ARMENIAN - Erevangala500

Seljuks, Mongol Invaders and Ottomans
Emperor Romanus IV Diogenus (1068-71) was a skillful
and circumspect general. He was left with the task of trying
to cover the mistakes that the "Bulgar-slayer" and
"Monomachus" Constantine had made in their frenzy of
excessive expansionism . . . and he failed.
The people living in the eastern part of the Byzantine
Empire were tired o f endless taxation and loathsome religious
pressure. They greeted the Turkish Seljuks as a
lesser evil, if not as liberators.
Near Mantzikert (Malazgirt), only a few hours march
north of Lake Van, the deciding battle between Seljuks
and Byzantines was fought. It ended in a total defeat for
Romanus Diogenus, who was the first Byzantine emperor
ever to be taken prisoner.
The chivalrous victor, Alp Arslan, made a treaty with
Romanus IV Diogenus, but as soon as he was back in
Constantinople, the emperor met with a typical fate of the
kind that have made Byzantine politics proverbial. The
traitorous opposition burned his eyes out with hot irons,
in spite of written quarantees that had been countersigned
by the church.
"It was only this monstrous postlude that turned the defeat
of Mantzikert into a true catastrophe," writes Georg
Ostrogorsky, because this made the treaty between Alp
Arslan and the emperor Romanus IV null and void.
The way was now open for the Turkish Seljuks. Just two
years later, Konia (central Anatolia) was the capial of the
Seljuk Empire of Rum. Armenian traders and craftsmen,
known for their fine talents, were already following their
new rulers - and enjoying an unprecedented religious and
social freedom.
Two generations later, the devestating Mongol invasion
brought the blossoming Seljuk Empire of Rum to an
abrupt end. In 1236, it was the Mongols who laid waste
to flourishing Ani, not the Turkish Seljuks, who suffered
just as much under the Mongol invasion as all the other
peoples of eastern and central Anatolia. In an "official
publication" of the "Catholicosate of Cili-tia", published
in Lebanon, the following passage appears: "In 1065,
when the Armenian kingdom fell simultaneously with the
destruction o f its capital, Ani, by the Seljuks . . .". It is no
wonder then that countless Armenians who read the publications
of their churches in good faith do not know the
truth about the fall o f the last semi-independent
Armenian principalities in eastern Anatolia, which took
place decades before the arrival o f the Seljuks.
Photo at top: View o f the Ottoman fortress of Hoshap-Giizelsu,
which served as a border fortification against the Persians in the
East.
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