Doukas

Doukas, Latinized as Ducas (Greek: Δούκας; feminine: Doukaina/Ducaena, Δούκαινα; plural: Doukai/Ducae, Δοῦκαι), from the Latin tile dux ("leader", "general", Hellenized as δοὺξ [ðoux]), is the name of a Byzantine Greek noble family, whose branches provided several notable generals and rulers to the Byzantine Empire in the 9th–11th centuries. A maternally-descended line, the Komnenodoukai, founded the Despotate of Epirus in the 13th century, with another branch ruling over Thessaly. After the 12th century, the name "Doukas" and other variants proliferated across the Byzantine world, and were sometimes presented as signifying a direct genealogical relationship with the original family or the later branch based in the Despotate of Epirus.

The continuity of descent amongst the various branches of the original, middle Byzantine family is not clear, and historians generally recognize several distinct groups of Doukai based on their occurrence in the contemporary sources. According to Demetrios I. Polemis, who compiled the only overview work on the bearers of the Doukas name, in view of this lack of genealogical continuity "it would be a mistake to view the groups of people designated by the cognomen of Doukas as forming one large family".

Doukas (historian)

Doukas or Dukas (c. 1400 – after 1462) was a Byzantine historian who flourished under Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine Emperor. He is one of the most important sources for the last decades and eventual fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans.

Life

The date of Doukas's birth is not recorded, nor is his first name or the names of his parents. He was born probably in the 1390s somewhere in western Asia Minor, where his paternal grandfather, Michael Doukas, had fled. Michael Doukas was eulogized by his grandson as a learned man, especially in matters of medicine. He had played a role in the Byzantine civil wars of the mid-14th century as a partisan of John VI Kantakouzenos. Michael Doukas had been arrested by Alexios Apokaukos, and was one of the prisoners at the palace where Apokavkos was murdered by some of the inmates. Michael Doukas narrowly avoided becoming one of the 200 prisoners murdered in retribution by hiding in the underground chamber of the Church of Nea. He and five others disguised themselves as monks and managed to escape Constantinople. Michael met Isa, the grandson of Aydin, who became his patron and established him at Ephesus. He remained there even after the end of the civil war, convinced that sooner or later all of the remnants of the Byzantine state would succumb to the Turkish onslaught. Although his grandson claims so, it is unknown how, if at all, Michael was related to the old Byzantine imperial dynasty of the Doukai.