The Seljuk campaigns in the Aegean refer to the ground and naval actions conducted by the Seljuk Turks, chiefly under the leadership of Tzachas of Smyrna against the Byzantine Empire. A fierce opponent, Tzachas constructed the first Turkish navy and captured a few Aegean islands, supplemented by the conquest of Smyrna and Abydos. In the aftermath of the First Crusade Alexios I launched a counter-attack which regained the territories lost. Alexios was also able to rapidly quell the threat of Abu'l Qasim, the Seljuk governor of Nicaea, who attempted to create a fleet of his own at Abydos in ca. 1090.
Tzachas recovered from his first defeat and retook several islands, but was definitively defeated at Lesbos by Constantine Dalassenos and John Doukas in 1092. His capital, Smyrna, and most of the Aegean coastline were recovered by Doukas in 1097, ending the Turks' direct access to the Aegean.
Alexios I Komnenos' son, John II Komnenos inherited a sizable amount of land in Western Asia Minor, although the port city of Antalya was under Seljuk siege. Nonetheless, John's tireless campaigns drove the Turks deep into Anatolia and by 1143 the Seljuk Turks had lost all control of the coastal regions of Asia Minor. The Byzantines under Manuel I Komnenos could muster some 200 ships. Not until the demise of the Comnenian dynasty would the Turks capture a port and it was Umur of Aydın in c. 14th century that constituted the first Turkish threat to Christian shipping in the Aegean since the 11th century.
Alexios I Komnenos was Byzantine emperor from 1081 to 1118. 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. Inheriting a collapsing empire and faced with constant warfare during his reign against both the Seljuq Turks in Asia Minor and the Normans in the western Balkans, 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 Turks was the catalyst that sparked the First Crusade.
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 House of Komnenos, Latinized as Comnenus, was a Byzantine Greek noble family who ruled the Byzantine Empire in the 11th and 12th centuries. The first reigning member, Isaac I Komnenos, ruled from 1057 to 1059. The family returned to power under Alexios I Komnenos in 1081 who established their rule for the following 104 years until it ended with Andronikos I Komnenos in 1185. In the 13th century, they founded and ruled the Empire of Trebizond, a Byzantine rump state from 1204 to 1461. At that time, they were commonly referred to as Grand Komnenoi, a style that was officially adopted and used by George Komnenos and his successors. Through intermarriages with other noble families, notably the Doukas, Angelos, and Palaiologos, the Komnenos name appears among most of the major noble houses of the late Byzantine world.
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.
Tzachas, also known as Chaka Bey was an 11th-century Seljuk Turkish military commander who ruled an independent state based in Smyrna. Originally in Byzantine service, he rebelled and seized Smyrna, much of the Aegean coastlands of Asia Minor and the islands lying off shore in 1088–91. At the peak of his power, he even declared himself Byzantine emperor, and sought to assault Constantinople in conjunction with the Pechenegs. In 1092, a Byzantine naval expedition under John Doukas inflicted a heavy defeat on him and retook Lesbos, while in the next year he was treacherously slain by his son-in-law Kilij Arslan I. Smyrna and the rest of Tzachas' former domain were recovered by the Byzantines a few years later, in c. 1097.
The Byzantine Empire experienced several 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. However, modern historians generally agree that the start of the empire's final decline began in the 11th 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 Byzantine Empire was ruled by emperors of the Komnenos dynasty for a period of 104 years, from 1081 to about 1185. The Komnenian period comprises the reigns of five emperors, Alexios I, John II, Manuel I, Alexios II and Andronikos I. It was a period of sustained, though ultimately incomplete, restoration of the military, territorial, economic and political position of the Byzantine Empire.
Nikephoros Melissenos, Latinized as Nicephorus Melissenus, was a Byzantine general and aristocrat. Of distinguished lineage, he served as a governor and general in the Balkans and Asia Minor in the 1060s. In the turbulent period after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, when several generals tried to seize the throne for themselves, Melissenos remained loyal to Michael VII Doukas and was exiled by his successor Nikephoros III Botaneiates. In 1080–1081, with Turkish aid, he seized control of what remained of Byzantine Asia Minor and proclaimed himself emperor against Botaneiates. After the revolt of his brother-in-law Alexios I Komnenos, however, which succeeded in taking Constantinople, he submitted to him, accepting the rank of Caesar and the governance of Thessalonica. He remained loyal to Alexios thereafter, participating in most Byzantine campaigns of the period 1081–1095 in the Balkans at the emperor's side. He died on 17 November 1104.
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.
Manuel Boutoumites or Butumites was a leading Byzantine general and diplomat during the reign of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, and one of the emperor's most trusted aides. He was instrumental in the Byzantine recovery of Nicaea from the Seljuk Turks, in the reconquest of Cilicia, and acted as the emperor's envoy in several missions to Crusader princes.
John Doukas was a member of the Doukas family, a relative of Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos and a senior military figure of his reign. As governor of Dyrrhachium, he secured the imperial possessions in the western Balkans against the Serbs. Appointed megas doux, he scoured the Aegean of the fleets of the Turkish emir Tzachas, suppressed rebellions in Crete and Cyprus, and then recovered much of the western coast of Anatolia for Byzantium.
Constantine Dalassenos was a prominent Byzantine military leader on land and sea during the early reign of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, especially in the campaigns against Tzachas of Smyrna. His life is only known from the Alexiad of Anna Komnene.
Constantine Opos was a notable Byzantine general and aristocrat in the first half of the reign of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. He participated in the wars against the Normans and the Seljuk Turks, eventually reaching the rank of megas doux.
Abu'l-Qasim was the Seljuk governor of Nicaea, the Seljuk capital, from 1084 to his death in 1092.
Eumathios Philokales was a high-ranking Byzantine military leader and administrator during the reign of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, most notably as governor of Cyprus for twenty years, from 1093 to c. 1112. He also served as governor of southern Greece, ambassador to Hungary and megas doux.
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.
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