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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 among empires, sedentary and nomadic groups, and 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 or Turkish triumph, but rather, the driving force of change was the successful interaction between these two spheres.
Alexander Daniel Beihammer received his PhD from the University of Vienna and is a member of the Institut fiir Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung. From 2001 to 2015, he taught at the University of Cyprus and is currently Associate Professor of Byzantine History at the University of Notre Dame. He has published widely on Byzantine official documents, diplomacy, and cross- cultural communication between Byzantium and the Muslim world, as well as on Byzantine- Latin contacts and mutual perception in the crusader states and the Eastern Mediterranean.
BYZANTINE HISTORY
Acknowledgments
My interest in Byzantine-Turkish contacts and the political transformation of Anatolia from Byzantine territories into Muslim-Turkish principalities goes back to 2007 when I began working on a series of articles on the perception of the Seljuk Turks in Byzantine historiography. My student years at the Institut fur Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung (1992-1997) made me aware of the fact that the Anatolian Turks share many commonalities with all those entities lying at the core of the genesis of modern European nations, although these Turks have hardly ever been included in the relevant scholarly discussions.
The current situation in Cyprus, where I had the privilege to teach over the past 15 years, bears a certain resemblance to what happened in medieval Anatolia on a much larger scale. Political and ideological discourses, however, tend to obfuscate the realities of ongoing transformative processes.
During my research, I had access to the resources of a number of excellent libraries. ‘his book profited especially from the Turkish collection of the University of Cyprus, the library of the Institut fiir Byzantinistik und Neograzistik at the University of Vienna, the Austrian National Library, and Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame. Savvas Neocleous (Cyprus), Miriam Salzmann (Mainz), and Christopher Schabel (Cyprus) read drafts of the introduction and chapters 1-5 and contributed numerous linguistic improvements. Charles Yost (Notre Dame) undertook a thorough linguistic revision of chapters 6-9. An anonymous reader kindly provided me with additional linguistic comments on chapters 1-6.
Another anonymous reader called my attention to the value of archaeological evidence. Myrto Veikou (Uppsala) was extremely helpful in discussing issues of modern archaeology with me and provided me with numerous bibliographical references. Theodore Galanopoulos prepared the maps and Evgenia Chatziloizou created the index for this volume. I am deeply indebted to all of them, but, naturally, all errors of fact and interpretation are my own.
I also thank Gabriel Pappas, who offered manifold support in Cyprus and on trips in Turkey. My special gratitude goes to John Haldon (Princeton) and Rhoads Murphey (Birmingham) for accepting this book in the Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies series, as well as to Michael Greenwood at Taylor & Francis, Routledge, for his generous support during the production of this book. The final stage of my work on this project coincided with my move from Cyprus to the University of Notre Dame. I am extremely grateful to John van Engen, Daniel Hobbins, Hildegund Muller, and Thomas Noble, as well as Charles and Lauren Yost for their much appreciated encouragement and support during my first year in the American Midwest.
To my deepest regret, my friend Jean Schotz did not live to see the completion of this book. Those who know his work may assess how much I owe to him as a constant source of inspiration. This book is dedicated with love to Ibrahim, Siileyman, Roxelane, Danai, Wilhelm, and, above all, Christiana and Aristotelis.
Notre Dame and Nicosia, May 2016
Introduction
Conquests, modern nations, and lost fatherlands
The topic and its disciplinary perspectives
Anna Komnene, the well-educated and highly gifted daughter of Emperor Alexios I, describes a rather insignificant episode, which took place in Asia Minor among numerous other troublesome events during the early 1090s, in the following manner:
When the message arrived from the East that the guardian of Nicaea, whom the Persians usually call satrapes, whereas the Turks, who nowadays think like the Persians, label him ameras, Apelchasem, was preparing his arms for a campaign against Nikomedeia, he [i.e., the emperor] sent these men [i.e., a newly arrived detachment of 500 horsemen under Robert of Flanders] in order to guard the region.
The terminological and historical issues explicitly or implicitly raised in this passage pretty much summarize what this book will address. Anna, who wrote her father’s encomiastic biography approximately 40 to 50 years after the aforementioned event, was one of the first Byzantine intellectuals to give us an account of how the elite of Constantinople perceived and handled the appearance of Turkish invaders in the Propontis coastland situated at an alarmingly small distance from the imperial city. No doubt, the emperor and his closest advisers and officers were on alert; a fierce clash was lying ahead.
But who were these enemies, who were somehow associated with the cultural tradition of the Persians and used their language, although the title assigned to their chief was Arabic? It is not clear whether the author was aware of this fact, but what she actually alluded to in this passage is a highly complicated process of migration and acculturation, which through a long series of conflicts eventually resulted in the emergence of a new cultural and political entity.
This entity was certainly not exclusively Turkish, nor Persian, nor Muslim, nor Greek, nor Byzantine, nor Christian, but included elements of all these substrates. Anna and her compatriots at some point had to admit that they had failed to expel these barbarians from their territories. Hence, they were forced to recognize them in their capacity as a considerable political factor and to seek for modes of co-existence.
This book concerns itself with the earliest stage in the penetration of Asia Minor by the so-called Seljuk Turks, their first encounter with the ByzantineChristian sphere, and the beginnings of their gradual transformation from rather superficially Islamized warrior groups and nomadic shepherds to state founders and rulers of durable principalities based on distinct ideological and organizational patterns as well as a Muslim religious identity.
With respect to the geographical space, this study alternately uses the terms “Asia Minor” and “Anatolia” as synonyms designating the peninsula of Asia Minor along with the adjacent regions of Upper Mesopotamia and Armenia, which in the time following the death of Emperor Basil II (1025) formed part of Byzantium’s eastern provinces.” In comparison with the Republic of Turkey, the empire’s borderline ran a little further north along the Anti-Taurus Mountains and in some parts of the Caucasus further east than that of the modern state, but as a whole, there is an amazing coincidence with the external boundaries of what is now called Giineydogu and Dogu Anadolu, i.e., “Southeastern” and “Eastern Anatolia.” Hence, geographical terms are largely employed in their modern sense but do not intend to suggest any ahistorical continuities.
Chronologically, our analysis starts with the first incursions into the empire’s eastern borderland in the middle of the eleventh century and traces the developments up to about 1130. By that time, the Seljuk sultanate of Konya, the Danishmandid principality in Cappadocia, and a number of minor emirates in Upper Mesopotamia and the Armenian highlands had crystallized into consistent political powers. Likewise, a long strip of land stretching from the Taurus Mountains north of Attaleia across the fertile regions of the western river valleys and the fringes of the Anatolian plateau up to the mountainous areas of Paphlagonia had turned into a broad Byzantine-Turkish and/or Christian-Muslim contact and/or conflict zone, which proved to be of astonishing durability up to the time of Mongol rule in Anatolia in the second half of the thirteenth century.
Two years before Alexios I’s death in 1118, the Byzantine army successfully expelled the last major invading force, which was pushing as far as the Propontis coastland. At the same time, the emperor refrained from advancing towards Konya. The status quo reached on this occasion, some minor changes of local significance notwithstanding, by and large persisted until the rise of the Ottomans. In this sense, it can be said that the 1120s signify the end of the first Turkish expansion in Asia Minor.
The transition process evolving over the preceding decades, no doubt, formed the most crucial turning point in the history of Byzantium’s eastern territories since the Islamic conquests of the seventh century and had a deep and long-lasting impact on the entire Middle East. Viewed in the broader context of the great migration movements between the Eurasian steppe and the Mediterranean basin from the fourth century onwards, it is important to note that the developments in Anatolia, though on a much smaller scale, have many things in common with the historical processes leading to the transformation of the Roman world, the creation of the so-called barbarian successor kingdoms in Europe, and the nomadic empires between the Danube and the Caspian Sea, as well as the emergence of the Arab-Muslim world. It is evident that the various aspects of the Byzantine-Seljuk encounter in Anatolia can and
should be scrutinized with the aid of similar methodologies and analytical tools as have been applied to the aforementioned subject areas, which have adopted concepts and models originating from historical anthropology, ethnography, and acculturation theories. Especially since the 1970s, the barbarian migrations in early medieval Europe have internationally developed into a booming field with an increasing amount of scholarly production.° A number of groundbreaking studies published in the 1980s and 1990s stimulated a similar revision of views and source critical methods with respect to the emergence of Islam and the transformation of the Near East.‘ In contrast, the change from Byzantine-Christian to Turkish-Muslim Anatolia largely remained the domain of nationalistic historiographical discourses in the Turkish Republic.” Apart from a few important but rather isolated exceptions, this topic did not find much attention among European and American historians of Byzantium and the Muslim world. In part, this neglect may be due to the academic traditions of scholarly disciplines, which are still very much in line with the continuity concepts of modern nation states and the clear-cut divides set by cultural, religious, and linguistic barriers. For a long time, there was hardly any room for mixed and hybrid entities that fail to meet these criteria of classification. For modern scholarly discussions dealing with the medieval origins of the nation states, the roots of a common European identity.
and the clash between Islam and Christendom, the Goths, Franks, and Muslin Arabs certainly offer many more points of reference than the Anatolian Turks. It is only in the past few years that European historians began to subject traditional views to critical scrutiny and to re-examine the linguistically highly diversified source material of medieval Anatolia under the light of new methodological approaches. Various thought-provoking studies pointing out new perspectives
and trajectories of investigation have recently been published, but none of these
works concerns itself with the early Turkish penetration of Asia Minor.
The co-existence, mutual permeation, and gradual merging of two previously distinct cultural and political spheres are characteristic features penetrating all levels of the historical development that began with the arrival of the Turks in the mid-eleventh century. It would be a serious over-simplification, however, if, as is often implied in the older scholarly literature, these entities were considered self-contained and homogenous blocks. Byzantine Asia Minor, no doubt, had a strong component of what may nowadays be called Orthodox Hellenism, which manifested itself in the widespread use of Greek as literary and administrative language, the persistence of Constantinopolitan institutions and administrative structures, a substrate of imperial traditions, a well-established ecclesiastical organization, and a Roman-Christian cultural identity.© On the other hand, there was a powerful aristocracy rooted in the provincial towns and domains of Anatolia which possessed a marked local identity and up to the tenth and eleventh cent ries set free strong centrifugal dynamics and autonomous tendencies. Moreover. the empire's eastern provinces always were the homeland of a variety of eine: religious minorities. With the empire’s expansionist policy and the annexation of large strips of land in the tenth and eleventh century, the Armenians and the Syriac Christians became the strongest population groups in the East. In the late eleventh-century, remnants of the old Armenian nobility set about building up new semi-independent power bases and lordships.’
The Turkish groups, at the time of their arrival in Anatolia, combined cultural and linguistic features of the Turkic peoples of the central Asian steppes, a lifestyle of nomadic pastoralists, religious tenets ranging from Sunni Islam to syncretistic popular beliefs, and political, cultural, and ideological attitudes adopted in the time of their migrations from the Persian-Muslim milieu of Iran. The term “Seljuk Turks” has been commonly accepted as the collective name designating the Turkish-Muslim population of Pre-Ottoman Anatolia. Apart from misleadingly extending a clan’s or dynasty’s name to an entire ethnic group, this term implies a kind of political or ethnic homogeneity that never existed during the period in question. Just as all the other nomad groups and tribal confederations making their appearance in Southeast Europe, the Eurasian steppes, and the Middle East did, these people formed a conglomeration of very different ethnic and social elements. In their core, they were loosely connected groups of Islamized Oghuz Turks, frequently identified as “Turkmens,” who under the leadership of the Seljuk clan, one of the chief lineages of the Oghuz tribes, had spread from Transoxania to Khurasan and other regions of Iran as far as the central Muslim lands of Iraq and Syria.® Although the available data are rather scarce, it is quite evident that the Turkish warrior groups, in their structural and organizational patterns, must have adopted various characteristics of the Karakhanid and Ghaznawid armies, in the service of which they had been educated and fought for a long time. To a great extent, the Seljuk expansion was carried out and supported by confederations of subordinate or independent Turkmen warriors, at times with a certain tendency towards recalcitrant behavior. The first Seljuk chiefs, however, probably from an early stage onwards, combined their own Turkish tribal traditions with elements adopted from the eastern Iranian Muslim states. Thus, they included in their forces contingents of slave soldiers (ghulam), auxiliary troops provided by vassal lords, and voluntaries from various regions. It is a matter of debate when the Seljuk leaders began to build up regular troops of professional soldiers paid by “land grants” (igfd'), a system that is traditionally ascribed to Sultan Malikshah’s renowned vizier Nizam al-Mulk.? Due to the loose structures of tribal coalitions and the manifold tensions among the leading members of the Seljuk clan, the internal cohesion among these forces could not have been very strong, and their bonds of allegiance with their commanders were rather unstable and short-lived. This manifested itself in frequent revolts, internal power struggles, and attempts of warrior groups to escape the centralizing control of the Seljuk sultanate.
The penetration of Anatolia started in the early 1040s with sporadic raids of independently operating Turkmen groups and some large-scale campaigns in the Armenian borderlands initiated by the leaders of the Seljuk clan. In the 1070s the Turkish warriors spread from the Upper Euphrates region and the valleys south of the Pontic Mountains over the rural areas of the central Anatolian plateau as far as the Bithynian coastland. Simultaneously, the disintegration of Byzantine military and administrative structures was progressing considerably as a result of internal power struggles and the Turkish incursions. A temporary strengthening of recalcitrant mercenary troops and a dangerous growth of various seditious movements aiming to gain the imperial throne characterized the political setting. Under these circumstances, the Turks turned from invaders into powerful players operating within a patchwork of numerous competing forces. From the early 1080s onwards, first signs of a permanent establishment in fortified places and urban centers can be perceived. The First Crusade and the ensuing deployment of Byzantine troops in 1097-1098 caused the violent displacement of Turkish groups from the western coastal areas to the central Anatolian plateau and the loss of territories in Cilicia, Antioch, and the Euphrates region. But already in 1101 a remarkable re-stabilization of Turkish lordships, which began to take the shape of firmly established principalities in a smaller but better-controlled region stretching from the western fringes of the Anatolian plateau up to the Armenian highlands, can be observed. In the following decades, these nascent state-like entities developed administrative structures, mechanisms of legitimization, and a distinct religious and ideological identity. As such, they did not supplant a preexisting Byzantine substrate but grew out of a conflation of various indigenous and newly imported structures.
Generally speaking, the scholarly literature treats the topics just outlined in a highly selective and one-sided manner, either giving preference to certain categories of primary sources or explicitly adopting a Byzantine or a Turkish point of view. This overall tendency by and large corresponds to the modern division of the scholarly disciplines of Byzantine studies vs. Turkish or Islamic studies. A further subdivision is due to the long-lasting impact of various discourses of national historiography and the collective memories, stereotypes, and interpretations associated with them. The Turkish scholarly tradition, which took shape in the years following the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and produced a great number of remarkable works up to the 1970s, stands in clear opposition to the seminal work of the Greek-American historian Spyros Vryonis on the Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor published in 1971. On account of its references to nationalistic views, including the idea of a pureblooded GreekOrthodox ethnic stratum in medieval Asia Minor, the latter became a sort of standard work expressing prevailing academic and popular opinions in Greece and nationalistically oriented philhellenic circles. In Europe, the works of the French historian Claude Cahen on the formation of pre-Ottoman Turkey remained a brilliant achievement, presenting a more balanced version of Turkish continuity concepts, but until recently did not find many successors further delving into the various topics treated in his studies. Western scholars have done further substantial work on the Great Seljuk dynasty and its branches and institutions in the Muslim central lands. For many decades, work on the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor was completely outweighed by a strong trend towards crusader studies and, to a lesser degree, by an interest in the internal developments of Byzantium during the eleventh century and the Komnenian period. In this context, the Seljuks, in one way or another, were constantly touched upon but hardly formed a subject per se. In what follows, we attempt to present the theoretical assumptions and interpretations of the relevant scholarly traditions in more detail. We will draw conclusions regarding the challenges posed by them with respect to a thorough re-examination of the first Byzantine-Turkish encounter in Asia Minor and its aftermath.
The Byzantine viewpoint
Much of the twentieth-century scholarly discourse on Byzantium on the eve of the Seljuk expansion is dominated by the idea of a profound internal crisis in the decades following the death of Emperor Basil I in December 1025. Irrespective of the widely diverging views concerning the nature and extent of the alleged decline, Byzantinists usually resort to this explanation in order to elucidate the reasons for the successful penetration of Asia Minor by the Turkish invaders, a region that in the context of traditional confrontation models is frequently conceived of as a well-defended bulwark resisting the onslaught of Islam for more than four centuries.!° Although starting from a diametrically opposed perspective, they paradoxically arrive at similar conclusions as modern Turkish scholars, namely that the eastern provinces with their crumbling socio-political and military structures were ripe for conquest. In the context of discussions about the internal situation of the empire, historians of Byzantium normally confine themselves to equating the Turks with all other hostile forces threatening the empire in the eleventh century, such as the Pechenegs in the Danube region and the Normans in southern Italy and the Adriatic coastland. ‘Thus, the transition of Byzantine to Turkish Asia Minor is largely reduced to the classical binary opposition of indigenous defenders ws. aggressive foreign invaders, who because of the empire’s political and military decay were simply too strong to be stopped. This mono-causal explanation does not leave much room for a more comprehensive analysis of the various manners of intrusion and integration, through which Turkish warriors and nomads became permanent inhabitants of Anatolia, founded states, and developed forms of co-existence with the indigenous population. Chapters 1 and 2 of the present study develop a different approach by focusing on the complex interplay of different factors, such as the changing administrative and military structures of the Byzantine state, the raiding activities of Turkmen groups, and the expansion of the Seljuk sultanate.
The sharp contrast between the Byzantine state at the height of its territorial expansion, as it appeared at the time of Emperor Basil II’s death, and a dwindling empire threatened on all sides by invading forces, as was the case in the years after Alexios I’s rise to power in April 1081, naturally evokes associations of a total breakdown. The basic features of this idea can already be found in Ferdinand Chalandon’s monograph on Alexios I (1900) and in Joseph Laurent’s study on Byzantium and the Seljuk Turks in western Asia Minor (1913):'! The landowning military aristocracy in Asia Minor was in rivalry with the European aristocrats and, above all, with the elite civilian functionaries represented by the senate of Constantinople. This opposition resulted in an estrangement between the army, which several decades earlier had been the moving force of
Introduction 7
the expansion in the East, and the central government.!? In addition, special emphasis is placed on the personal shortcomings of emperors and high-ranking dignitaries. In Laurent’s view, for instance, all emperors between 1025 and 1057 were either of advanced age, of poor health, or dominated by women. Likewise, the military forces, though sufficient in number, due to personal ambitions and bonds of allegiance, were frequently entrusted to inept officers, eunuchs, and Armenian noblemen.!* The strength of the armed forces, he further argues, was relatively stable until the abdication of Isaac I (1059), but with the accession of Constantine X Doukas a sudden collapse began, which was exacerbated by the fact that all important offices in the central government were in the hands of favorites of the court, bureaucrats, chamberlains, eunuchs, and men of letters, none of whom were acquainted with military matters. Recruitments, armaments, and payments were neglected, and thus when Romanos IV came to power in early 1068, the army was already in full decay.'*
In George Ostrogorsky’s view (1963), the shortcomings of Basil IT’s successors, the power struggle between civil and military aristocrats, the ensuing decline of the defensive structures and the thematic system in the provinces, the abolition of local military units, and the increasing dependency upon mercenary troops constitute symptoms of feudalization in the Byzantine social fabric. This process manifested itself in the increasing power of the landed aristocracy based on revenues from growing estates, imperial privileges, purchases of offices, and tax farming, while the influence of the central government weakened.!? Consequently, Speros Vryonis (1971) combines his image of Anatolia as “the most heavily populated, important, and vital province of medieval Hellenism ... subject to the integrating power of church, state, and culture emanating from the heart of the empire”!® with the aforementioned explanatory model of the eleventh-century decline as the long-term cause lying behind the disaster of Manzikert and the ensuing ‘Turkish expansion. ot
More recent studies by Alexander Kazhdan (1985) and Alan Harvey (1989), however, put the notions of downfall and decay into perspective by demonstrating that the period in question evinced conspicuous signs of economic and demographic growth, the greatest building activity in Constantinople since the sixth century, and plenty of changes and innovative tendencies in the social structure and thought world of the Byzantine elite as well as in the literary production of Byzantine intellectuals.!® This upswing certainly brought about growing markets in the provincial towns and strengthened the great landowners, to the detriment of the centralizing structures that had prevailed under Basil II. Ostrogorsky’s over-simplifying model of feudalization and Paul Lemerle’s counter-argument (1977) presenting Alexios I and his family’s rule as the root of all evil!? were thus replaced by more differentiated approaches that took into account the multi-dimensional complexity of Byzantine society in the eleventh century. The overall scarcity of evidence still raises many questions as to the impact of the economic growth. A case in point is the debasement of the Byzantine coinage under Constantine IX Monomachos, which was alternatively connected with the increased circulation of money and the constantly growing expenditure of the state apparatus and the court.2? Be that as it may, the whole concept of crisis seems to have given way to the image of a multifaceted and contradictory society in flux, as is reflected in recent titles like “The Empire in Crisis (?)” or “Belle Epoque or Grisis?”?!
Equally unsatisfying was the traditional categorization of the Byzantine elite into a military and a civil class. In this respect, Jean-Claude Cheynet (1996) provided the most profound analysis.”” In his study on revolts and power struggles of the Byzantine aristocracy between the tenth and the early thirteenth century, he convincingly reconstructed the geographical distribution and social networking of aristocratic clans, pointing out the close interplay between material resources based on landed estates, titles, and functions in the civil and military apparatus, bonds of kinship and marriage, allegiances with groups of servants, clients, and military units, and personal proximity to the innermost circle of imperial rule.” As for Asia Minor in the time after 1025, Cheynet discerns a number of upcoming clans rooted in the eastern military forces, such as the Doukai, the Argyrot, the Diogenai, and the Komnenoi, which came to fill the vacuum left by the great Anatolian families dissolved as a result of the power struggle with Basil IT. These families abstained from any intermingling with the “Macedonians of Adrianople” and other western clans but created alliances with members of the Bulgarian and Georgian nobility.** In the center of power in Constantinople all claimants and incumbents of the imperial office except for the Paphlagonians were in one way or another related by bonds of kinship focusing on either the Argyros or the Doukas clan. The predominant military character of these families is, according to Cheynet, clear proof against the thesis of a civil aristocracy prevailing in eleventh-century Constantinople.”°
With respect to their political goals and ambitions, Cheynet discerns two opposing factions among the aristocracy of Asia Minor, one centered around the Diogenes clan in Cappadocia and aiming at a continuation of the expansionist policy on the basis of a “national army,” and another gathering around the Komnenos and the Doukas families and supporting an efficient mercenary army of lower cost.2° Of decisive significance for the further development was the rebellion of 1056—57, which appears as a conflict between families formerly favored by Romanos II and Constantine IX Monomachos and supported by troops from the Euphrates region and the northeastern borderland, on the one hand, and families attached to Leo Paraspondylos, head of Michael VI’s government, and backed by units from central Asia Minor, on the other. The accession of Constantine X Doukas, resting upon the same coalition of forces, did not cause further changes in the existing factionalism. But Eudokia Makrembolitissa’s marriage with Romanos IV Diogenes in January 1068 marked a clear shift in the empire’s military policy towards more energetic attempts to restore central control over the eastern provinces. The Doukas clan and its supporters emerged victorious from the 1071-72 civil strife, maintaining its position until the outbreak of a whole series of revolts in western Asia Minor (Nikephoros Botaneiates)
and the European provinces (Nikephoros Bryennios, Nikephoros Basilakios) in 1077. During the ensuing contest for powerful coalitions, Botaneiates ultimately
Introduction 9
was defeated by the Komnenoi-Doukai alliance.”’ But apart from the emergence of a new strong dynasty, the invasions of the Turks and Pechenegs primarily contributed to a profound change in the Byzantine aristocracy.”®
The main virtue of Cheynet’s reconstruction is his avoidance of over-
simplifying concepts that would reduce the complexity of the situation to a few social, political, or economic factors and thus create the impression that eleventhcentury Byzantium despite all internal tensions was still a homogenous bloc. The notion of a conglomerate of competing forces evolving around a network of coalitions in the imperial palace of Constantinople and in various provincial centers not only accurately reflects the reality of political competition among autonomously operating elite members. It also helps explain many of the developments observable during the period of the Turkish invasions, such as the striking absence of specific forms of central control, the high degree of liberty of action among local military units and mercenary groups, and the frequent outbreak of local seditious movements. Chapters 2 and 5 of the present study will discuss these issues in detail.
The existence of these opposing tendencies within the Byzantine elite also goes a long way towards explaining the contradictory and sometimes highly critical statements articulated by contemporary or near-contemporary historians about the bad performance of the armed forces. Certainly, they did not just register observable grievances and shortcomings but also put their rhetoric into the service of certain factions and their political ambitions. This is one of the most crucial problems in estimating the military power of the Byzantine Empire in the time of the Turkish invasions. Well-known authors like Michael Attaleiates Michael Psellos, and Kekaumenos complain openly about an erroneous state polity of withholding payments, neglecting the army, and converting military service into cash. Furthermore, they refer to ineffective strategic decisions, incompetence of leadership, lack of reliability, low morale, and cowardice as reasons for and symptoms of military failures.”? On the basis of these statements, Speros Vryonis supports the opinion that the eleventh-century military forces must have actually undergone a disastrous decay in comparison with the great successes of the expansionist period.°”
Moreover, by analogy with previous experiences of warfare against nomadic steppe peoples, defeats of the Byzantine troops are commonly also ascribed to disadvantages in matters of fighting technique and tactical difficulties, which resulted from the Turks’ skillful use of archery.°! Though it is certainly true that these matters actually caused a lot of trouble to the empire, it is equally important to see them, as John Haldon suggests, in a larger historical context of military developments, changing geopolitical conditions, strategic reorientations and ideological attitudes.*? Already during the period of offensive wars in the tenth and early eleventh centuries there were deep-rooted structural changes that replaced the traditional thematic structures in the eastern borderland with a more fragmented and localized organization of military forces.** Given that the proportional ratio between successful and failed military actions in the years 1025-1081, despite some phases of serious setbacks, does not differ from that in previous periods in Byzantine history, Haldon concludes that the level of training and effectiveness in the Byzantine army did not show any significant decline. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that from time to time there actually were serious problems, such as tactical disadvantages, insufficient availability of troops, lack of discipline, collapse of morale, and a damaging parsimony on the part of the central government. These factors were partly due to or combined with a lack of competent leadership.** The peculiarity of eleventh-century developments, in Haldon’s view, lies in the fact that the strategic arrangements introduced during the expansionist period and the ideological attitudes focusing on a peaceful consolidation of the imperial power through diplomacy could not match the challenges posed by highly flexible and quickly moving groups of Turkish nomadic warriors.”> Chapter 3 of the present study re-examines many of these questions on the basis of a fresh analysis of the sources on the Byzantine defensive strategy in the reign of Romanos IV (1068-1071).
Another issue frequently mentioned in connection with the disintegration of eleventh-century Anatolia and the Turkish invasions is the highly heterogeneous character of the population living in the empire’s eastern provinces. According to the prevailing views, the inhabitants of the eastern regions were not especially attached to Constantinople, nor had they strong feelings of allegiance towards the imperial elite, because their linguistic, cultural and ecclesiastical identities differed widely from the overwhelmingly Greek-speaking Chalcedonian population in the empire’s core Jands.2° A multi-ethnic mixture consisting of Armenians, Syrians, Muslim and Christianized Arabs, Kurds, and other minor population groups formed a highly diverse and complex social fabric that was characterized, on the one hand, by strong dynamics of acculturation in various directions and, on the other, by manifold tensions both amongst the local elites and with the central government, which from an attitude of tolerant pragmatism gradually changed to increasingly coercive centralizing tendencies.
Although already a culturally diverse region in former periods, Asia Minor saw a growing influence of these minorities in the centuries in question. The massive influx of Syriac Christians from Muslim regions starting with the reign of Nikephoros II Phokas led to the establishment of a vital ecclesiastical organization with a constantly increasing number of bishoprics and monastic foundations in the regions between the Pyramos/Jayhan Valley (Ceyhan Nehri) and the Arsanias River (Murat Nehri) and around the urban centers of Germanikeia/ Mar‘ash (Kahramanmaras), Melitene (Eski Malatya), and Edessa (Sanliurfa). Another positive effect was a flourishing economic life largely based on profitable trade routes and merchant activities, which in turn expressed itself in the expansion of church buildings and monastic foundations and the patronage of art.>
The Armenians, “the largest non-Greek unit” in Byzantine society, forming a strong component of the army,”® the aristocracy, and at times even of the imperial circle, considerably increased in number with the progressive annexation of Armenian provinces from the reign of Nikephoros II Phokas onwards and, above all, with the cession of the Bagratid and Artsrunid kingdoms of Vaspurakan (1021-22), Ani (1044-45), and Kars (1064-65) to the Byzantine Empire. These
Introduction 11
events resulted partly from the Byzantine expansionism in this period and partly from the growing pressure of hostile Arab and Turkish raids from Azerbaijan. The ensuing immigration turned into a massive influx of Armenian elements including the former royal families, a large portion of the nobility, and dies followers of lower social strata. As the royal families were compensated with domains in Gappadocia, an important number of these people took residence in this province’s urban centers stretching from Dokeia (Tokat), Sebasteia (Sivas) and Tephrike (Divrigi) in the northeast to Kaisareia (Kayseri), Tzamandos Gabadonia (Develi), and Lykandos in the southwest, and thence spread to itie Jayhan region, Cilicia, and the Upper Euphrates area.
These populations underwent varying degrees of cultural, religious, and political integration. Whereas a significant part of the Armenians were fully absorbed by the Byzantine elite through military careers, titles, intermarriages, and conversion to the Orthodox dogma, other groups resisted these forms of acculturation, maintaining their own institutions and ecclesiastical organization. The former rulers were especially excluded from high ranks within the imperial elite and thus contributed to a strengthening of the Armenian cultural and religious presence in the regions in which they came to be established.*? In the time of the Turkish invasions local lords of Armenian origin started to become powerful factors as raiders and outlaws and, in some cases, governors or even semi-independent rulers.*? Older studies interpret these phenomena as tendencies of disobedience and unrest, which were caused by religious discords with the Church of Constantinople and by the political aspirations of the Armenian nobility and were further enhanced by the Turkish invasions." It is quite obvious, however, that these groups did not differ very much from other warlords and local aristocrats operating in the eastern borderlands at that time. Another important consequence of the incorporation of the Armenian lands into the empire is the loss of an important buffer zone between the Caucasus region and the Anti-Taurus Mountains. As a result of the establishment of the new themes of Taron, Vaspurakan, Iberia, and Greater Armenia, the Byzantine military administration had to take care of the defense of these vast areas and thus was fully exposed to the Turkish invasions.*? Chapter 7 of the present study develops a new approach to the notion of waning central power by examining the formation of Turkish and Armenian lordships in Byzantine territories during the 1080s and 1090s under the light of a general shift of political authority from the center to the peripheries. Chapter 9 describes the outcome of this process in the time after the First Crusade, in which central and eastern Anatolia developed into largely autonomous politico-cultural spheres with new forms of interaction among local Frankish, Armenian, Greek, and Muslim-Turkish entities.
Speros Vryonis’ monumental work, Decline of Medieval Hellenism, is certainly a masterpiece of scholarly comprehensiveness, covering an amazing amount of primary material from five centuries of Anatolian history. It is also a work full of value judgments, insisting on a sharp and conflict-ridden opposition between Christian and Muslim cultural spheres and presenting the transformation process that began in the eleventh century as a disruptive turn for the worse. This assumption is based on the view that Byzantine Asia Minor was a highly prosperous region with thriving urban centers based on local industries as well as trade and commercial activities. Showing demographic vitality and a strong presence of great landed families, according to Vryonis, the whole region was tightly connected with the central government of Constantinople through well-functioning administrative institutions. A firmly established ecclesiastical organization, flourishing monastic centers, sanctuaries, and local cults bear witness to the vitality of the Christian faith in Asia Minor, and the widespread use of the Greek language amply demonstrates a high degree of Hellenization in linguistic terms. This vision of a flourishing and culturally homogenous society necessarily makes the subsequent conquest and Islamization appear to be “something more than a negative historical event,” as the author puts it in a recent summary of the principle findings and underlying concepts of his book from a distance of almost 30 years after its publication.*# Accordingly, the changes triggered by the arrival of the Turks are described in negative terms as “major dislocation and partial destruction” of Byzantine society, its structures, and ecclesiastical institutions and as the gradual decay of the Christian communities, which were drawn into a maelstrom of conversion and assimilation to the Muslim environment. Institutions of Sunni Orthodoxy and Muslim patronage, such as mosques, madrasas, and wagf foundations, as well as forms of popular piety represented by the dervish orders, were the main factors promoting the Islamization of Anatolia. On the other hand, Vryonis argues, the Christian population continued to maintain its presence in both rural and urban areas, high-ranking individuals of Christian background formed part of the Seljuk ruling elite, and the Byzantine cultural substrate deeply influenced the emerging Turkish popular culture.*® It is certainly true that the notion of decay is inherent in most Byzantine and Eastern Christian sources commenting on the political and ecclesiastical situation in Anatolia. But it should not be forgotten that these texts were primarily written by people belonging to the old pre-conquest elite and thus articulate the viewpoint of those who had suffered great damage, losing territories, privileges, and sources of income, or were in a state of political and ideological competition with the Muslim-Turkish rulers. Hence, their statements, rather than generalizable realities, reflect the experiences and thoughts of specific groups in conjunction with the perceptions and literary conventions molding the mindset of these people. As will be shown below in more detail, descriptions of the Turks usually form subtopics of various overarching themes referring to alarming developments in the empire, the moral decay of secular and ecclesiastical leaders, or God’s interventions into the course of history. Using these accounts as mere mines of information without sufficiently taking into account the ideological horizon into which they are embedded, unavoidably leads to anachronistic interpretation patterns based on clear-cut cultural and religious boundaries and the juxtaposition of inferior and superior cultural entities. These concepts are hardly appropriate to explain complex transformation processes and phenomena of hybridity with their countless grey zones and intermediary stages.
Perhaps the most remarkable progress that has been achieved since Vryonis’ book with respect to the early Turkish expansion in Byzantine Asia Minor concerns our understanding of the administrative and military structures in the eastern provinces. To a large extent, this is due to a much better knowledge of the sigillographic evidence in conjunction with developments in the domain of Byzantine court titles. On this basis, Jean-Claude Cheynet argues in favor of a much stronger presence than has been hitherto assumed of high-ranking Byzantine functionaries in many parts of Asia Minor well into the early years of Emperor Alexios I.*” A rich collection of material is provided by the recent monograph by Georgios Leveniotis (2007) on the Political Collapse of Byzantium in the East. He gives extensive prosopographical lists of military and civil dignitaries and presents a detailed analysis of the institutional developments in each administrative unit of the eastern borderlands until the final breakdown of imperial rule, which is seen in connection with the transfer of the last remaining forces to the Balkans because of the Norman threat in 1081.*° This historico-geographical approach enables us to grasp the specific particularities of each region in the vast area straddling the Armenian highlands, Upper Mesopotamia, Cilicia, and Cappadocia. Largely in line with traditional interpretation patterns are Leveniotis’ conclusions regarding the reasons for the collapse. He draws the image of a powerful, ethnically and religiously homogenous central state, which was facing heavy assaults of overwhelming enemy forces, internal revolts, and the disloyalty of non-Greek and non-Orthodox populations in the East. The empire’s defense was further undermined by the inadequacies of the military structures established during the expansionist period and by considerable losses of manpower and fighting force because of civil strife and wrong decisions made by various men in power.*?
None of these aspects should be ruled out. Both Haldon and Leveniotis are certainly right in explaining the failures of the Byzantine army with structural shortcomings in the defensive system. But were they really confronted with an overwhelmingly superior enemy? Was it primarily a problem of inadequate strategies and insufficient fighting techniques that caused the loss of Asia Minor? No doubt, these factors played a certain role as long as the fighting and pillaging went on. But how then did these Turkish warriors manage to take permanent hold of Byzantine territories and turn into rulers? In order to understand the mechanisms lying behind this transformation, it is indispensable to view the political behavioral patterns of that time more comprehensively. The political situation of Byzantine Asia Minor from 1056 onwards was marked by serious tensions between centralizing tendencies and the gradual strengthening of regional powers backed by military forces. These consisted of seditious Byzantine aristocrats, foreign mercenary troops, Armenian noblemen, Arab and Kurdish emirs and many others. ‘This process resulted in a fragmentation of state authority aid the emergence of numerous, mostly short-lived, semi-independent local lordships of limited size. Political power, to a large extent, was regionalized. This is to say that we are dealing not necessarily with a conflict between the Byzantine central government and Turkish invaders but with struggles and contentions within a complicated patchwork of local powers, in which the Turks intruded and eventually managed to prevail for reasons that have to be explained in the following chapters. Hence, besides the aforementioned aspects, the analysis has to focus on the very nature of both these local powers and the Turkish warrior groups as well as the strategies and forms of interaction they developed with respect to the relations among themselves and with the central government of Constantinople.
The Turkish viewpoint
The foundations of the modern Turkish scholarly tradition of Seljuk historiography were laid by a series of outstanding historians of the early Republican period, who published the greatest part of their work between the 1930s and the 1970s. Perhaps the most important among them are Mehmet Fuad Koprulu (1890-1966), Mikrimin Halil Yinang (1900-1961), Ibrahim Kafesoglu (1914-1984), Osman Turan (1914-1978), Mehmet Altay Koymen (1915-1993), Faruk Sumer (1924-1995), Ali Sevim (1928-2013), Isin Demirkent (1938-2006), and Erdogan Mercil (born 1938).?° In one way or another, this school of thought is deeply influenced by a key concept of Turkish nationalism, presenting Anatolia as the Turks’ natural homeland (vatan) and final destination after a centuries-long process of migration.°! The idea of a Turkish nation closely related to the geographical and cultural environment of Asia Minor has to be seen against the background of an ideological discourse that rejected both the traditional dynastic historiography of the Ottoman Empire and the ideas of Panturkism or Ottomanism, placing special emphasis, instead, on the historical continuities between the Seljuk legacy and modern Turkey. According to this view, Asia Minor, after centuries of Arab invasions and decades of civil strife, in the eleventh century was a vast, empty, and devastated area, in which new political and cultural entities based on Turkic-nomadic traditions of Central Asia and on Muslim elements imported from the central lands of Islam could be swiftly established.°” Thus, the process of a rapid and deep-rooted Turkification of the whole region was inaugurated. A constantly recurring motif is the idea of huge masses of migrants, who within a few decades after the outset of the Turkish raids swamped most parts of Anatolia “like a storm tide” (sel gibt) and in a fierce life-and-death struggle successfully withstood all attempts to expel them thanks to their political unity in the state founded by Sulayman b. Qutlumush.*4 In Osman Turan’s view, the actual driving force of the Oghuz Turks’ expansion and establishment in Anatolia was their conversion to Islam, which, because of the moral and material superiority of its high culture, proved especially attractive for the Turks in Transoxania and became their “common national religion” (umtimi ve millé din). The new Turkish Muslims, with their inherent vigor and dynamic, rescued the Muslim civilization from the state of decay, in which it had been trapped since the tenth century, thus inaugurating a period of religious, cultural, and political revival.>* Accordingly, Islam is considered an indispensable part of or even a precondition for the immigration and state building of Turkish nomad tribes in Asia Minor. This process resulted in the identification of Seljuk political entities with Anatolian territory, which within a short time came to be called “Turkey.” Expressions like Selguklu Tiirkiyest (Seljuk Turkey), Tiirkiye Selguklulart (The Seljuks of Turkey), and Tiirkiye Selguklu devleti, (the Seljuk state of Turkey)? promote the notion of a culturally and linguistically unified nation, which possessed a collective identity and a common homeland bearing this people’s name. Accordingly, in Turan’s view the Islamization of Anatolia did not result from a long-lasting process of co-existence and acculturation, but rather from sudden and massive displacements of indigenous populations in conjunction with the gradual absorption of the remaining elements by the numerically superior Turkish conquerors and settlers.?°
Another approach, which seems to prevail in more recent publications and frequently contradicts older religiously oriented interpretations of the Seljuk period, combines anthropological models constructed on the basis of nomadic tribal societies with the idea of a clearly discernible Oghuz Turkish cultural legacy.” This concept underlines the existence of specific Turkish institutions, social structures, and identity markers engendering the transition from tribal coalitions to warrior groups and state-like entities. In this context, the role of Islam is often downplayed, and thus the Turkish warriors are presented as only superficially Islamized, using religion as nothing more than a legitimization strategy. Likewise, the idea of ethnic and cultural continuity serves the construction of links with later Turkish states, such as the Anatolian emirates (beyliks) of the fourteenth century and the Ottoman Empire. An extreme version of this concept even claims that what had begun with Alp Arslan and the Seljuk commanders in Anatolia during the 1070s and 1080s was eventually brought to completion by Kemal Atatiirk’s victory in the War of Independence in 1922.°9
Over the past three decades, the academic interest in the Seljuk period was largely superseded by Ottoman studies, a fact that is also reflected in the reduction of teaching hours of Seljuk history in the study programs of Turkish universities.°° Nevertheless, though on a smaller scale and with varying quality, there stil] is an ongoing flow of publications on various aspects of the political, institutional, and cultural history of the Great Seljuks and the Seljuks of Anatolia. Some especially noteworthy monographs of the past years, for instance, concern themselves with the Seljuks in Khurasan and their first leader Jaghri Beg;°! the Great Seljuks’ attitudes towards Islam;°? outstanding sultans of Konya of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, such as Mas‘ad I, Giyath al-Din Kaykhusraw I, and Sulayman-shah II;°° the political relations of the Anatolian Seljuks with the Armenians of Cilicia and the Euphrates region;®* the army and warfare techniques of the Anatolian Seljuks;®° their ambassadors and diplomacy;®° and Seljuk identity through the lens of Byzantine sources.®” In addition, there are some collected studies volumes by well-established specialists of the Seljuk period and a number of new textbooks and general introductions addressing a broader readership.°® Of direct concern for the topic of the present book is Muharrem Kesik’s new study on the battle of Manzikert and its aftermath.’ The author reaffirms the well-established views of this battle in both Turkish and European scholarly discourses as a decisive event in the history of Turkish Anatolia and a landmark in the transition from Byzantine to Seljuk rule. While discussing various military aspects of the battle itself as well as the ensuing Turkish penetration of Asia Minor in the 1070s, however, his analysis is in line with the approaches and concepts of the Turkish scholarly tradition. Generally speaking, the Turkish bibliography of the past few years evinces a growing interest in hitherto neglected or understudied aspects of Seljuk political, institutional, and intellectual history and re-examines certain prominent topics of Seljuk history under the light of a fresh reading of the primary sources. Yet, there is hardly any innovation in terms of methodology or with respect to the prevailing concepts presenting the Seljuk conquests as a starting point for the formation of a Turkish nation and homeland. In spite of these differing viewpoints, the works of the Turkish scholarly tradition are extremely valuable for their deep knowledge of the available primary material and their detailed discussions of many matters of political and institutional history. Chapters 4 and 5 of this study present a new interpretation of the political activities of Sulayman b. Qutlumush and other Turkish warlords during the 1070s and 1080s by focusing on structural similarities of the conflicts in Syria and in Anatolia, as well as on comparable behavioral patterns of the principle players.
The perspective of western oriental studies
Despite the attempts by Speros Vryonis and other Byzantinists to elucidate the reasons and characteristics of the internal change in eleventh-century Asia Minor and the transformation initiated by the Turkish invasions, western historians until recently showed astonishingly little interest in the Anatolian Seljuks. There are important studies on the Great Seljuk Empire and the innovations it brought to the institutions of the Muslim central lands and the law schools of Sunni Islam by Clara L. Klausner, Heribert Horst, Clifford E. Bosworth, Ann K. S. Lambton, $.G. Agadshanow, and Taef Kamal El-Azhari, to mention just the most important.’° More recently, Eric Hanne, Deborah G. Tor, David Durand-Guédy, and Andrew Peacock questioned traditional views and developed a number of new topics, such as the power relationship between the Seljuk sultanate and the Abbasid caliphate, the status and loyalty of slave soldiers, the role of local elites, the image of Seljuk sultans as Muslim model rulers, and crucial questions related to the formation and expansion of the Seljuk Empire.’! Chapters 1 and 2 of the present study try to contribute to this discussion by examining the earliest military conflicts and diplomatic relations with Byzantium in relation to the consolidation process of the Great Seljuk sultanate. Chapter 6 examines the repercussions of the centralizing policy of Sultan Malikshah and the ensuing civil strife on the Turkish emirs in Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, and Anatolia in the time before the First Crusade. The concluding section of chapter 8 focuses on Upper Mesopotamia at the time of the final contest for control between the Great Seljuk sultanate and the Anatolian Seljuks up to 1107.
Western views of the Seljuks in Pre-Ottoman Anatolia for a long time almost exclusively depended upon Claude Cahen’s articles and monographs written between the 1940s and the 1970s.’? Though avoiding nationalistic views and
Introduction 17
anachronistic interpretations, his approach still shares some of the premises and assumptions of the Turkish scholarly tradition: the penetration of Anatolia was the historical consequence of the Turkish migrations; the ghdzi ideology developed in the eastern Iranian borderland decisively supported the expansion; Asia Minor, due to its demographic and economic decay during the Byzantine period, “was incapable of offering a solid and united front.””?
The early phase of the Turkish expansion in Anatolia and the formation of the first Turkish-Muslim principalities still remain widely neglected. ‘This lack of interest is reflected, for instance, in the first volume of the Cambridge History of Turkey edited by Kate Fleet in 2009, in which the Turkish penetration, even though the battle of Manzikert in 1071 is chosen as the chronological starting point, is only very briefly treated within a very general overview of Byzantine history between the eleventh and the fifteenth century. A more accurate treatment of Asia Minor starts only with the Mongol period beginning with the battle of Késedag in 1243.’* More illuminating is Dimitri Korobeinikov’s chapter in Jonathan Shepard’s new Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire (2008), which despite its succinctness offers a number of new insights into the problems of primary sources and their interpretation.’”” Carole Hillenbrand’s recent monograph on the battle of Manzikert is, in its main part, a commented collection of Muslim primary sources in chronological order.’° The focus of analysis lies not so much on the battle itself but on the diachronic development of the historiographical discourse about the event from the earliest surviving reports up to modern ‘Turkish perceptions. In this respect, the study constitutes a useful guide to a proper understanding of Muslim accounts on the Seljuk expansion and the campaigns in Anatolia in particular. Hillenbrand’s source-critical approach can be fruitfully combined with a number of thought-provoking ideas and suggestions most recently produced by Andrew Peacock.
In various articles and his monograph on the earliest phase of Seljuk history, from the Seljuks’ first appearance in ‘Transoxania and Eastern Iran up to the death of Sultan Alp Arslan in 1072, he re-examines some essential core issues, such as the historiographical tradition on the Seljuk origins, the dynasty’s relations with the Turkmen tribes, patterns of warfare and conquest, and the Seljuk attitudes towards Sunni Islam and Shiism.’’ In this context, he also presents some stimulating thoughts on the nomadic character and the aims of the first invasions into Byzantine territory.”®
A factor contributing to a certain interest in the Anatolian Seljuks among western historians is the fact that the early Turkish expansion chronologically coincided with the First Crusade of 1096-1099. Ever since the massacre of Peter the Hermit’s People’s Crusade in the autumn of 1096, all crusading armies taking the way through Asia Minor were confronted with the fierce resistance of the Seljuks and other Turkmen groups. Likewise, the crusader states of Antioch and Edessa were constantly engaged in conflicts with Turkish potentates in eastern Anatolia, Syria, and northern Iraq.
In the mid-twelfth century, this trend eventually culminated in the big clashes with the atabeg ‘Imad al-Din Zangi and his son Nir al-Din. Hence, the co-existence and conflicts between Franks and Turkish-Muslim rulers was a major theme of the crusader states’ early history, Nevertheless, crusader historians usually treat the Turks in a quite undifferentiated and superficial manner as one of many Muslim powers constituting the hostile environment surrounding the Latin East.
They are described as a disturbing factor and dangerous menace, stubbornly opposing the crusaders on their march to the Holy Land and, later on, playing a leading role in the Muslim jihad against the Franks. More sophisticated issues (such as the peculiarities of Seljuk attitudes towards the Franks or the perception of the Turks in crusader chronicles) have hardly been examined systematically.’ The main part of chapter 8 of this study forms an attempt to fill this gap.
In contrast to this neglect of the Anatolian Seljuks in the past decades, there has been a strong revival of scholarly discussions about the controversial subject of the origins and nature of the early Ottoman state, which in many respects shows similarities and parallels with the problems posed by the first arrival of the Turks in Asia Minor. Paul Wittek’s ghdzi thesis and other theories articulated by Herbert A. Gibbon and Mehmet Fuad Képrilii were repeatedly submitted to severe criticism based on a thorough re-examination of the epigraphic evidence provided by the well-known Bursa inscription of 1337, early Ottoman historiography, and, to a certain degree, contemporary Byzantine historiography.
Rudi P. Lindner has made the point that “Holy War played no role in early Ottoman history, despite the later claims of Muslim propagandists,” thus strictly distinguishing between later ex post facto reconstructions by Muslim scholars providing ideological coverage and legitimacy, on the one hand, and contemporary evidence supported by the results of anthropological studies on tribal and nomadic societies, on the other.
He mentions several elements that form an explanatory model describing the gradual transition from a clan-like band of warriors to an empire: The notions of clan and pastoral nomadism with all their implications for social organizations, the formation of political groupings, and specific forms of political behavior in insecure frontier regions, which lack strict central control and are characterized by blurred boundaries between various social and ethnic components.
Colin Imber, Cemal Kafadar, and, most recently, Heath W. Lowry pushed the discussion forward in various directions and with diverging results. According to Imber’s approach, the genealogical and historical material referring to the first Ottomans is so strongly intermingled with legendary features that a further elucidation of the facts is basically impossible. Kafadar developed a modified version of Wittek’s theories. Lowry’s interpretation of the Ottoman ghazd is that the combination of the nomadic practice of pillaging with the Muslim concept of jihad resulted from the ideological re-orientation in the time of the civil war in the early fifteenth century.
He also highlights the significance of manifold syncretistic elements in early Ottoman society and tries, on the basis of early Ottoman tax registers from the Greek island of Limnos, to demonstrate the paramount importance of the principle of istimdlet, i.e., winning over someone by generous promises and concessions, in the relations between the central government and non-Muslim subjects, as has been defined by previous studies by Halil inalcik.®?
All these ideas, in one way or another, call for a comparison between the Ottoman expansion in the fourteenth and the first Turkish penetration of Asia Minor in the eleventh century. Various facets of the early period show striking parallels: the lack of contemporary sources written from the viewpoint of the Turkish conquerors; the construction of a Seljuk dynastic identity combining Persian-Muslim, Oghuz-Turkish, and Byzantine elements; the employment of the jihad ideology in decisive conflicts with the Byzantine enemies, such as the campaigns in Armenia and the battle of Manzikert; and various forms of collaboration and alliances with Byzantine commanders, rebels, foreign mercenary groups, and segments of the indigenous population.
Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that, when the Ottomans made their appearance, the political, social, cultural, and ethnic structures of Anatolia during the preceding two centuries had already undergone a deep-rooted transformation. The emergence of various Turkish-Muslim principalities, the political unification of central and eastern Anatolia under the Seljuk sultanate of Konya, and the subsequent period of Mongol domination created an environment that strongly differed from what the first Turkish warrior groups had found when arriving in the eastern provinces of eleventh-century Byzantium. In short, in order to reach a better understanding of the historical conditions in which the Ottomans made their appearance, it is indispensable to further illuminate the nature and particularities of the preceding Seljuk period.
Most recently, a number of noteworthy publications have taken important steps in this direction by combining the re-examination of aspects of Seljuk history in the Muslim central lands with new approaches to the Seljuk sultanate of Rum during its heyday and decay in the thirteenth century. A special focus lies on Seljuk political culture, dynastic identity, ideology, and the relations with Sunni Islam, the Abbasid caliphate, and indigenous local elites.8° David Durand-Guédy’s case study on the city of Isfahan examines the particularities of Seljuk rule in the intersection between central authority and local institutions, thus offering a useful model for comparable processes in other regions, be they Muslim or Christian.°* Songiil Mecit’s monograph investigates the dynastic ideology of the Seljuk sultanate of Rim, including its relations with the Byzantine Empire.
The groundbreaking studies by Sara Nur Yildiz and Sevket Kiiciikhiiseyin present new source-critical approaches to core texts of Seljuk historiography and other genres of local Anatolian writing from the Mongol period onwards.®® By exploring the Muslim literary production of Anatolia, they give us a better understanding of the structures and peculiarities of Mongol rule in Anatolia and offer us new insights into the cross-cultural experiences, perceptions, and literary representations of Muslims, Christians, and Turks in these texts.
A collective volume edited by Andrew Peacock and Sara Nur Yildiz on The Seljuks of Anatolia further illuminates aspects of the dynastic identity and the royal household of the sultanate of Rum and sheds new light on the social and political role of the Sufi orders as an intrinsic part of the Seljuk elites. ° Dimitri Korobeinikov’s monograph on Byzantium and the Turks in the Thirteenth Century is the first comprehensive analysis of the Byzantine Empire’s political and institutional relations with the Seljuks of Konya and the early Anatolian beyliks from the Fourth Crusade (1204) to the sultanate’s collapse during the reign of Andronikos II Palaiologos.
An ongoing stream of publications by Scott Redford examines the great wealth of information to be gained from the analysis of the archaeological, architectural, and epigraphic evidence surviving from thirteenth-century Anatolia with respect to Seljuk elites, patronage, cultural behavior, and economic activities.°? As a whole, over the past years much substantial work has been done on the Great Seljuk Empire, the classical age of the Anatolian Seljuks, and the literary production of medieval Anatolia.
‘The early period largely remains outside the scope of these innovative trends in Seljuk studies. Hence, it has to be one of the main tasks of this and future works on the Seljuks to point out new possibilities of examining the first period of Turkish presence in Anatolia, free from the one-sided and ideologically biased perspectives of modern Greek and Turkish scholarship and that take advantage of the various new approaches developed on the basis of Seljuk and early Ottoman material from later centuries.
Material remains
The archaeological evidence for the earliest stages of Turkish presence in Anatolia is extremely difficult to grasp." Systematic excavations in sites like Amorion and Sagalassos and archaeological surveys in areas like the Amuq and Kahramanmaras Plains; the Euphrates region, in Lycia; and in the provinces of Kursehir, Ankara, Konya, and Aksaray in Central Anatolia provide us with numerous invaluable insights into environmental, climatic, agricultural, economic, and urban developments.?! Yet the available evidence derives mostly from late antique and early medieval (= middle Byzantine) layers, whereas the material remains pertaining to the transition period from Byzantine rule to the heydays of the Seljuk sultanate in the thirteenth century are extremely rare and raise a number of intricate chronological and interpretive issues.”
Data of environmental history indicate a decay of rural agrarian activities on the central Anatolian plateau around 1100, something that is explained as resulting from an interplay between climatic factors and the expansion of Turkish nomads in the said region.”° Our written sources, however, mostly present the Turkish invaders as warriors and raiders or, occasionally, even as skillful politicians and state builders. Hence, it is virtually impossible to reconstruct the extent and nature of nomadic activities on the basis of the available accounts and thus to gauge the role of intruding pastoralists in the desertion of agricultural areas.
The first known copper coins minted in the Seljuk sultanate of Konya and in eastern Anatolian emirates date to the first half of the twelfth century.2* The oldest surviving monuments of Seljuk art and inscriptions were produced in Konya in the 1150s. Yet the bulk of the surviving material hardly predates the thirteenth century, and it is mostly in the 1210s and 1220s that we observe large-scale building activities in the towns and citadels of Anatolia.°° Studies on Byzantine fortifications shed some light on the re-organization of defensive structures in Asia Minor under Alexios I and his successors.”© Conclusions drawn on the basis of stylistic features and brickwork, however, are not always reliable and need a more
thorough investigation with the aid of refined methods. Pottery that has been identified as ‘Turkish-Muslim is usually dated to the thirteenth century, when Seljuk urban culture with its palaces, religious institutions, and sacred buildings flourished to the fulll.9’
The lack of material for the eleventh century is usually interpreted as a sign of devastation and/or desertion in the years after the battle of Manzikert in 1071 or of a shift from sedentary to nomadic settlement patterns in vast areas of Anatolia.?® Yet archaeologists usually face difficulties in adducing positive evidence to corroborate these assumptions. The traditional concept of a profound cultural and demographic upheaval caused by the Turkish onslaught certainly is an easily adaptable explanatory model,”” but it hardly appears appropriate as long as both written and material sources fail to provide convincing arguments.
The highly fragmentary and in many respects insufficient basis of material evidence may partly be due to the current state of archaeological research on Byzantine sites in present-day Turkey. It is to be expected that future excavations and surveys will modify our current understanding, but it is hardly predictable how and to what extent. For the time being, it seems more appropriate to assume that the Muslim-Turkish population groups and politico-cultural entities in Anatolia grew out of a relatively slow process of gradual penetration and transformation, which took at least some decades to leave archaeologically palpable traces and even longer to develop into a distinct elite culture with its own morphological characteristics and identity markers.
This study, first and foremost, focuses on a re-examination and fresh interpretation of historiographical traditions, as will be explained in more detail in the following chapter. A comprehensive analysis of the material evidence would go far beyond both the competence of the present writer and the scope of this book. Yet a selection of important archaeological studies will be referred to wherever their findings shed additional light on or modify what we know from the written record.
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