Byzantium and the Emergence of Muslim-Turkish Anatolia, ca. 1040-1130

Alexander Daniel Beihammer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351983853
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

The arrival of the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia forms an indispensable part of modern Turkish discourse on national identity, but Western scholars, by contrast, have rarely included the Anatolian Turks in their discussions about the formation of European nations or the transformation of the Near East. The Turkish penetration of Byzantine Asia Minor is primarily conceived of as a conflict between empires, sedentary and nomadic groups, or religious and ethnic entities. This book proposes a new narrative, which begins with the waning influence of Constantinople and Cairo over large parts of Anatolia and the Byzantine-Muslim borderlands, as well as the failure of the nascent Seljuk sultanate to supplant them as a leading supra-regional force. In both Byzantine Anatolia and regions of the Muslim heartlands, local elites and regional powers came to the fore as holders of political authority and rivals in incessant power struggles. Turkish warrior groups quickly assumed a leading role in this process, not because of their raids and conquests, but because of their intrusion into pre-existing social networks. They exploited administrative tools and local resources and thus gained the acceptance of local rulers and their subjects. Nuclei of lordships came into being, which could evolve into larger territorial units. There was no Byzantine decline nor Turkish triumph but, rather, the driving force of change was the successful interaction between these two spheres.

Part I
First encounters in Byzantium’s eastern marches, ca. 1040–71

1 The eastern provinces, Turkish migrations, and the Seljuk imperial project

Byzantine administrative and military structures in the East

The social, demographic, administrative, and military structures in Byzantium’s eastern borderland, as they appeared on the eve of the first Turkish invasions, were the result of long-term developments, which in some respects had already begun in the late ninth century and culminated in the Byzantine eastward expansion between the 930s and the 1020s. Scholars concerned with the military and administrative history of the eastern frontier and with Byzantine-Arab relations have discussed the manifold aspects of this process repeatedly.¹ A much more recent strand of analysis concentrates on patterns of frontier settlement, agricultural production, farming, animal husbandry, and trade and exchange between peripheral communities, as well as relations between settled populations and nomadic elements in the centuries after the first Muslim conquests. Excavations, remains of material culture, and geomorphological studies yield a broad range of archaeological data. Yet survey methodologies are widely disparate, and the available evidence is still too sparse and unevenly dispersed to allow the reconstruction of chronological layers and to connect specific finds with written evidence of the tenth and eleventh centuries.² Hence, we have a fairly clear image of the structural changes that occurred during the period in question, though admittedly some crucial issues related to the social and economic background remain hypothetical or cannot be elucidated in a satisfactory way.

It is crucial for our understanding of the period that over the past decades the traditional notion of the Byzantine-Islamic frontier as a contested zone of Muslim-Christian warfare and cultural clash or as a depopulated and devastated no man’s land gave way to new concepts, which focus on the particularities of borderlands, shared spheres, and plots of interaction. Medieval notions of border and territory differ largely from our modern understanding. We are dealing with complex zones, in which peripheral societies were closely interconnected and underwent dynamic processes of cultural change. There certainly were instances of decline and violent displacement of population groups as a result of military conflicts, but the available data also point to a high degree of unbroken continuance and economic prosperity based on fertile agricultural zones, irrigation systems, and road networks.³

Likewise, the traditional way of examining Byzantine institutions under the light of modern bureaucratic systems and their standards of efficiency was refined by increasingly accurate interpretations of medieval administrative structures. These are based on the presumption of less rigorously organized mechanisms and leave room for many grey zones and inconsistencies, as they reckon with much more limited possibilities for exerting centralizing control.⁴ A basic issue, which needs to be addressed with respect to the early Turkish penetration of Asia Minor and the ensuing collapse of the Byzantine imperial administration, is the nature of the relationship among the central government, the eastern peripheries, and the military aristocracy in the provinces. As has been shown in the introductory chapter, the studies by Cheynet and others have widely rebutted the traditional views of antagonisms between a Constantinopolitan civil bureaucracy and provincial military magnates. Instead, they stress personal networks based on parentage, intermarriages, allegiances, and profitable collaborations as the main vehicles of political interaction and decision-making in eleventh-century Byzantium.⁵ With respect to the gradual expansion of the Turkish invaders in Asia Minor, it is of primary importance to reach a better understanding of the mechanisms and behavioral patterns, through which the centralizing forces of the imperial government came to be superseded by semi-independent regional powers and by new coalitions between indigenous elements and the invading Turks. After a first phase of violent clashes, Byzantine, Armenian, and Syrian aristocrats, Muslim vassals in the borderland and foreign mercenary groups soon developed forms of collaboration and concluded alliances with the Turkish invaders. These processes allowed the gradual crystallization of new political structures based on a fusion of local and immigrating forces in Asia Minor, as the following sections will show in more detail. This development was further accelerated by serious internal conflicts that began with the civil war between the faction supporting Michael VI and the aristocratic coalition led by Isaac I Komnenos in 1057 and went on with the takeover of the Doukas clan in 1059 and its clashes with the followers of Romanos IV Diogenes in 1071/72. Even then, stability could not be restored, and thus a new series of rebellions ultimately brought about the downfall of the Doukas regime in 1078. These conflicts doubtlessly entailed the removal of military units from the eastern frontier, serious losses of manpower, and a general decline of power and cohesion among the leading clans of the military aristocracy and political elite. It may be safely assumed that they contributed to the disintegration of the imperial administration just as much as the disastrous campaigns of Seljuk sultans and Turkish warrior groups. It is certainly no coincidence that the Turkish attacks started to become a permanent and geographically more extensive threat in about 1057 while in the early 1070s the Turks started advancing without obstacles through the central Anatolian plateau as far as the western coastland. The battle of Manzikert in 1071, which is constantly referred to as the decisive turning point for the Turkish intrusion into Asia Minor, resulted from various coincidental movements and decisions made by commanders on both sides, who pursued different strategic plans and had no desire to fight with each other. It was a military setback for the empire and a humiliation for the imperial office at the hands of a Turkish newcomer, but for the fate of Asia Minor it was just one in a whole series of factors, events, and developments. In this sense, we may say that the civil strife of 1057 in conjunction with the Turkish invasions constituted a more decisive watershed.

In the first three decades of the Byzantine-Turkish encounter, the political and military developments in question mostly affected the recently acquired territories east of the Anatolian plateau stretching from the Caucasus and the Pontus region over the Armenian highlands and the Upper Euphrates provinces to Cilicia and northern Syria. Only few expeditions advanced further west to the districts of Koloneia and Sebasteia in northeastern Cappadocia and to Cilicia. Apart from the regions under direct Byzantine control, there was a broad sphere of imperial influence encompassing a network of Muslim vassal potentates in Azerbaijan, the Diyār Bakr province, the Syrian desert, and Aleppo. According to the political constellations, each of these emirates pursued its own strategy in facing the Turkish threat, but, all in all, there were many parallels and similarities in the developments in Christian-Byzantine and Muslim frontier regions with respect to forms of collaboration and mechanisms of integration.

In what follows the reader will find a brief survey of the administrative structures in the eastern Byzantine provinces on the eve of the Seljuk invasions. Despite all simplification, this endeavors to outline the institutional framework in which the first Turkish penetration of Byzantine territories occurred. As a general characteristic, it is important to note that we are not dealing with well-defined territorial units, but with a highly permeable border zone held together by a network of cities and fortresses “as primary nodes of political control.”⁶

With its new edition and analysis by Nikos Oikonomides (1972), the so-called Escorial Taktikon written in 971–975 has been recognized as the most important source for the administrative organization of the eastern borderland in the second half of the tenth century. The structures in question, according to prevailing scholarly opinions, resulted from a reorganization, which most probably has to be associated with the Phokas clan and Emperor Nikephoros II (963–69).⁷ This assumption draws on the fact that many of the data provided by the Taktikon’s hierarchically arranged catalogue of military officials harmonize with the data provided by near-contemporary narrative sources regarding Byzantine territorial gains in the eastern marches, that resulted from the campaigns of Nikephoros II and his successor John I Tzimiskes (969–76). The essence of their reform, according to this interpretation, lies in the emergence of an array of new themata in the newly conquered Byzantine provinces, while older kleisourai were upgraded to themata. Both formed a kind of buffer zone protecting the old thematic units on the Anatolian plateau. They differed from the latter in that they constituted small districts based around strongholds of strategoi manned with local garrisons. These small-size units were originally attached to three overarching administrative areas placed under the command of a doux or katepano.⁸

Byzantium’s remarkable territorial gains in the years following the conquest of Melitene/Malaṭya (Eskimalatya) in 934 were mainly achieved through successful campaigns carried out in the 940s and 950s by generals from the Kourkouas and Phokas families and other members of the eastern military aristocracy. As the most important frontier city in the eastern parts of the borderlands, Melitene occupied a central position in the “mountain-ringed lowlands” of the Karababa, Tohma, and Elazığ Basins.⁹ Its control allowed access to a large number of districts and fortresses situated in the area between the upper course of the Euphrates River and the Mouzouron Mountains (Munzur Dağları) and north of the Arsanias River (Murat Nehri). The Byzantine troops thus annexed strongholds like Charpezikion (near modern Amutka), Chozanon (Hozat), Asmosaton/Shimshāṭ,¹⁰ and Romanoupolis (Bingöl). Conquests were also carried out in the areas south of the Anti-Taurus Mountains (Güneydoğu Torosları) and east of the Euphrates, such as Samosata/Sumaysāṭ (Samsat), the second largest town in the area after Melitene,¹¹ Chasanara/Severak/al-Suwaydā’ (Siverek), Zermiou (Çermik), and Erkne (Ergani), as well as in districts further west, like Larissa (Mancılık) and Adata/al-Ḥadath west of the Pyramos/Jayḥān River (Ceyhan Nehri). In the 960s, under the reign of Nikephoros II, cities in the ancient province of Commagene east of the Pyramos Valley, such as Germanikeia/Marʽash (Kahramanmaraş) and Telouch/Dulūk (Dülük), the main cities of the fertile Cilician plain like Tarsus, Mopsuestia/Mamistra, and Anazarba, as well as Artāḥ east of Antioch, were likewise incorporated into the Byzantine territories.¹² At about the same time, the expansion continued in an easterly direction along the Arsanias River with the annexation of the Armenian province of Taron in 966, including strongholds like Melte (Ziyaret), Mous (Muş), and Khouet (Huyut) near the western shores of Lake Van. The gradual strengthening of the Byzantine mili...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of maps
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Conquests, modern nations, and lost fatherlands
• Sources, images, perceptions
• PART I First encounters in Byzantium’s eastern marches, ca. 1040–71
• PART II Decay of imperial authority and regionalization of power, 1071–96
• PART III The crusades and the crystallization of Muslim Anatolia, 1096-ca. 1130