greek or Armenian – who had emerged elsewhere in the
peninsula.
Despite his lack of military resources, Alexios I’s eastern policy was successful,
even in the first fifteen, most difficult years of his reign. Firstly
he succeeded in reconquering the coastline of Bithynia from Suleiman,
including Nikomedeia. A peace treaty had been signed by 17 June 1081,
establishing the Drakon river as the frontier between the empire and the
sultanate of Rum. In 1086, after Suleiman’s death, Malik Shah offered
Alexios an alliance, to be cemented by marriage between Alexios’ daughter
(and future historian) Anna Komnena and Malik Shah’s son Barkyaruq.
Although the marriage was never concluded, with Malik Shah’s
permission Alexios retook Sinope and other Pontic cities from the Seljuqs.
The sultan’s concession was not particularly generous: both rulers were
united in antipathy towards the Nicaean statelet, now ruled by Suleiman’s
successors.29
Some of the Christian lords ruling over the remnants of the Byzantine
territories in Anatolia still recognised imperial authority. Philaretos
remained Byzantine domestic of the East and doux of Antioch untilDecember
1084 when Suleiman seized the city. Gregory Pahlavuni, the nephew
of Catholicos Gregory II the Martyrophile (1066–1105), was the Byzantine
magistros, doux and ‘kouropalat¯es of the East’ until 1099 when he was killed
in the neighbourhood of Ani. Finally, in 1091 Theodore Gabras visited
Constantinople and accepted the authority of the emperor.
However, Alexios I’s foremost concern upon his accession was the Turkish
statelets in western Anatolia. Although Suleiman had proclaimed himself
sultan, his power base was far from solid, despite controlling the old
Byzantine military road from Nicaea to Ikonion. The situation became
even more volatile when he moved his armies back to Cilicia and thence
to Syria in 1082–3. Suleiman almost destroyed Philaretos’ lordship, taking
Antioch and finally Melitene in 1084–5, but he was himself killed in battle
against Malik Shah’s brother Tutush near Aleppo in May–June 1086.
However, Suleiman’s departure from Anatolia and subsequent death did
not halt the Turkish incursions into Mysia, Lydia and Ionia. At the end of
1083, shortly after Suleiman had withdrawn his forces to Syria, Alexios was
forced to repel a series of attacks against the Byzantine cities along the Sea
of Marmara by Abu al-Qasim, chief deputy to the sultan of Rum. In 1092,
while the rapprochement between emperor and sultan after the death of
Suleiman was still in force, Alexios I organised a counter-attack against the
Turks in Nicaea; his general Tatikios marched on Nicaea to help the army
of Malik Shah’s amir Buzan besiege the city, while Manuel Boutoumites
destroyed Abu al-Qasim’s fleet near Kios in Bithynia. By the end of 1092 or
early 1093, Abu al-Qasim was required to sign a peace treaty while receiving
imperial hospitality in Constantinople and he accepted the Byzantine title
of sebastos from Alexios.30
Malik Shah died on 19November 1092 and for two years after his death a
struggle raged between the newsultan, Barkyaruq (1094–1105) and his uncle
Tutush. In early 1094, Buzan ordered the murder of Abu al-Qasim near
Isfahan, and became Barkyaruq’s commander-in-chief in Asia Minor; just
before Abu al-Qasim was killed, Suleiman’s son Kilij Arslan I (1092–1107)
entered Nicaea. Alexios I also subdued two other over-active Turkish beys
in the early 1090s: Tzachas (C¸ aka) of Smyrna, who occupied Klazomenai,
Phokaia and Chios from 1090 to 1093 (see above, p. 611), and at the end
of 1093, a certain Elchanes who, judging by his title, was Buzan’s or Kilij
Arslan I’s deputy in Apollonias and Kyzikos. Around this time Alexios
regained Nikomedeia and built some other forts looking onto the Gulf of
Nikomedeia.31
Yet despite all these measures, the most the Byzantines achieved in Asia
Minor between 1081 and 1096 was the temporary halting of Turkish incursions
into north-west Anatolia. It was the participants of the First Crusade
who destroyed the Turkish statelet in Bithynia. Not only did they besiege
and takeNicaea on 19 June 1097; they also defeated the army of Kilij Arslan
I at Dorylaion on 1 July 1097 (see above, p. 623). So shattering was this
defeat to the Seljuqs of Rum that the sultan, who was later supported by
the malik known as Danishmend, only managed to organise resistance on
the eastern borders of his realm, in Hebraike near Heraclea-Cybistra, at the
beginning of September 1097. Once again, the crusaders were victorious.
The Byzantine reconquest of western Anatolia began almost as soon
as Nicaea had fallen to the Crusaders. By 28 June 1098 the Byzantine
armies had cleared the Aegean coast and the provinces of Phrygia, Ionia
and Lydia of the Turks and reached the river Maeander. Sardis, Philadelphia
and Laodicea became Byzantine, and imperial troops penetrated as
far as Polybotos. At the end of 1099 or early in 1100 General Manuel
Boutoumites’ expedition to Cilicia brought Antalya back to the Byzantines,
although the road between the city and the Byzantine strongholds on
theMaeander remained vulnerable to possible Turkish incursions. Antalya
(Attaleia) became the springboard for further Byzantine campaigns into
Cilicia, where Alexios I established a nucleus for Byzantine administration
in 1101. Towards the end of his reign, the emperor succeeded in subjugating
the lands around Kotyaeion in the summer of 1113, reaching Kedrea (near
Amorion) and Philomelion in the autumn of 1116.
World History
