Byzantine Empire (Byzantine Khazaria)

The Byzantine Empire (or Byzantium) was the eastern division of the Roman Empire which survived well after the fall of Rome, centered around its capital of Constantinople, and ruled by emperors in direct succession to the ancient Roman emperors. During its medieval existence of more than a thousand years, the Empire remained one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe, despite setbacks and territorial losses to the Turks and Arabs.

The Empire recovered during the Comnenus dynasty, rising again to become a pre-eminent power in the Eastern Mediterranean by the late eleventh century, rivaling the Fatmid Caliphate of Egypt. Despite more losses to the Seljuks, the empire began to concentrate on its northern borders. By the 1400's, it had underwent a massive transformation into one of the largest nations in Europe, with the conquest of much of Russia. Byzantine rule extended from Syria in the east to Switzerland in the west, and ushered in a new golden age remembered today as the 'Glory Years of Great Byzantium'.

History
Byzantium was originally founded as the key to three continents, on the land of Thrace, which connected Greece and Anatolia, and thus, Europe and Asia. It was absorbed into the Roman Empire sometime in the 100's BC. In 324, Constantine I became emperor of the Roman Empire. He made Byzantium the new Roman capital because he recognized the richer eastern Roman provinces had become even more important than Rome itself. Byzantium was renamed Nova Roma, but was soon called Constantinople, after Constantine.

In 395, the empire was permanently split into a Latin Western Roman Empire and a Greek Eastern Roman Empire. The Western Roman Empire quickly disintegrated and collapsed with the fall of Rome in 476. The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire's early history was marked by struggle after struggle to repel encroaching Germanic and Slavic tribes. Persian invasions also weakened the crumbling empire. In 610, the emperor Heraclius temporarily rid Constantinople of the Persian threat by winning the Romano-Persian wars and driving the Persian shahs back to Mesopotamia. In 634, the Byzantines begin to collapse again when they were struck by an invasion of the Arab Muslims, who went on to overrun North Africa, Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. A large Byzantine army was destroyed in Syria by 642, and the Arabs went on to defeat the Byzantine navy off the coast of Anatolia.

By the 700's, the Byzantine Empire had barely managed to turn back the Muslims from the gates of Constantinople itself. During the 800's, the Byzantines begin to expand again. Their control of the major trade routes made Constantinople one of the richest cities in the known world. Business grew, and the empire prospered. However, the Byzantine Greeks were shaken again when a quarrel with Western Europe began in 1054 over matters of religion. That year, growing disputes over Papal authority led to a permanent split between the Roman church, into eastern (Orthodox) and western (Catholic) sections.

The Komnenian Era
The Komnenian era was born out of a period of great difficulty and strife for the Byzantine Empire. Following a period of relative success and expansion under the Macedonian dynasty (c.867-c.1054), Byzantium experienced several decades of stagnation and decline, which culminated in a vast deterioration in the military, territorial, economic and political situation of the Byzantine Empire by the accession of Alexios I Komnenos in 1056.

After Manzikert, a partial recovery was made possible due to the efforts of the Komnenian dynasty. This is sometimes referred to as the Komnenian restoration. The first emperor of this royal line was Alexios I Komnenos (Comnenus). Alexios's long reign of nearly 37 years was full of struggle. His early years were marked by struggles to suppress revolts and repel Normans in southern Italy. By the time he had ascended the throne, the Seljuks had also taken most of eastern Asia Minor. Alexius was able to secure much of the other Anatolian regions by campaigning a series of defensive movements against the Turks, but was unable to recover any lost territory. As early as 1090, Alexios had taken reconciliatory measures towards the Papacy, with the intention of seeking western support against the Seljuks. In 1095 his ambassadors appeared before Pope Urban II at the Council of Piacenza. The help which he wanted from the West was simply mercenary forces and not the immense hosts which arrived, to his consternation and embarrassment, after the pope preached the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont later that same year. Not quite ready to supply this number of people as they traversed his territories, the emperor saw his Balkan possessions subjected to further pillage at the hands of his own allies. Alexios dealt with the first disorganized group of Crusaders, led by the preacher Peter the Hermit, by sending them on to Cilicia, where they were massacred by the Turks in 1096.

By that time, Alexios had consolidated and stabilized Byzantine Italy, as well as accepting a formal union with the states of Georgia. He saw the chance for more such gains when the second and much more formidable host of crusaders gradually made its way to Constantinople, led by the Holy Roman emperor and other important members of the German nobility. Many of the other Western medieval kingdoms were at the time paralyzed by various expansionist wars and unwilling to send troops for the Crusade. Alexios used the opportunity of meeting the crusader leaders separately as they arrived and extracting from them oaths of homage and the promise to turn over conquered lands to the Byzantine Empire. Transferring each contingent into Asia, Alexios promised to supply them with provisions in return for their oaths of homage. The crusade was a notable disappointment for Byzantium, as the Turks were able to destroy it and capture the German emperor. Upon his execution, the Crusading spirit began to fall apart at the seams.

Checked by the failure of the Crusade, the Byzantines turned their attention away from the Turks and, with the Crusading spirit in Western Europe broken, began focusing their attention elsewhere. First, Alexios used a considerable amount of diplomatic and military pressure to force a peace with the Norman County of Sicily to stabilize his western borders. He then turned his attention to the Khazars.

Conquest of Khazaria
The conquest of Khazaria was done swiftly and with an impressive amount of little bloodshed. Crimea was the first to be completely absorbed, as the Khazar governor was bribed by the Greeks to join them and cede Crimea to them. As a reward, he was appointed Duke of Crimea. In the following years, all of the Khazar commanders in Ukraine had received offers to join the Byzantine ranks for considerable amounts of gold, corrupting the military and crippling the Khazars' ability to resist Byzantine conquest, accomplished through diplomacy instead of warfare.

With Crimea in Byzantine hands, the last Khazar Khagan attempted to raise his army to retake the region but was unsuccessful. Instead, finding his generals deserting him, he retreated to a castle in eastern Ukraine and refused to come out. After a week of siege, the Byzantines convinced the Khagan he could only profit by surrender. Indeed, the Khagan was allowed to retain control of Khazaria as a Byzantine-appointed governor. Thus, by 1114, the Khazars had quietly ceased to be as an independent nation. The Khazars remained content under Byzantine rule, but the Eastern Orthodox Church began a series of religious reforms across Khazaria, bringing in Greek clergymen from Georgia to help convert the population.

The Khagan was the force behind several plots against Alexios, however, ensuring his downfall. Frustrated with his growing unwillingness to cooperate with Constantinople, the emperor stripped him of his command and committed the ultimate insult: Turning over the title and office of governor to a common Black Khazar. The would-be Khagan was then sent to fight a Bulgar tribe in the north, where he was taken prisoner. Alexios refused to pay the demanded ransom and the last of the Khazar rulers was executed by a Bulgar Khan as a warning to future Byzantine incursions into their territory.

Further Expansions into Russia and Middle Eastern Conquests
Alexios took only three years to govern and keep Khazaria before he was eager for further Russian expansion. From 1118-1124, the Byzantines made massive territorial gains in Russia. The Kievan Rus' former territories were soon overrun, and the Greeks continued to push further and further north, meeting less and less resistance.

Around this time, Alexios also annexed Bulgaria and Serbia, adding them to his growing empire. Bulgaria fell due to treachery, corruption, and diplomacy. The Bulgar khan was assassinated by a Byzantine agent, and his heirs played off against each other. After a three year war had spent them and devastated the entire country, the Greek forces marched in and restored order. The Serbs, meanwhile, were able to offer only token resistance due to the massive sizes of the Byzantine armies sent against them.

By 1126, Moscow and Kiev had both been overrun by a Byzantine expeditionary force. The Greeks' main advantage was their ability to move swiftly over winter wastelands and use local militia troops, guides, and mercenaries for their conquest. Georgia in particular became a recruiting ground for many mercenaries. Members of the Teutonic Knights were among those who traveled to Georgia seeking mercenary work. In 1129, Alexios realized his chance had come for revenge against the Seljuk Turks. The sultans of Egypt and Turkey alike had offered him alliances, all of which he had rejected. When central Anatolia revolted against the Turks, Alexios himself led a large army out to capture it. The rebels were only defeated after a narrowing, fierce, battle. Greek casualties were especially staggering, and included among them were over one half of the Varangians, the emperor's Scandinavian bodyguards.

But their battle was far from over. The same year, the Turkish sultan Mesud I marched a large army into Anatolia. The Byzantine forces crushed the Turks after the sultan unwisely attempted to draw the Greeks into a pitched battle on an open field. Mesud himself fell slain on the plains, and his own bodyguards decapitated his corpse. Upon his death, the Seljuk sultanate broke apart into several minor Turkish sultanates and emirates, based in Armenia, the Caspian Sea, and Syria. The Fatmid Caliphate went on to seize some of these minor states, but Armenia was absorbed into the Byzantine Empire. Alexios died the same year, mourned all over the empire as a true Roman conqueror. His age is incredible; Greek sources state that he died at 93, which was extremely old for his time. He was perhaps the longest ruling Roman emperor. Alexios was succeeded by his relative Alexios II Komnenos, who was born the same year Alexios I had ascended to the throne.

Reign of Alexios II
The reign of Alexios II saw further Byzantine expansion into Russia and the conquest of Syria. His early reign proceeded peacefully as he attempted to begin administrative reforms in the new territory conquered by Alexios I. In 1134, seeing the Byzantines recalling many of their border troops for conflicts in faraway Russia and the Middle East, the Norman County of Sicily launched an invasion of Byzantine Italy, hoping to strike out towards Naples and crush the Greek garrisons. However, their onslaught was repelled with such tenacious violence that the count was forces to withdraw his troops. A pitched battle near Croton doomed the ravaging Norman army, and destroyed the bulk of the county's forces.

Alexios himself proceeded to southern Italy to access the damages of war. He concluded a profitable peace treaty with the Normans, and forced them to pay him an annual tribute. However, the Normans continued to harass Greek ships in the Adriatic and continually launched probing expeditions into southern Italy. Alexios seemed unwilling or unable to deal with these problems during his reign. In 1136, the Byzantines pushed the borders of their Russian empire as far west as Prussia, where they finally halted.

Alexios had his eye on the Fatmid Caliphate and was continually wary of them. After surviving two attempted assassination attempts orchestrated by the Egyptians, Alexios ordered an invasion of Syria. Several especially bloody battles were fought in the Syrian desert, which the Byzantines only won with agonizing difficulty. Alexios also hired Egyptian and Moorish mercenaries to help him better combat the Fatmid forces. By 1140, Antioch itself was in his hands. The Fatmid Caliphate called a Jihad against the Byzantine Empire, but Alexios had wisely developed an alliance with the faraway Almoravids, who retracted the alliance but refused to join the Fatmids in the Jihad.

As many as 50,000 Byzantine troops were amassed on the borders of southern Syria to prevent the Jihad, but the Fatmids continually tried to attack isolated Greek positions in the Syrian desert instead. After four years of scattered fighting and skirmishes, the Arab forces withdrew back to Palestine, leaving Syria firmly in Byzantine hands. Alexios II ended his reign with a forced white peace on the Fatmid Caliphate.

Sicilian Wars
In 1160, the Normans proved once again to be a thorn in Byzantium's side. That year, they blockaded Naples itself. The Byzantines had had enough. In 1164, the last straw came when the Normans pushed upward into southern Italy again.

The Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos decided it was time to take action against the County of Sicily once and for all. In 1167, the entire Norman fleet was destroyed off the coast of Sardinia. By 1168 they had been driven back to Sicily itself. The Byzantines then made a massive land and sea invasion into Sicily. A number of ferocious battles were fought along the coast, including the Battle of Alcantara River, in which nearly five hundred Norman knights were slaughtered by heavily armored Byzantine infantry wielding pole-arms.

After a siege lasting nearly two years, Palermo fell to the invaders. The count requested a peace, but instead the Byzantines rejected his offer outright. In 1171, the count himself was captured by Greek agents and beheaded. All of Sicily was then swiftly overrun by Byzantine forces, and the Normans retreated to Malta. Manuel opted not to pursue them any further, and instead turned to rebuilding and reconstructing Sicily.