The Turco-Mongol Invasions and the Lords of Armenia in the 13 ...

differentiation it remains true, nonetheless, that
whether a detachment of Xurkmens pillaged a given locale
under orders from the sultan, or in defiance of those
orders, the results ordinarily were the same. Certainly
such fine points of distinction were lost on the victims
themselves who were killed or raped and led away into
slavery. Even if the obviously inflated figures of
contemporary eye-witnesses are halved, even if quartered,
the extent of the damage occasioned by the Saljuqs during
the period of the conquest was and is dizzying .
Turning now to some of the consequences of the
Saljuq invasions and domination vis-a-vis the Armenians,
a number of tendencies are observable. For the most part
the Saljuqs acted as catalysts on phenomena which predated
their arrival. One striking example of this is the dem-
ographic change observable in central Asia Minor (Cappadocia),
northern Mesopotamia and Syria. In the early 11th century,
the Byzantine government had followed a policy of removing
powerful Armenian lords (naxarars) and their dependents
from their native Armenian habitats and settling them to
1
PP. 155-63. Also pp. 166-67, which contain a listing
of towns, villages and provinces destroyed, pillaged,
enslaved, massacred or beseiged.
71