Manzikert and Myriokephalon: The History of the Battles for Anatolia between the Byzantines and Seljuks

In the late 11th century, Anatolia was still mostly controlled by the Byzantine Empire. A large force of Turkish tribesmen, having descended from Central Asia, conquered Persia and faced the army of the Byzantines. The ensuing fighting still stirs up powerful emotions in the national psyche, not only in Turkey but amongst Armenians, Greeks, and other ethnicities in the region, as the Byzantine losses at Manzikert and Myriokephalon are now regarded with hindsight as marking the end of Christian hegemony in Asia Minor and the beginning of the rise of Islam as a rival to Christianity.

The most notable invaders were the the Turkish-speaking Seljuks, led through a series of battles by Kutalmishouglu Suleiman, who supported different usurpers against the Byzantine emperor. The expansion of the Seljuks was so successful that when Suleiman died, he had put all of Bithynia under his control as well as several important harbor towns along the shores on the Asian side of Bosphorus. With that accomplishment, he had managed to separate the Byzantines living in Anatolia from their emperor in Constantinople. This immediately weakened the unity of the Byzantine Empire. 

When another invading Muslim army took control of what is now Syria, Israel, and Northern Africa, the dismembered Byzantine Empire lost significant portions of land, but that allowed it to grow into a smaller and stronger unity. It took a lot of power struggles and battles on many fronts for the empire to recapture some of the lands, but gradually the Byzantine Empire lost all influence in Anatolia. By the end of the 11th century, the Hellenic culture and Greek language were replaced by Islam and Turkish.

Of all the conflicts that brought this state of affairs into being, perhaps none were as instrumental as the Battle of Manzikert, a fact noted by Turkey’s current leader.