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Alexios I Komnenos, Latinized Alexius I Comnenus, was Byzantine emperor from 1081 to 1118. Inheriting a collapsing empire and faced with constant warfare during his reign, Alexios was able to curb the Byzantine decline and begin the military, financial, and territorial recovery known as the Komnenian restoration. His appeals to Western Europe for help against the Seljuk Turks were the catalyst that sparked the First Crusade. Although he was not the first emperor of the Komnenian dynasty, it was during his reign that the Komnenos family came to full power and initiated a hereditary succession to the throne.
Romanos IV Diogenes was Byzantine emperor from 1068 to 1071. Determined to halt the decline of the Byzantine military and to stop Turkish incursions into the empire, he is nevertheless best known for his defeat and capture in 1071 at the Battle of Manzikert, which played a major role in undermining Byzantine authority in Anatolia and allowed for its gradual Turkification.
Michael VII Doukas or Ducas, nicknamed Parapinakes, was the senior Byzantine emperor from 1071 to 1078. He was known as incompetent as an emperor and reliant on court officials, especially of his finance minister Nikephoritzes, who increased taxation and luxury spending while not properly financing their army. Under his reign, Bari was lost and his empire faced open revolt in the Balkans. Along with the advancing Seljuk Turks in the eastern front, Michael also had to contend with his mercenaries openly turning against the empire. Michael stepped down as emperor in 1078 and later retired to a monastery.
The Battle of Myriokephalon was a battle between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Turks in the mountains west of Iconium (Konya) in southwestern Turkey on 17 September 1176. The battle was a strategic reverse for the Byzantine forces, who were ambushed when moving through a mountain pass.
Roussel de Bailleul, also known as Phrangopoulos and Norman Chief Roussel, or in the anglicized form Russell Balliol was a Norman adventurer who travelled to Byzantium and was a soldier under the Emperor Romanus IV. He is also known as Ursellus de Ballione in Latin or Roscelin or Roskelin de Baieul, and Anna Comnena called him Ourselios (Οὐρσέλιος), also rendered Urselius.
The Battle of Levounion was the first decisive Byzantine victory of the Komnenian restoration. On April 29, 1091, an invading force of Pechenegs was crushed by the combined forces of the Byzantine Empire under Alexios I Komnenos and his Cuman allies.
John Doukas was the son of Andronikos Doukas, a Paphlagonian Greek nobleman who may have served as governor of the theme of Bulgaria (Moesia), and the younger brother of Emperor Constantine X Doukas. John Doukas was the paternal grandfather of Irene Doukaina, wife of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos.
Isaac Komnenos or Comnenus was a notable Byzantine aristocrat and military commander in the 1070s. Isaac played a major role in the rise to the throne of his younger brother, the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, and remained a leading figure in his brother's administration until his death.
The Byzantine Empire experienced cycles of growth and decay over the course of nearly a thousand years, including major losses during the early Muslim conquests of the 7th century.
The Byzantine–Seljuk wars were a series of conflicts in the Middle Ages between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Empire. They shifted the balance of power in Asia Minor and Syria from the Byzantines to the Seljuk dynasty. Riding from the steppes of Central Asia, the Seljuks replicated tactics practiced by the Huns hundreds of years earlier against a similar Roman opponent but now combining it with new-found Islamic zeal. In many ways, the Seljuk resumed the conquests of the Muslims in the Byzantine–Arab Wars initiated by the Rashidun, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates in the Levant, North Africa and Asia Minor.
The Battle of Philomelion of 1116 consisted of a series of clashes over a number of days between a Byzantine expeditionary army under Emperor Alexios I Komnenos and the forces of the Sultanate of Rûm under Sultan Malik Shah; it occurred in the course of the Byzantine–Seljuk wars. The Seljuk forces attacked the Byzantine army a number of times to no effect; having suffered losses to his army in the course of these attacks, Malik Shah sued for peace.
Byzantine Anatolia refers to the peninsula of Anatolia during the rule of the Byzantine Empire. Anatolia was of vital importance to the empire following the Muslim invasion of Syria and Egypt during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in the years 634–645 AD. Over the next two hundred and fifty years, the region suffered constant raids by Arab Muslim forces raiding mainly from the cities of Antioch, Tarsus, and Aleppo near the Anatolian borders. However, the Byzantine Empire maintained control over the Anatolian peninsula until the High Middle Ages, when imperial authority in the area began to collapse.
The Byzantine Empire was ruled by emperors of the Doukas dynasty between 1059 and 1081. There are six emperors and co-emperors of this period: the dynasty's founder, Emperor Constantine X Doukas, his brother John Doukas, katepano and later Caesar, Romanos IV Diogenes, Constantine's son Michael VII Doukas, Michael's son and co-emperor Constantine Doukas, and finally Nikephoros III Botaneiates, who claimed descent from the Phokas family.
Afshin ibn Bakji Bey was a Turkoman general of the Seljuk Empire in the 11th century. He served three Sultans: Chaghri Beg, Alp Arslan and Malik-Shah I. He is believed to have disappeared after 1077.
Aaron was a younger son of the last Tsar of the First Bulgarian Empire, Ivan Vladislav. After the Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria he entered Byzantine service along with his brothers, and held a series of higher military commands in the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire during the 1040s and 1050s, rising from patrikios to protoproedros in the process. In this capacity, he fought in the first battles against the invading Seljuq Turks, as well as, unsuccessfully, against the uprising in 1057 of his brother-in-law Isaac I Komnenos. The Aaronios noble family was named after him, and included his descendants, as well as the descendants of his siblings.
The timeline of the Latin Empire is a chronological list of events of the history of the Latin Empire—the crusader state that developed on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade in the 13th century.
The battle of Ain Salm was a battle between the forces of Tutush, the Seljuk ruler of Syria and brother of the Seljuk sultan Malik Shah, and Suleiman ibn Qutalmish, the Seljuk ruler of Anatolia in June 1086 close to the city of Aleppo.
The Battle of Sebastia (1070) was part of the Byzantine–Seljuk wars.