Empire of Trebizond | |||||||||||||
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1204–1461[1] | |||||||||||||
![]() Map of the Empire of Trebizond shortly after the foundation of the Latin Empire in 1204, featuring the short-lived conquests in western Anatolia by David Komnenos (later reconquered by the Empire of Nicaea) and Sinope (later conquered by the Sultanate of Rum). | |||||||||||||
Status |
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Capital | Trebizond | ||||||||||||
Common languages |
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Religion | Greek Orthodoxy | ||||||||||||
Government | Monarchy | ||||||||||||
Notable emperors1 | |||||||||||||
• 1204–1222 | Alexios I | ||||||||||||
• 1238–1263 | Manuel I | ||||||||||||
• 1280–1297 | John II | ||||||||||||
• 1349–1390 | Alexios III | ||||||||||||
• 1459–1461 | David | ||||||||||||
Historical era | Late Middle Ages | ||||||||||||
1204 | |||||||||||||
• Fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade | 12 April 1204 | ||||||||||||
• Submission to the Mongol Empire | 1243 | ||||||||||||
• Permanent loss of Sinope | 1265 | ||||||||||||
1282 | |||||||||||||
1340–1349 | |||||||||||||
15 August 1461[1] | |||||||||||||
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Today part of | Georgia Russia Turkey Ukraine | ||||||||||||
1 the full title of the Trapezuntine emperors after 1282 was "the faithful Basileus and Autokrator of All the East, the Iberians and Perateia" |
The Empire of Trebizond or the Trapezuntine Empire was a successor state of the Byzantine Empire that existed during the 13th through to the 15th century. The empire consisted of the Pontus, or far northeastern corner of Anatolia, and portions of southern Crimea.
The Trapezuntine Empire was formed in 1204 with the help of Queen Tamar of Georgia after the Georgian expedition in Chaldia and Paphlagonia,[3] which was commanded by Alexios Komnenos a few weeks before the Sack of Constantinople. Alexios later declared himself emperor and established himself in Trebizond (now Trabzon in Turkey).
Alexios and David Komnenos, grandsons and last male descendants of the deposed emperor Andronikos I Komnenos, pressed their claims as Roman emperors against Alexios V Doukas. The later Byzantine emperors, as well as Byzantine authors, such as George Pachymeres, Nicephorus Gregoras, and to some extent Trapezuntines such as John Lazaropoulos and Basilios Bessarion, regarded the emperors of Trebizond as the "princes of the Lazes" while the possession of these "princes" was also called Lazica.[3][8] From the point of view of Byzantine writers connected with the Laskaris and later the Palaiologos dynasties, the rulers of Trebizond were not emperors.[3]
After the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade overthrew Alexios V and established the Latin Empire, the Empire of Trebizond became one of three Byzantine successor states to claim the imperial throne alongside the Empire of Nicaea under the Laskaris family and the Despotate of Epirus under a branch of the Angelos family.[9] The ensuing wars saw the Empire of Thessalonica, the imperial government that sprang from Epirus, collapse following conflicts with Nicaea and the Second Bulgarian Empire and the final recapture of Constantinople by the Nicaeans in 1261.
Despite the Nicaean reconquest, the Emperors of Trebizond continued to style themselves as Roman emperor for two decades and to press their claim on the imperial throne. Emperor John II of Trebizond officially gave up the Trapezuntine claim to the Roman imperial title and Constantinople itself 21 years after the Nicaeans recaptured the city, altering his imperial title from "Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans" to "Emperor and Autocrat of all the East, Iberia and Perateia".[10]
The Trapezuntine monarchy survived the longest among the Byzantine successor states. The Despotate of Epirus had ceased to contest the Byzantine throne even before the Nicaean reconquest and was briefly occupied by the restored Byzantine Empire c. 1340, thereafter becoming a Serbian Imperial dependency later inherited by Italians, ultimately falling to the Ottoman Empire in 1479.
The restored empire ended in 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans. Trebizond lasted until 1461, when the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II conquered it after a month-long siege and took its ruler and his family into captivity.[11]
The Crimean Principality of Theodoro, an offshoot of Trebizond, lasted another 14 years, falling to the Ottomans in 1475.
Ostrogorsky, G. 1997 pp. 102, 305
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).A remarkable feature of the Pontic situation in that some groups of nomad apparently wandered Trapezuntine territories as subjects of the Grand Komnenoi. According to Brendemoen, by the 14th century, a group of Pontic nomads was bilingual and spoke both Turkic and Greek. In addition to the case of the Christian Çepni, this is substantiated by linguistic data. Moreover, the earliest Turkic dialect of the Pontos was based on the Aqqoyunlu Turkic dialect under the influence of Pontic Greek.
Hewsen47
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