The Cambridge Medieval History - Book XV: The Eastern Roman Empire from Isaac I to Andronicus

THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY - BOOK XV

The Eastern Roman Empire from Isaac I to Andronicus

Charles Kadlec, William Miller, Louis Brehier, Thomas Arnold, and Ferdinand Chalandon

PERENNIAL PRESS

Thank you for reading. If you enjoy this book, please leave a review.

All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

Copyright © 2016 by Charles Kadlec, William Miller, Louis Brehier, Thomas Arnold, and Ferdinand Chalandon

Published by Perennial Press

Interior design by Pronoun

Edited by J.B. Bury

Distribution by Pronoun

ISBN: 9781531246358

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE EMPIRE AND ITS NORTHERN NEIGHBOURS, by Charles Kadlec

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE FIRST BULGARIAN EMPIRE (679-1018), by William Miller

THE GREEK CHURCH ITS RELATIONS WITH THE WEST UP TO 1054, by Louis Brehier

MUSLIM CIVILISATION DURING THE ABBASID PERIOD, by Thomas Arnold

THE EARLIER COMNENI. ISAAC I (1057-1059). ALEXIUS I (1081-1118), by Ferdinand Chalandon

THE LATER COMNENI. JOHN (1118-1143). MANUEL (1143-1180). ALEXIUS II (1180-1183). ANDRONICUS (1183-1185), by Ferdinand Chalandon

THE EMPIRE AND ITS NORTHERN NEIGHBOURS, BY CHARLES KADLEC

~

WHILE THE GERMANS IMPRESSED THEIR characteristic stamp on both the medieval and modern history of Western Europe, it was reserved for the Eastern Slays, the Russians, to build a great empire on the borderlands of Europe and Asia. But the work of civilization was far more difficult for the Russians than for the German race. The barbaric Germans settled in regions of an old civilization among the conquered Romans and Romanized peoples, whereas the geographical and ethnical surroundings entered by the Eastern Slays were unfavourable, in so far as no old inheritance existed there to further any endeavours in civilization; this had to be built up from the very foundations. Boundless forests, vast lakes and swamps, were great obstacles to the colonization of the immense plain of eastern Europe, and the long stretch of steppes in southern Russia was for many centuries the home of Asiatic nomads, who not only made any intercourse with Greek civilization impossible but even endangered incessantly the results of the native progress of the Russian Slavs.

The growth of the Russian empire implies not only the extension of the area of its civilization but also the absorption of many elements belonging to foreign races and speaking foreign tongues, and their coalescence with the dominant Russian nation.

It was only the southernmost parts of the later Russian empire that had from time immemorial active connections with the several centres of ancient Greek civilization. In the course of the seventh century B.C. numerous Greek colonies were founded on the northern shore of the Black Sea, such as Tyras, Olbia, Chersonesus, Theodosia, Panticapaeum (now Kerch), and Tanais. These towns were the intermediaries of the commerce between the barbaric peoples of what is now Russia and the civilized towns of Greece. They were at the same time centres of Greek civilization, which they spread among their nearest neighbours who inhabited the southern steppes of Russia and were known in history first under the name of Scythian$ and then of Sarmatian$. Of what race these peoples were, is not clearly established.

Alans, Goths, and Huns

The ancient historians mention several tribes who lived to the north and north-west of the Scythians and Sarmatians, and were in all probability Slavs or Finns.

The Scythian and Sarmatian nomads were a continuous danger to the security of the Greek colonies; they extorted from them regular yearly tributes. Still the chief towns to the north of the Black Sea did succeed though with difficulty in maintaining their existence during the whole period of the Scythian and Sarmatian dominion. These towns in course of time exchanged Greek independence for a Roman protectorate.

After the Sarmatians there appeared new enemies of the Greek colonies along the northern littoral of the Black Sea. Already in the first century of our era the name of the Sarmatians is superseded by that of Alans, which new generic name, according to the explanation of ancient historians, comprehends several nomadic races, mainly Iranian.

In the second and third centuries A.D. new immigrants poured in to the northern shores of the Black Sea. The western part of the steppes was occupied by German races, especially by the Goths, the eastern part by Asiatic Huns. The Goths remained more than two centuries in the steppes of southern Russia and the lands bordering the Black Sea, whence they made incursions into the Roman Empire. By the inroad of overwhelming masses of the Huns the Gothic state was subverted in A.D. 375, and the Goths disappeared slowly from the borders of the Black Sea. Only a small part of them remained, some in the Caucasus and others till much later in the Crimea. The other Goths acquired new homes in other lands of Europe. Of the Greek colonies on the north of the Black Sea only those in the Crimea outlived the Gothic period.

With the expansion of the power of the Huns a new period begins in the history of Eastern and Central Europe. Hitherto Asia sent its nomads only as far as the steppes of southern Russia. The Huns are the first nomads who by their conquests extend Asia to the lands on the central Danube. Like a violent tempest their hordes not only swept over the south Russian steppes but also penetrated to Roman Pannonia, where Attila, their king, in the first half of the fifth century founded the centre of his gigantic but short-lived empire. After Attila’s death his empire fell to pieces, and the Huns disappeared almost entirely among the neighbouring nations. Only a small part fled to the Black Sea, where they encountered the hordes of the nomadic Bulgars, a people in all probability of Finnish (Ugrian) origin, but mixed with Turkish elements. The Bulgars were originally settled in the lands between the rivers Kama and Volga, where even later the so-called Kama and Volga Bulgars are found, but part of them moved at an unknown time to the south-west, and when the Huns had migrated to Pannonia came to the Black Sea, where they appear already in the second half of the fifth century. Before they arrived there they had lived under so strong a Turkish influence that they could easily blend with the remnants of the Huns. The Greek authors of the sixth century especially mention in these regions two Bulgarian tribes, the Kutrigurs or Kuturgurs and the Utigurs or Utrigurs. The Kutrigurs roamed as nomads on the right bank of the Don to the west, the Utigurs from the Don to the south, eastwards of the Sea of Azov. After the departure of the other Bul¬garian hordes in the second half of the seventh century only the Utigurs remained in the lands near the Black Sea; they are later known as the Black Bulgars.

Bulgars, Avars, and Turks

Like other barbarians the hordes of the Bulgars were an unceasing source of trouble to the Eastern Roman Empire. Justinian was forced to pay a yearly tribute to the Kutrigurs. But, as even this subsidy did not restrain them from frequent invasions, he made use of the common Byzantine policy, bribing the Utigurs to be their enemies.

The Utigurs violently attacked the Greek colonies situated on both shores of the Cimmerian Bosphorus. Panticapaeum, better known to the Byzantine authors as Bosphorus, resisted only a short time, and finally had to acknowledge the Utigurs’ supremacy in order to save some sort of autonomy. In 522, during Justinian I’s reign, Bosphorus had a Greek garrison.

Immediately after the Huns other nomads from Asia thronged to Europe. They were part of a people named by the Chinese Yuan-Yuan but calling themselves Yü-küe-lü, who in Europe became known by the name of Avars. This nation appeared in the territory of the empire of the T’o-pa, founded by a secession from the Chinese Empire.

The empire of the T’o-pa was short-lived. The Yuan-Yuan revolted against their masters and founded on a part of their territory a separate state, for a time under the supremacy of the T’o-pa, but in the second half of the fourth century they rose to such power that they tried to gain their independence. They succeeded in this endeavour under their chief Shelun (402-410), who assumed the title of Khagan. From that time down to the sixth century the Yuan-Yuan became the foremost people in Central Asia. They ruled over Eastern Turkestan, and over the present territories of Mongolia and Manchuria as far as Korea. But from the end of the fifth century the empire of the Yuan-Yuan was already in decline.

The subdued races took advantage of this weakness and endeavoured to shake off their yoke. The Chinese call these hordes T’u-küe, the nearest they could get to Turks. The Chinese knew of a long series of Turkish hordes and counted them among their tributary tribes. Some of these hordes were also under the dominion of the Huns. In the middle of the sixth century the half mythical chieftain T’u-men united the numerous Turkish tribes and rose to the leadership of the whole

Turkish nation in northern and central Asia, whereupon the Turks allied themselves with the T’o-pa against the Yuan-Yuan. These succumbed, their Khagan A-na-kuei (Anagay) in 552 committed suicide, and their empire came to an end.

The Avars in Europe

That part of the Turks which formerly was under the dominion of the Yuan-Yuan remained in their homes and acknowledged the supremacy of T’u-men, but the other part migrated to the west into the steppes of southern Russia and further into Pannonia. These new nomadic hordes appear in Europe under the name of Avars. But according to Theophylact Simocatta the European Avars were not the genuine Avars but Pseudo-avars. In any case they, like the other Asiatic nomads, were not an ethnically pure race but a mixed people.

During the migration the number of the Avars increased considerably, since other tribes, kindred as well as foreign, joined them, and among these was also a part of the Bulgars. Soon after their arrival in Europe in 558 the Avars encountered the Eastern Slavs, called Antae in the ancient histories, the ancestors of the later South Russian Slavonic races. The Avars repeatedly invaded the lands of the Antae, devastating the country, dragging away the inhabitants as prisoners, and carrying with them great spoils.

A few years later, in 568, they appear in Pannonia, which they selected as the centre of their extensive dominion, and where they roamed for two centuries and a half. From there they made their predatory incursions into the neighbouring lands, especially into the Balkan peninsula, often in company with the Slavs. The worst period of these devastations by the Avars lasted no longer than about sixty years, for they soon experienced several disasters. From the western Slavonic lands they had been driven by Samo, the founder of the first great Slavonic empire (623-658), and in the East the Bulgarian ruler Kovrat, who was in friendly relations with the Greeks, shook off their yoke. After 626, when the Avars beleaguered Constantinople in vain, the Balkan peninsula remained unmolested by their inroads, their last hostile incursion being the aid they gave to the Slavs in their attack on Thessalonica. Moreover there began in their dominion internal disorders which were in all probability the principal cause of the downfall of their power. In 631 there arose a severe conflict between the genuine Avars and their allied Bulgarian horde, because the chieftain of the Bulgarians had the courage to compete with an Avar for the throne. A fight arose between the two contending parties, which resulted in the victory of the Avars. The vanquished Bulgarian and 9000 of his followers with their families were driven from Pannonia.

During the period in which the dominion of the Avars reached from the middle course of the Danube almost to the Dnieper, there flourished between the Sea of Azov and the Caspian the dominion of the Chazars, nomads of another Turkish race, which in course of time became a half-settled nation. The Chazars formed one of the best-organized Turkish states and their dominion lasted several centuries. Their origin is entirely unknown.

Chazars and Turks

The history of the Chazars becomes clearer with the beginning of the sixth century, when they made repeated inroads into Armenia, crossed the Caucasus, and extended their dominion to the river Araxes. The Chazar warriors not only devastated Armenia, but pushed their inroads even into Asia Minor. Kawad (Kobad), King of Persia, sent an army of 12,000 men to expel them, and conquered the land between the rivers Cyrus and Araxes. Having moreover occupied Albania (Shirvan), Kawad secured the northern frontier of the land by a long wall stretching from the sea to the Gate of the Alans (the fortress of Dariel) and containing three hundred fortified posts. The Persians ceased to keep this wall in good repair, but Kawad’s son Chosroes I Nashirwan (531-578), with the consent of the ruler of the Chazars, had erected the Iron Caspian Gate, from which the neighbouring town near the Caspian Sea was called in Arabic Bab-al-abwab, Gate of Gates, and in Persian Darband (gate). The ramparts, however, erected by Chosroes near Dar-band and running along the Caucasian mountains for a distance of 40 parasangs (about 180 miles) were of no great use, as the Chazars forced their way by the Darband gate into Persia and devastated the land.

In the last quarter of the sixth century the Chazars were a part of the great Turkish empire, founded by T’u-men. His son, whose name is given in the Chinese annals as Sse-kin and by the Greek authors as Askin or Askil (553-569), ruled over an immense territory stretching from the desert of Shamo as far as the western sea, and from the basin of the river Tarim to the tundras near the river Kien (Kem or Yenisey). The Turkish empire was further extended by his successor Khagan Dizabul, named also Silzibul, in Turkish Sinjibu. During his reign also the Chazars belonged to the Turkish empire.

The Persian empire was a great obstacle to the tendency of the Turks to expand, and as the Byzantines were also the enemies of the Persians, the Turks sought to conclude alliances with them against the common foe. Khagan Sse-kin in 563 was the first to send an embassy to the Byzantines to negotiate a treaty of alliance, and under Justin II in 568 another mission was sent by the Turks to Constantinople. In return the Greeks also sent their ambassadors to the Turks; and in 569 Zemarchus journeyed from Cilicia to Central Asia as Justin II’s envoy.

Among other embassies of the Greeks to the Turks should be mentioned that of Valentinus in 579, which was to notify the accession of the new Emperor Tiberius II to the throne. On Valentinus’ second journey he had 106 Turks among his retinue. At that time there lived a considerable number of Turks in Constantinople, principally those who had come there as attendants of Byzantine envoys on their return journey. After a long and arduous journey, Valentinus arrived at the seat of Khagan Turxanth in the steppes between the Volga and the Caucasus, evidently one of the khagans subordinate to the supreme khagan who ruled over the Chazars, and from here the Byzantine embassy continued its way into the interior of the Turkish empire to reach the supreme khagan. During their stay there Turxanth acted in open enmity against the Byzantines, assaulting their towns in the Crimea, assisted by Anagay, prince of the Utigurs and vassal of the Turks.

The power of the Turks declined during the reign of Sinjibu’s successors. At the end of the sixth century there began contests for the khagan’s throne. Although the supreme khagan was able in 597 to subdue the revolt with the aid of the three other khagans, the disturbances were soon renewed, and the horde of Turks dwelling between the Volga and the Caspian Sea, the Chazars, freed themselves from the power of the supreme Turkish khagan in the early years of the seventh century.

Growing power of the Chazars

During the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries the empire of the Chazars was very powerful. As soon as the Chazars became independent of the supremacy of the Turkestan Turks, they expanded their dominion in all directions to the injury of the Black Sea Bulgars (Utigurs), the Crimean Greeks, and other peoples. The Bulgarians were for a long period in the seventh century the allies of the Byzantines. In 619 Organas, lord of the Huns (obviously the Utigurs), came with his magnates and their wives to Constantinople and embraced with them the Christian faith. In like manner Kovrat, Khan of the Bulgars, having freed himself from the power of the Avars (635), became an ally of the Byzantines. But when Kovrat died and his sons had divided his realm between them, Batbayan, the youngest of them, who remained near the Sea of Azov, was compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of the Chazars and to pay them a tribute.

When in the second half of the seventh century the Arabian Caliphate succeeded the Persian empire, the Chazars waged wars with the Arabs. Their relations with the Byzantines did not change. They had been the steady allies of the Greeks against the Persians, and remained Their allies also against the Arabs, in spite of frequent conflicts due to their opposing interests in the Crimean peninsula.

During the reign of the third Caliph, Othman, the Arabs consolidated their power in Armenia and even took a part of their lands from the Chazars. After 683 Armenia was again menaced by the Chazars, but in 690 they were severely defeated and many were burned in churches where they had sought shelter. According to Makin, the Arabs passed the Caspian gate and killed many Chazars; those who survived were compelled to embrace Islam.

Relations with the Empire

At the beginning of the eighth century the Chazars already ruled over a part of the Crimea, and conquered almost the whole of the peninsula before the end of the century; only the town of Cherson kept its independence, although for a short time it fell under their rule. Towards the end of the seventh century Justinian II, the dethroned Emperor (685-695), was sent there into exile. Sometime later he tried to regain his throne, but when the inhabitants of the city attempted to hinder his design, he fled to the Gothic town of Doras in the Crimea, whence he sent to the Khagan of the Chazars, Vusir (Wazir) Gliavar, asking for a hospitable reception. This the khagan accorded him with much kindness, and gave him his sister Theodora in marriage. Justinian then lived some time in Phanagoria or Tamatarcha (on the peninsula now called Taman), which at that time belonged to the Chazars. But the Emperor Tiberius Apsimar induced the khagan by incessant bribes to turn traitor and to send him Justinian either dead or alive. The khagan ordered his tuduns (lieutenants) in Phanagoria and Bosphorus to slay Justinian. The plans for the execution of the treachery were ready, but Theodora warned her husband in time, and he fled to the Bulgarian prince Tervel, who even aided him to regain his throne in 705.

Justinian now turned all his thoughts to wreaking his revenge on the inhabitants of Cherson. Three times he sent fleets and troops to the Crimea, but no sooner did the third army begin to beleaguer Cherson with some success than the forces of the Chazars arrived and relieved the town. Cherson retained thereafter its autonomy under an elected administrator until the time of the Emperor Theophilus, that is for more than a century.

From Byzantine sources we learn that the Emperor Leo the Isaurian sent an ambassador to the Khagan of the Chazars to ask the khagan’s daughter as a bride for his son Constantine, who was then in his fifteenth year. The Chazar princess was christened and named Irene (732). In 750 she became the mother of Leo, surnamed the Chazar. She introduced into Constantinople the Chazar garment called toitzakia, which the Emperors donned for festivities.

In the eighth century the Chazars had wars with the Arabs with alternating success. Georgia and Armenia were devastated by these wars during a period of eighty years. In 764 the Chazars again invaded these territories, but after that they are not mentioned by the Arabian authors before the end of the eighth century. The Khagan of the Chazars then made an inroad into Armenia in 799 with a great army and ravaged it cruelly, but finally he was expelled by the Caliph Hdran ar-Rashid. This was, as far as we know, the last predatory expedition of the Chazars into a land south of the Caucasus.

Chazar institutions

The organisation of the imperial power of the Chazars is very interesting. At the head of the State was the supreme khagan (ilek), but his power was only nominal. The real government was in the hands of his deputy, called khagan bey or even simply khagan and isha. He was the chief commander of the forces and chief administrator. The supreme khagan was never in touch with his people; he lived in his harem and appeared in public only once every four months, when he took a ride accompanied by a bodyguard which followed him at a distance of a mile. His court numbered four thousand courtiers and his bodyguard twelve thousand men, a number which was always kept undiminished.

The supreme Khagan of the Chazars practiced polygamy, having twenty-five legal wives, who were every one of them daughters of neighbouring princes. Moreover he kept sixty concubines. The main force of the Chazar army was formed by the bodyguard of 12,000. These troops are called by the Arabian writers al-arsiya or al-lairisiya, which Westberg says should be karisiya, because the overwhelming majority of them were Muslim mercenaries from Khwarazm, the Khiva of our days. In addition to these, men belonging to other nations (Masudi mentions Russians and Slavs) were also taken into the bodyguard or other service of the khagan. This Musulman bodyguard stipulated that it should not be obliged to take part in a war against co-religionists, and that the vizier must be chosen from its ranks.

Religious tolerance

An ideal tolerance in religion was exercised in the dominions of the Chazars. The Chazars proper (Turks) were originally all heathen and Shamanists. But in course of time Judaism began to spread among the higher classes. Further, some of the nations subdued by the Chazars were heathen, while others professed Christianity. The bodyguard, as we have seen, was almost entirely composed of Muslims, and part of the inhabitants of the capital, Itil, as well as some foreign merchants, were also adherents of Islam. The ruler and his courtiers professed Judaism about the middle of the eighth century (according to other authorities not earlier than the end of the eighth or the beginning of the ninth century).

Judaism and Christianity could spread among the Chazars from two quarters, from the Caucasus and from the Crimea. The existence of Jewish communities is attested by inscriptions dating from the first to the third century of our era in the towns of Panticapaeum, Gorgippia (now Anápa) at the north-western end of the Caucasus, and Tanais. In the eighth century Phanagoria or Tamatarcha was the principal seat of the Jews of the Cimmerian Bosphorus; and in the ninth century it is even called a Jewish town, the Samkarsh of the Jews.

Islam did not predominate among the Chazars before the second half of the tenth century. It seems that Christianity did not find many followers. It was the religion only of some Caucasian tribes subdued by the Chazars, and probably of some foreign merchants who visited the Chazar towns for their business. St Cyril endeavoured to convert the Chazars to Christianity but with no considerable result, for we learn from a legend of the saint that only two hundred Chazars were christened’.

All religions were ideally tolerant towards each other in the Chazar lands, so that this half-barbarian state could serve as an example to many a Christian state of medieval and even modern Europe. The courts of justice were organized in the capital town of the ruler according to religions. Seven or, according to Ibn Fadlan, nine judges held courts to administer justice; two of them were appointed for the Muslims, two for the Jews, two for Christians, and one for the heathen. If the judges of their own religion were unable to decide a complicated controversy, the litigants appealed to the cadis of the Muslims, whose administration of justice at that time was considered as the most perfect.

But in spite of religious tolerance, it was a great drawback to the Chazar state that there existed within it so many different religions, and, in all probability, it suffered much harm from the adoption of the Mosaic faith by the rulers and their courtiers. The inhabitants of the Chazar empire could not coalesce into one nation, and the Chazar realm continued until its downfall to be a conglomerate of different ethnic and religious elements. The state was upheld by artificial means, especially by the foreign Musulman mercenaries. Although the downfall of the empire did not begin in the ninth century, yet in the tenth it certainly was in rapid decline.

That the Chazar civilization attained a high development is apparent from the flourishing commerce of a part of the inhabitants and from the existence of several great towns in the empire. The authorities mention principally the towns Itil, Balanjar, Samandar, and Sarkel. Balanjar was a more ancient capital of