Patterns of Turkish Migration and Expansion in Byzantine Asia Minor in the 11th and 12th Centuries

Abstract

Beihammer The historical evolution of medieval Anatolia in the centuries between the decay of Byzantine rule and the Ottoman conquest is closely linked with intricate processes of migration, cross-cultural encounter, and ethnic change. The area in question includes what the Byzantines with a very generic terms used to la-bel ἑῴα or ἡ ἀνατολή, i.e., “the East”.1 After various expansionist stages that culminated in the reign of Basil (976–1025) the empire’s eastern provinces stretched from the western coastland of Asia Minor as far as northern Syria, the Upper Euphrates region, and the Armenian highlands. first, the political, cultural, and ethnic transformation of this area began as a fortuitous side effect of the rise of the Great Seljuk Empire in the central lands Islam. A ruling claiming from a common ancestor called Seljuk and super-ficially nomadic warriors, who drew their origin from Oghuz in lands of Transoxania, formed the driving force of this new empire. In the 1040s, Turkmen hosts made their first raids into the region south of the Anti-Taurus range and invaded the Armenian highlands between the Araxes (Aras) and the Arsanias (Murat) Rivers. Soon it turned out that the Taurus Mountains, which for centuries had formed a natu-ral barrier between Christian-Roman and Muslim territories, had become salient patterns of from the