Battle of Manzikert

"Manzikert" redirects here. For the town in Turkey where the battle was fought, see Malazgirt.

Battle of Manzikert
Part of the Byzantine–Seljuk wars

15th-century French miniature depicting the combatants in contemporary Western European armour
Date26 August 1071
Location
Near Manzikert, Theme of Iberia[1][2]/Byzantine Armenia[3][4]
(present-day Malazgirt, Turkey)
39°08′41″N 42°32′21″E / 39.14472°N 42.53917°E / 39.14472; 42.53917
Result Seljuk victory
Territorial
changes		 Beginning of Turkic rule over Anatolia, accompanied with immigration, gradual Islamization, Turkification and Persianization under the later Sultanate of Rûm.
Belligerents

Byzantine Empire

  • Byzantine regular (tagmata) and provincial (thematic) troops.
  • Feudal levies of frontier land owners.
  • Frankish, English, Norman, Georgian, Armenian, Bulgarian, Turkic Pecheneg & Uz mercenaries

Seljuk Empire

Commanders and leaders
Romanos IV (POW)
Nikephoros Bryennios
Theodore Alyates
Andronikos Doukas		 Alp Arslan
Afshin Bey
Artuk Bey
Suleiman ibn Qutalmish
Strength
c. 40,000[5]
(Close to half deserted before battle. Turkic mercenaries defected to the Seljuk side.)
200,000 (according to Turkish and Arabic sources)[6]		 35,000[7]–50,000[6]
Casualties and losses
2,000[5]–8,000 killed[7]
4,000 captured[5]
20,000 deserted[8]		 Unknown

The Battle of Manzikert or Malazgirt was fought between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Empire on 26 August 1071[9] near Manzikert, theme of Iberia (modern Malazgirt in Muş Province, Turkey). The decisive defeat of the Byzantine army and the capture of the Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes[10] played an important role in undermining Byzantine authority in Anatolia and Armenia,[11] and allowed for the gradual Turkification of Anatolia. Many Turks, travelling westward during the 11th century, saw the victory at Manzikert as an entrance to Asia Minor.[12]

The brunt of the battle was borne by the Byzantine army's professional soldiers from the eastern and western tagmata, as large numbers of mercenaries and Anatolian levies fled early and survived the battle.[13] The fallout from Manzikert was disastrous for the Byzantines, resulting in civil conflicts and an economic crisis that severely weakened the Byzantine Empire's ability to defend its borders adequately.[14] This led to the mass movement of Turks into central Anatolia – by 1080, an area of 78,000 square kilometres (30,000 sq mi) had been gained by the Seljuk Turks. It took three decades of internal strife before Alexius I (1081 to 1118) restored stability to Byzantium. Historian Thomas Asbridge says: "In 1071, the Seljuqs crushed an imperial army at the Battle of Manzikert (in eastern Asia Minor), and though historians no longer consider this to have been an utterly cataclysmic reversal for the Greeks, it still was a stinging setback."[15] It was the only time a Byzantine emperor became the prisoner of a Muslim commander, and the first time since Valerian that a Roman emperor was captured alive by an enemy force.


Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ Nesbitt, John and Eric McGeer. Catalogue of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art. 1st ed. Washington, D.C.: N.p., 2001. Print.
  2. ^ Church, Kenneth. From Dynastic Principality to Imperial District. 1st ed. 2001. Print.
  3. ^ The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 6 (Cambridge: University Press, 198), p. 791: "In 1071, five years after Hastings, the Byzantine army, the oldest and best trained military force in Europe, was destroyed in battle with the Seljuk Turks at Manzikert in Kurdistan."
  4. ^ Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: University Press, 1987), pp. 62–63: "With this large but untrustworthy army, Romanus set out in the spring of 1071 to reconquer Armenia. As he was leaving the capital the news came through from Italy that Bary, the last Byzantine possession in the peninsula, had fallen to the Normans. The chroniclers tell in tragic detail of the Emperor's march eastward along the great Byzantine military road. His intention was to capture and garrison the Armenian fortresses before the Turkish army should come up from the south. Alp Arslan was in Syria, near Aleppo, when he heard of the Byzantine advance. He realized how vital was the challenge; and he hurried northward to meet the Emperor. Romanus entered Armenia along the southern branch of the upper Euphrates. Near Manzikert he divided his forces."
  5. ^ a b c Haldon 2001, p. 180.
  6. ^ a b Sevım 2003, p. 481; Hillenbrand 2007, p. 213.
  7. ^ a b Markham, Paul. "Battle of Manzikert: Military Disaster or Political Failure?".
  8. ^ Haldon 2001, p. 173
  9. ^ Norwich 1991, pp. 350–351, citing Friendly 1981
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference Grant77 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Holt, Peter Malcolm; Lambton, Ann Katharine Swynford & Lewis, Bernard (1977). The Cambridge History of Islam. pp. 231–232.
  12. ^ Barber, Malcolm. The Crusader States Yale University Press. 2012. ISBN 978-0-300-11312-9. p. 9
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference Norwich240 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ Norwich, John Julius (1997). A Short History of Byzantium. New York: Vintage Books. p. 241. ISBN 0-679-45088-2.
  15. ^ Thomas S. Asbridge The Crusades (2010) p. 27 [ISBN missing]