PART SEVEN: With Apologies to Mike Duncan (1098-1101)

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GarageBand Acoustic Picking 18.aif plays

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome. Episode 460: The Byzantine-Saimid War.

So, yeah. The Seljuks, nemesis of the Eastern Empire for the last few weeks worth of podcasts— first in the form of Suleyman and his short-lived Sulanate of Rûm, and then in the consolidated Seljuk Empire which stretched from Anatolia to Afghanistan– collapsed more or less overnight. The sudden fall of the Seljuks was so complete that it barely even mattered when a cabal of Turkish nobles bankrolled by the Byzantines murdered Sultan Ahmad.

The new Sultan of the Persian Empire, Saim the Conquerer, had succeeded in seizing power over one of the largest empires in the medieval world with unprecedented speed. But when he was crowned King of Kings at Eskisehir, there were still a lot of balls in the air, including an uprising of Seljuk holdouts centered around the Persian city of Hormuz.

This posed a dilemma for Alexios. As we’ve seen, his general tack towards the Seljuks after his first war to reclaim the Anatolian coast had always been to try to build up Byzantine strength through improvements to imperial administration and infrastructure and the curbing of smaller regional powers like Duklja, Rashka, and the Pechenegs. At the same time, though, he wasn’t a dummy, and he knew that there wouldn’t be another opportunity like this until who knows when.

More importantly, he knew that the Senate and the Douxes knew this. If he didn’t try to get a piece of the pie while he could, it would have been bad news for the legitimacy of the Komnenos dynasty.

On the other hand, he was well aware of the risks of overextension. Remember that one time Justinian tried to reconquer the whole Western Empire? Yeah, not such a great idea in the long term. So when he declared war on the Saimid Empire, he set himself a relatively modest goal: the reclamation of the theme of Thracesia. His hope would that this would be enough to keep the Senate happy and continue the gradual chipping away at the Persian Empire without suddenly finding himself responsible for administering a huge swath of territory full of Sunni Turks.

As had become Alexios’ standard operating procedure, he sought aid from the West.

This time, however, Emperor Henry’s aid came with some strings attached, and Alexios agreed to inervene in a border dispute between Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire.

The bulk of the Byzantine army remained in Anatolia, however, where Alexios hoped to take advantage of the Saimid still trying to mop up the remnants of the Seljuk loyalist forces in the area. In one of those strange coincidences of history we love so much, the Seljuk army that was busy being eradicated by the Saimids at Ankara was commanded by none other than Kilij Arslan, last seen being run out of Rûm on a rail by Sultan Ahmad.

Meanwhile, the Holy Roman Empire turned out to not really need Byzantium’s help walking all over Hungary, and the war for Istria came to an end, freeing Henry to reinforce his brother in law in the east.

In short, everything was coming up Alexios. He’d pushed a Saimid army exhausted from trying to hunt down Seljuk holdouts out of Ankara, earned some brownie points with the emperor of the West without even lifting a finger, and now 13,000 Germans were bearing down on Anatolia.

So of course he chose that moment to drop dead. The exact causes of Alexios’ death are unknown. The Alexiad states that he died of an infected wound sustained in the Battle of Ankara, but as his health had been declining for the past several years, it’s possible that it was sickness. Some historians have even suggested that it was the Hashshashin, out to avenge the assassination of Sultan Ahmad.

I, for one, think that Livia did it.

Whatever the cause, Emperor Alexios I Komnenos died on June 3rd, 1099. He was 43 years old, and had ruled the empire for 18 years.

When we assess an emperor’s reign, it’s always important to take into consideration just who it was who wrote the histories of their reign. To go waaaay back to episode 77, Domitian’s contentious relationship with the Senate– AKA, the guys who wrote the history of Domitian’s reign– caused the autocratic and stand-offish but still thoroughly competent Domitian to go down in history as the evil, bad, no-good Domitian who was pretty much the worst thing to happen to Rome, ever.

With Alexios, we have the opposite problem— our main source for his reign is Iouliana Konmene, who was pretty much the president of the Alexios Komnenos Fan Club. Oh, and, you know, hisdaughter. Still, the most basic assessment of any emperor’s reign is if he left the empire better off than he found it. When he came to the throne in 1081, the “Eastern Roman Empire” was pretty much just the empire of Greece and the Balkans. When he kicked the bucket, not only had the coast of Anatolia been reclaimed and Rascia brought to heel, but he’d also begun consolidating the Byzantine hold on the Black Sea.

The trick was if his successors would be able to hold onto his gains.

With the empire still at war, Alexios’ son Meletios assumed power with a minimum of fuss.

As the boy was still 14, though, actual power was vested in the eunuch Athanasios, whose mastery of courtly intrigue made claiming the regency child’s play.

Unfortunately for Athanasios, child’s play would prove to be his undoing when Meletios pushed him out the balcony of the imperial palace.

Athanasios was 25 years old, and had been emperor in all but name for just over a month.

The new regent was Gavril Mihajloic, a Serbian noble who was– get this– a member of the Dukljanin dynasty. He was apparently perfectly fine with Byzantine rule over Rascia, though, and had enjoyed the cushy post of steward to Alexios for some time. With court politics in chaos after the sudden death of Athanasios, power fell to him.

The next month, yet another sudden death rocked the imperial family— Princess Agnes of the Holy Roman Empire, whose marriage to the Byzantine prince Nikephoros had secured the alliance between east and west which had been a cornerstone of Alexios reign, died at the age of 26. Holy Roman Empire troops continued to participate in the war agains the Saimids, but the death meant that after hostilities concluded, the alliance would be more or less defunct.

Fortunately, the war with the Saimids had already been more or less won before Alexios died— not that it was that hard, since the whole idea was to just kick Saim while he was down– so the two sides concluded a peace in September. Sultan Saim really didn’t want to lose Thracesia, since he was pretty sure that the Byzantines would eventually come back to tear another chunk out of his Anatolian holdings. But he really, really didn’t want the Saimid Empire to be overthrown the same year it was founded by a couple thousand Seljuk no-hopers who were pretty much armed with sharpened sticks and rocks at this point because all the Saimids’ soldiers got killed by a bunch of Byzantines and Germans, so the territory was ceded.

Mihajloic knew that he couldn’t just coast on lingering good will towards Alexios forever, and immediately set to work appeasing various nobles. Prince Nikephoros, in recognition of his good work in, um, being married to a German Princess? Not doing a very good job when he tried to assassinate Alexios? Promising not to do it again? Anyway, he was appointed Doux of Thracesia in a well-thought-out scheme.

Eumathios Philokales, Doux of Cyprus, was made Kouropalates– honorary head of the palace. It’s suspected that he made noises about favoring Nikephoros’ succession to the imperial throne.

Finally, Prince Andronikos Doukas was given a giant pile of gold and a polite but firm letter asking him to please not start a second civil war, because that’d be a huge hassle and no fun for anyone.

With the Saimid Empire still in the throes of civil war, the Islamic world remained in chaos. Amidst all this, the Hashshashin continued to spread, no doubt getting up to all sorts of super secret assassination stuff.

Meanwhile, the Catholic kingdoms of Western Europe entered a period of extreme religious unrest. Fraticelli heretics succeeding in cutting a swath across northern France and occupied Paris, forcing King Philip to flee for his life into the countryside.

Emperor Henry, whose relationship with the Pope was always, um, contentious, finally had enough with Rome and backed his own pontiff, styled Pope Damasus III.

Robert the Cruel, the second Norman king of England, stayed loyal to Pope Nicholas III, tried to depose Henry’s antipope– and got his butt kicked, because, come on.

With his reputation in tatters, Robert soon found the lords of England rising up against him to install Prince William on the throne.

Mihajloic’s rather baffling decision to make Prince Nikephoros responsible for the administration of Thracesia bore unexpected dividends when he uncovered a plot by our pal the ex-Sultan of Rum, Kilij Arslan Seljuk, to try and stake a claim on Nikephoros’ holdings, which not so long ago were still part of Rum. Mihajloic had gambled that making Nikephoros a stakeholder in the fortunes of the empire would make him less inclined to riddle Emperor Meletios with arrows, and it seemed to be paying off.

In general, though, Mihajloic had a very hard time keeping the nobles of Byzantium in line. While none of them made a move towards claiming the throne, they also all wanted to be left alone to do their own thing. Like, say, wage private wars against the rebellious vassals of the Saimids without any authorization from Constantinople. In October, 1100, Anna Konmenos– Alexios’ niece and the Komessa of Chaldea, with the backing of the religious faction of the Senate, seized Coloneia from the Danishmend Beylerbeylik. This was theoretically a victory for Byzantium, and Mihajloic duly trotted Meletios out in front of the Senate to praise Komessa Anna’s efforts in the continuing reconquest of Anatolia. Still, it doesn’t exactly look good for the imperial administration when some random relative who wasn’t even a Doukessa could just march around Asia minor and set foreign policy.

Religious chaos in the West, dynastic struggles in the East, and backstabbing nobles running amok at home. It was against this backdrop that Emperor Meletios came of age.

He was ambitious and competent in many of the arts of statecraft, but he had none of the administrative or military talents of his father. He wasn’t terrible or anything. But he also wasn’t that good. He was just kind of mediocre.

Meanwhile, Mihajloic slunk off to marry his Meletios’ stepmother, the Dowager Empress Jaddvor.

Finally, Meletios himself followed in his father’s footsteps by marrying a talented Norsewoman.

Next week, we’ll see how the teenage emperor deals with nobles running amok, a Senate with their watches set to AD 117, Western Europe being in the midst of some kind of double pope ecclesiastical meltdown, and the continuing battle for control over the Persian Empire between the Saimids and the surviving Seljuks. For now, though, let’s leave him at his wedding, where his Danish wife came with a giant pile of gold and– hopefully– a steady hand on the tiller of the ship of state.

WORLD MAP, 1101