Byzantine conventions and paints more sculpturally solid, almost perspectivised, figures. One might call it, Whiggishly, a ‘pre-Renaissance’ style.
GO HERE for a detailed photograph in high resolution: http://www.wga.hu/art/c/cavallin/lastjudg/last_j_8.jpg
1291-99:
The East: The civil war in the llkhanid (Mongol-Persian) Empire (1291-1295) and a series of rebellions on the part of several Mongol military governors in Anatolia (Tughachar and Baltu in 1297; Sulemish in 1298-99) with the ensuing repressions resulted in the immigration of more Turcomans and, now, of certain Mongol tribes as well, putting further pressure on the Byzantine frontier. —Inalcik 1980.
Latins Closing the Gap with Byzantium
“The rebirth of the state [in the West] and, thereby, of its tributary
domination, observable in [western] Europe since the thirteenth century, had the effect of bringing about the establishment of detailed fiscal
registers, first of all in the large Italian communes. The oldest surviving fiscal cadasters, such as the great cadaster of Orvieto of 1292, have been analyzed with the help of the computer. The analysis shows clearly that they, like the equivalent Byzantine documents, followed principles of
bureaucratic formalization that, in themselves, were responses to the needs of the state and to social conditions”: Toubert in Laiou ed., 2002: 388. Stoned in Tunis
Preaching to the unconvertible: About 1291, but some say 1285, the Catalan* (Majorcan-born) royal official, monk and writer Ramon Lull or Llull - he is known to us mainly as an author - went to Tunis, preached to the Muslims or ‘Saracens’, disputed with them in philosophy, and after another brief sojourn in Paris, returned to the East as a Christian missionary.
Others place this in 1293. Deciding on an overseas mission, Llull enlisted the support of James II of Aragon, who recommended him to King Abu Hafs Omar I of Tunis, where Llull arrived in mid-1293. Adopting a common Dominican tactic, Llull challenged local Islamic scholars to a debate on the relative truth of their faiths, which led to his speedy banishment from Tunis and return to Naples.
(*) At this time Catalonia was part of the kingdom of Aragon, which ruled the NE quarter of our Spain, and also the Balearics including Majorca. Lull was in Tunis again in 1304. After undergoing many hardships and privations, he returned to Europe in 1311 for the purpose of laying before the Council of Vienna his plans for the conversion of the ‘Moors’ to Christianity. Again in 1314 or 1315, now an old man of 82, he set out for Tunis—the Hafsid caliphate of Tunis: cf above 1270—where he was stoned nearly to death by the Saracens. Evacuated to Majorca, he died soon thereafter (1316) from the effects of the stoning.
Lower Greece: The Chronicle of Morea covers the period 1202-1292 in the Peloponnese: English trans. H.E. Lurier, Crusaders as Conquerors: The Chronicle of Morea, New York: Columbia UP, 1964.
1293:
SW Asia Minor: The Turks applied a policy of extracting tribute from the Byzantine towns and the countryside which they controlled but had not yet
conquered. In about 1293 the Turks of the Maiandros - the Upper Meander Valley - imposed a tribute upon Miletos, the Greek town near the mouth of the
Meander. See next. 1293-95:
Asia: In 1293 Alexios Doukas Philanthropenos, a soldier with much experience (but also with Arsenite* connections), was sent by Andronicus to the south to secure the lower Maeander Valley. Philanthropenos advanced into the emirate of Menteshe and his troops recaptured the fortress of Melanoudion (north of
Miletos).
Philanthropenus successfully protected Miletus from Turkish bands, securing booty in gold, silver, sheep- and donkey-skins. His accomplishments, and his generosity to his enemies in victory, won over some Turks, who formed a
separate corps among his men. His soldiers, and the populace he was protecting, rose in revolt against Constantinople in 1294 (or in 1296) under his banner: to the Greek farmers he represented a blow against high taxes, and to the nomad Turks (in Lindner’s view) he was a successful (tribal?) chief. Hopwood,
“Frontiers’ p.159, sees this as an attempt to set up a separatist state in the uç (marchlands).
Andronicus and his advisors had to rely on bribery and deceit to put down the revolt and, in late 1295, to imprison and blind its leader ( - thus Lindner).
(*) From Arsenios Autoreianos, Patriarch of Constantinople (1254-59 and 1261- 65). A supporter of the rights of the Laskarids and a defender of the observation of the rules of the Church. He was deposed by Michael VIII Palaiologos. His followers, the ‘Arsenites’, broke away from the official Church, causing what became known as the Arsenite schism, which ended in 1310 when a compromise was negotiated with the Church, during the reign of Andronikos II.
1294:
1. SW Asia Minor: As noted, Andronicus' nephew Alexius Philanthropenos
campaigns against the Turks in Asia Minor and briefly recaptures Miletus (in the far SW: Milet, near Aydin). He enlisted defeated Turks and Greek refugees from Crete to build up his army and scored what Bartusis calls a “dazzling” series of victories in 1294-95 (Bartusis, LBA p.74). His soldiers proclaim Philanthropenos emperor (1295), but his officers are soon bribed into seizing and blinding him. Cf 1295, 1296.
Alexios Philanthropenos Tarchanaiotes was placed in command of Nymphaion and Lydia during the Turkish campaign ordered by Emperor Andronikos II in the early 1290s. He advanced into the emirate of Menteshe and recaptured
Melanoudion, the fortress in the Meander Valley inland from (north of) Miletos. An island monastery abandoned by its monks before 1295 served as residence of the widow of the emir of Menteshe. Alexis Philanthropenos besieged and took over this island, and appropriated the riches. —Ragia 2007.
2. Lower Greece: Philip of Anjou, Prince of Taranto, is named by his father, Charles of Naples, as putative suzerain of all the Angevin possessions in the Balkans, from Albania to Athens, and is invested with the presumptive title ‘Despot of Romania’ (meaning in this context present-day Greece).
Philip marries (1294) Thamar Angela Komnene Dukaina, “Lady of Bonditza and Lepanto”, the daughter of Nikephoros I Komnenos Doukas, despot of Epirus and Anna Kantakuzene. With this marriage, Philip becomes leader of the
Aetholian league and Prince of Corfu. He also buys the title and much of the possessions of the Despotate of Epirus.
1294: (1) Death of the Mongol (Yuan) emperor of China, Khubilai Khan. (2) The Venetians build the first of the so-called ‘great galleys’ – armed cargo-galleys that were longer, deeper and broader and so more suited to transporting goods: hull about eight m wide; length 53 m – about twice as wide and 30% longer than before (Casson, in Gardiner 2004: 123, 125). See next.
1294-98:
Venice vs Genoa in the Adriatic, Marmara and Black Seas.
At Laiazzo, on the coast of Armenia, the Genoese were victorious (1294). The Venetians retaliated by destroying the Genoese quarter of Galata, the region or suburb opposite Constantinople on the north (1296). Then in 1298 Lamba Doria, an early representative of the Doria family, famous in the annals of Genoa, totally destroyed a Venetian fleet of 95 galleys near the island of Curzola or Korcula, an island off the (Venetian-ruled) Dalmatian coast. —Kleinheinz Med Ital 2004, I: 307; Cath. Encyc., under ‘Genoa’, at www.newadvent.org/cathen/06419a.htm.
Above: Icon of St Mercurius, 1295.
The nature of his armour is obscure: perhaps lamellar at the neck and a
corselet with mail underlay? His sword/sabre looks about 70 cm long (around 2 ft 4 in).
1295:
1. Asia: Following the capture and blinding of Alexius Philanthropenos, Turks re- invade and again seize the Meander Valley in east-central Asia Minor. The region was by 1300 divided between the emirs of Aydin (north), and Menteshe (south). Interestingly, the Aydin-oglu were Shi’ites (Moosa 1987: 446).
Cf 1296, 1299 and see 1302.
2. Andronicus’s son Michael Palaiologos, aged 18, is made junior emperor of Byzantium, and marries Rita (aged 17; d. 1333), dau. of King Leo III of Cilician Armenia. - Cilicia was a small Christian state lodged between the Anatolian Turks, their overlords the Il-Khans (the Mongols of Persia) and the Egyptians (Mamelukes).
Italian fleets
“The Venetians, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, never put to sea a fleet as large as the great Genoese fleet of 1295 with its 165 galleys and some 35,000 men [av. 212 per vesel], but still fleets of 40 to 50 galleys were common and, allowing a conservative estimate of 200 men on each galley, that would give 8,000 to 10,000 men for a major battle fleet.” —Dotson 2001. Cf below: 1296.
Genoese and Venetian naval forces were smaller in the next century: e.g. a fleet of 35 galleys dispatched by Venice in 1350, soon after the Black Death: battle of the Bosphorus vs the Genoese under Doria.
1290s:
Iran: Under Ghazan (Mahmud), the Mongol Ilkhan rulers of Persia convert from Buddhism to Islam.
1296:
1. Asia: Andronicus again marched forth for the east in late May 1296. After a series of earthquakes (1 June - 17 July), however, which he interpreted as an admonitory omen, he gave up the campaign (Lindner, ‘Nomads and Ottomans’). 2. A Venetian fleet of 75 ships rows into the Sea of Marmara and attacks and burns the Genoese colony at Galata and part of Constantinople itself. First of a series of naval battles fought off Constantinople between the Venetians and the Genoese, Byzantium's suppliers and protectors.
The Genoese retaliated later in the year, attacking the Venetian quarter in Constantinople (Norwich, Decline p.262).
When the Venetian-Byzantine war broke out in 1296, Venice openly encouraged its most prosperous subjects to arm their own galleys and move independently around the Aegean. The Imperial navy had been
disbanded, and so Andronicus could not prevent the Venetians from occupying various Aegean islands. Although Genoa and Venice made peace in 1299, a state of hostilities continued between Byzantium and Venice until 1302 (Mahaira-Odoni, 2007). Cf 1298.
3. fl. Maximus Planudes [aged about 36], scholar and man of letters, born in Nicomedia. Imperial secretary and abbot. Teacher and polymath, he was one of the first Byzantines to have a thorough acquaintance with Latin.
“Arabic” numerals and the zero, originally borrowed from India, were
introduced into Byzantium from Persia by Maximus Planudes in about AD 1300. He also edited the newest version of the ‘Greek Anthology’, a collection of ancient and later lyrics and epigrams.
Sent to Venice as ambassador in 1327, “he taught [many] 14th century Italian humanists, [and] was a pioneer in bridging the intellectual gap between East and West ...” (Dudley & Lang, p.205). See also under 1310.
4. (or 1295/96:) The Cilician Armenian king Hethum and his brother Thoros went to Constantinople to see their sister Rita marry the Caesar [junior emperor] Michael IX Palaeologus.
By 1296:
SW Asia Minor: The Menteshe family, Turkish "ghazi" lords, controlled inland Caria = further decay of Seljuk and Byzantine rule.
After repulsing a Byzantine attack under Alexius Philanthropenus in 1295 (see there), Mentese's son Mesud occupied part of the island of Rhodes in 1300. - Encyc. Britannica 15th ed. ( = ‘EB 15’) under ‘Menteshe’.
After 1300 western Asia Minor will be divided between as many as nine beyliks or "ghazi emirates". The four western-most beyliks were those of: 1. the Ottomans: at first at Sogut near Eskisehir; later at Bursa; 2. Sarukhan: at Manisa/Magnesia from 1313; 3. Aydin: at Birgi; and 4. Menteshe: later at Peçin Kale near
Milas/Mylasa. Cf 1299, 1300, 1302, 1304, 1305, 1308, etc.
1296-1316: Ala-ud-din Khilji (a Pashtun, born Ali Gurshap), ruler of the Turko-Afghan Khilji dynasty in northern India (”Sultanate of Delhi”). Mongol incursions from Central Asia were defeated in 1297 and 1299. McEvedy & Jones’s (1978) guesstimate for the population of the Indian subcontinent in 1300 is 90 million. Thus the Khilji empire, which extended from our N Pakistan south to Gujurat and east across N India to present- day Bangladesh, may have contained some 60 M people . . . compared with ‘only’ 80 M in all of Europe and, after a century of almost non-stop warfare, 85 M in China Proper [the eastern 2/3 of the modern Republic], the latter down from perhaps 110 M around 1200.
1297, Scotland: Scottish victory over the English at Stirling Bridge. Some 2,300 Scots under Andrew de Moray and William Wallace defeated perhaps 9,000 English and Welsh led by the Earl of Surrey, John de Warenne. A contemporary said that English losses in the battle were 100 cavalry and 5,000 infantry killed.
1297-1300:
The emperor’s cousin John Tarchaneiotes was governor of SW Asia Minor from 1297 or 1298. He was a skilful general with good administrative abilities, and temporarily improved the position of the Byzantines in the area. But he was blamed for planning a conspiracy against the emperor and was forced to leave Asia Minor in 1299/1300.
— General John Tarchaneiotes went south, and in another attempt to rebuild the local armed forces, equalised the size of soldiers' holdings so that all could afford to serve. Unwilling donors among the larger pronoiars and the bishop of
Philadelphia (present-day Alasehir) turned against him and secured his recall in the summer of 1299 or in 1300. —Rudi Lindner, in his Nomads and Ottomans, Bloomington, 1983.
1297-1330:
The tiny so-called ‘empire’ of Trebizond reached its greatest wealth and influence during the long reign of Alexios II (1297–1330).
Above: Anatolia and the Black Sea in about 1300. Karvuna, NE of Bulgaria proper, did not in fact become a separate Bulgarian principality until about 1320.
1298:
1. Outer Macedonia: Annoyed by the guerilla attacks of the Serbs, Andronikos sent an army to Macedonia under his nephew Michael Tarchaneiotes Glabas, the megas konostaulos or ‘great constable’ - commander of the knights. But the general quickly saw that his regular troops could not easily deal with guerillas, and he persuaded the emperor to deploy diplomacy (LBA p.73): see 1299, Metochites’s embassy to Milutin.
2. The emperor's cousin John begins rebuilding a native Byzantine army in Asia Minor. By 1301 it is clear, however, that the experiment is not successful, the new troops being judged of poor quality. Cf 1301, 1302.
Bartusis proposes that by this time there were probably more pronoiars (soldiers drawing their income from farm taxes) - say 3,000? - than mercenaries (soldiers paid from the imperial treasury) in the central army: say 2,000? (LBA p.35).
3. Italy: A Genoese fleet enters the Adriatic and defeats the Venetian navy. Among the captured Venetians was one Marco Polo.
In a fleet action near Curzola/Korcula in 1298 a Genoese fleet of 78 ships heavily defeated a Venetian one of 98. However, the Genoese admiral Lamba Doria also suffered such heavy losses in the battle that he did not press on to the lagoons of Venice.
Scotland 1298: English victory at Falkirk: The first major battle to be decided by the longbow . Some 6-12,000 Scots under Wallace were defeated by 15-18,000 English.
1298-99: Italy: Marco Polo dictates his Description of China.
“Contemporaries [in Europe] were reluctant to believe him … Who can blame them when Venice, [western] Europe’s largest city had a population of 160,000 while China’s, Hangchow, had [perhaps] a population of six million?” (Adshead p.110, citing Elvin’s Pattern of the Chinese Past, 1973). The Hazards of Overland Travel
After the recapture of Constantinople by the Byzantines in 1261, the eastern part of the Via Egnatia became once more the main axis for communications with Thessaloniki, although poor weather conditions were often an impediment to travel: in November 1298, for example, there was so much snow on the road from Selymbria [just west of Constantinople] to Thessaloniki that the journey took Andronikos II more than a month. (In summer travel by ship would be preferred.) —Avramea 2002.
Tsar Chaka was tsar of Bulgaria from 1298-1300. He was the son of the Mongol leader Nogai Khan and his Byzantine Greek wife, Euphrosyne, the daughter of the late Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus. He was installed on the Bulgarian throne by his brother-in-law Theodore Svetoslav.
Chaka had led his supporters into Bulgaria, intimidated the regency for Ivan II into fleeing the capital, and imposed himself, or was imposed, as ruler in
Turnovo in 1299. It is not completely certain whether he reigned as Emperor of Bulgaria or simply acted as overlord for Theodore Svetoslav.
1298-1301:
Anatolia: acc. of the last Seljuq ruler, Mesud II, 1298.
His reign saw revolts by Seljuk and Mongol generals against the Mongol
overlordship exercised from Persia. In the west, the Turcoman frontier chiefs felt secure from Mongol intervention, and so they were able to intensify their raids into the Byzantine lands. The raids extended from the lower Sakarya valley in the NW to Ephesus in the SW (Inalcik, “Siege” p.82).
The expansion of the Turcoman tribes toward the lower Sangarius (Sakarya) River and their relentless raids into the Byzantine province of Mesothynion (the peninsula of Nicomedia) were recorded by the contemporary historian
Pachymeres. He traced this back to the disorders which took place in the Paphlagonian frontier area between the Sangarius River and Kastamoni. — Inalcik 1980.
Hoping to interest the Mongol (Persian) Il-khan, and to persuade him to bring the Turcomans into line, Byzantium arranged for Maria, illegitimate sister of Andronicus II, to marry Ghazan Khan (died 1304). But the Mongols were unable or unwilling to deliver on the deal.
By 1299:
Central Asia Minor: At this time, the strongest of the several Turkish
principalities (the "ghazi" emirates) was the beylik (lordship) of the Germiyan- Oghullari at Kütahya, which controlled most of classical Phrygia [inland west- central Asia Minor]. An inscription has Ya’qub ruling a large region SW and NE of Kütahya, namely: from Ankara in the NE to Gumushar, Sivriköy, Simav/Simay and Kula [near Philadelphia] to the SE and as far as Tripolis on the far upper Meander [NE of Denizli, near modern Yenicekent]. Afyon (SE of Kütahya), Denizli itself (Ladik) and Aydin in the lower Meander valley were held by his relatives or vassals (Freely 2008: 112; also map in Nicolle 2008: 33; but Freely also says, p.139, that Kutahya was not taken by the Germiyanids until 1302). Cf 1304: Ephesus under threat.
Byzantium paid tribute (money) to Ya'qub I (“Ali Shir”), 1299-1327. The Ottomans at Sogut (see next) were less powerful. See 1304.
1299:
Embassy to Serbia led by Metochites. His ‘caravan’, as Vanni 2007: 12 imagines it, travelled first to Byzantine Thessalonica and thence by the inland road NNW to Serbian-ruled Skopje.
So imbued were the Serbs with the imperial ideology of Byzantium that King Milutin’s court panegyrist, the future archbishop Danilo II, referred to the
basileus of Constantinople as “the universal emperor of New Rome”; and a pupil of Danilo described him in the same vein as “the orthodox universal emperor, the Lord Andronicus” (Obolenksy p.327).
Byzantium/Rhomaniya recognised Milutin's conquests in Macedonia. Milutin came to Thessaloniki, wehere he marries (Easter 1299) the emperor's five-years old daughter, Simonis.
Simonis, the daughter of Emperor Andronikos II, was married at age five to the middle-aged ruler of Serbia: aged about 40. He injured her by premature sexual intercourse so that she was rendered incapable of childbearing (!!)
http://www.geocities.com/timessquare/labyrinth/2398/bginfo/social/women.ht ml; also in Nicol’s The Byzantine Lady, 1996: 52.
2. NW Asia Minor: The Turks under Osman captured the Byzantine fortress of Bilecik, known to the Byzantines as Belikoma or Belokoma, SE of Nicaea. Bilecik, 30 km NW of Sogut, was just 40 km from Byzantine Nicaea and 75 km from Bursa. (Some place this 10 years earlier: in 1289.)
The Turkish Ministry of Culture states that it was in “1298” that Osman’s men captured the forts of Bilecik, Yarhisar, and Inegöl, and this involved the
presentation of Nilüfer Hatun, a Greek woman captured during the action, to Osman Gazi to become his wife. – Turkish Ministry of Culture, ‘Chronology’, at
www.turizm.gov.tr/en/belgegoster; accessed 2008.
Freely 2008: 104, citing Pachymeres, dates the Turkish capture of Bilecik to after 1302.
Acknowledging this feat, the ex-ruler of Rum (Konya), Alaeddin Keykubat - the still deposed Ala ad-Din Kay Qubadh III: he will return to the throne 1301-1303 - sent him "a horsetail, a standard and a drum" as the insignia of sovereignty in 699 A.H. (1299 AD). Others say in 1295 and that the sultan who sent the insignia was Giyaseddin Mes'ud.* Thereupon, Osman minted coins and had the Friday prayers recited in his name alone. Cf 1300-26: raids in the direction of
Nicomedia. —Korkut Ozgen, ‘Osman’, at
www.theottomans.org/english/family/osman; accessed 2009. Also Encyc. Brit.
1911 edn under ‘Turkey’
(*) Ruling in Kayseri, the formal sultan was Ghiyath ad-Din Mesud or Mas'ud II, last of the Seljuk sultans of Rum. Both he and Kay Qubadh were puppets of the