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Balkans and Anatolia (11th–12th c.)Politics and state

Reign of Alexios I Komnenos: the Komnenian restoration begins

A young general who seized Constantinople in a coup, Alexios I Komnenos inherited an empire that had lost most of Anatolia and at once faced invasions, first by the Normans and then by the Pechenegs. In 37 years of almost constant war and diplomacy he held it together, reformed the coinage, founded a dynasty that ruled for more than a century and appealed to the West for help — the appeal that set off the First Crusade.

Date
4 April 1081 – 15 August 1118exact date · duration: ≈ 37 yearsDate in the Julian calendar
Place
Constantinopletoday: Istanbul, Turkey · Balkans and Anatolia
Participants
Alexios I Komnenos, Byzantine Empire
Threads
Balkans and Anatolia (11th–12th c.)
Also known as
Komnenian restoration; Комниновское возрождение; Hyperpyron; Иперпир; Alexiad; Алексиада

Alexios, a nephew of Isaac I Komnenos, had made his name fighting rebels for Michael VII and Nikephoros III. In February 1081 he and his brother Isaac fled the capital and won over the army assembling against the Normans; on 1 April their troops entered Constantinople through a gate held by bribed German mercenaries, and on 4 April Alexios was proclaimed emperor. His mother, Anna Dalassene, governed as regent during his long campaigns.

The first decade was a struggle for survival. Robert Guiscard's Normans defeated Alexios at Dyrrhachium in October 1081; he paid for Venetian naval help with sweeping trade privileges, bought an alliance with Henry IV and confiscated church treasure to pay his troops, and by 1085 the Normans had been driven out. Pecheneg invasions, joined by the emir Tzachas of Smyrna, brought the empire to the brink until Cuman allies helped Alexios annihilate the Pechenegs at Levounion in 1091. In 1092 he replaced the debased gold coinage with a new coin, the hyperpyron, and had his young son John crowned co-emperor. His envoys' appeal to Pope Urban II at Piacenza in 1095 brought the armies of the First Crusade to Constantinople; Alexios made their leaders swear to return former imperial lands, recovered Nicaea and much of western Asia Minor, but quarrelled with Bohemond over Antioch and defeated his invasion of 1107–1108. Alexios died on 15 August 1118; his reign is known above all from the Alexiad, the history written by his daughter Anna Komnene.

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  • First Crusade1096 – 12 August 1099 · Western and Central EuropeAlexios made the crusade leaders swear to return former imperial lands and recovered much of western Asia Minor in their wake

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The same period

11th century

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): Alexios I Komnenos
  2. Wikipedia (English): Komnenian restoration
  3. Wikipedia (English): Alexiad
  4. Wikipedia (Russian): Алексей I Комнин
  5. Anna Komnene. The Alexiad / tr. E. R. A. Sewter, rev. P. Frankopan. — London: Penguin, 2009.
  6. Angold M. The Byzantine Empire, 1025–1204: A Political History. — London: Longman, 1984.