Empire of Trebizond: Encyclopedia II - Empire of Trebizond - Foundation

Empire of Trebizond - Foundation

When Constantinople fell to the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Empire of Trebizond was one of the three smaller Greek states that emerged from the wreckage, along with the Empire of Nicaea and the Despotate of Epirus. Alexius, a grandson of Byzantine emperor Andronicus I Comnenus and a descendant of King David the Builder of Georgia through his great grandmother Katay (daughter of David the Builder), made Trebizond his capital and asserted a claim to be the legitimate successor of the Byzantine Empire.

The Emperor Andronicus was deposed and killed in 1185. His son Manuel Comnenus was blinded and died of his injuries. The sources agree that Rusudan, the wife of Manuel and the mother of Alexius and David, fled Constantinople with her children, to escape persecution by Isaac II Angelus, Andronicus' successor. It is unclear whether Rusudan fled to Georgia or to the southern coast of the Black Sea where the Comnenus family had its origins. There is some evidence that the Comnenian heirs had set up a semi-independent state centred on Trebizond before 1204.

The rulers of Trebizond used the titles Grand Comnenus, (Megas Komnenos) and Emperor until its end in 1461. The state is sometimes called the Comnenian empire because the ruling dynasty descended from Alexius I Comnenus.

Trebizond initially controlled a contiguous area on the southern Black Sea coast between Soterioupolis and Sinope, comprising the modern Turkish provinces of Sinop, Ordu, Giresun, Trabzon, Bayburt, Gumushane, Rise and Artvin. In the thirteenth century, the empire controlled Perateia which included Cherson and Kerch on the Crimean peninsula. David Comnenus expanded rapidly to the west, occupying first Sinope, then Paphlagonia and Heraclea Pontica until his territory bordered the Empire of Nicaea founded by Theodore I Lascaris. The territories west of Sinope were lost to the Empire of Nicaea by 1206. Sinope itself fell to the Seljuks in 1214.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Foundation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki