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With war in Hungary now successfully concluded, it might be thought that the hitherto naturally peaceable John Komnenos would have been eager to give up his time on the battlefield and spend the rest of his reign[2] in peace at the palace. Not a bit of it. Rather, the war in Hungary had convinced the Emperor that divine favour was on his side. Accordingly, in 1165 we find him leading an invasion of Syunik, that could have come very close to success were it not for the death in battle of John’s elder son and co-Emperor George, which brought the whole campaign to a drastic halt. The wily Armenian prince Smbat had, not for the first time, had a lucky escape.

George was buried at the Church of the Holy Apostles late in the year, amidst much mourning- the Emperor’s son genuinely popular with both the army and the urban mob of Constantinople. Still, he had not died childless and his own small son Michael was soon associated on the throne alongside his grandfather[3]. Once the period of mourning was over, John left again, heading now for Cilicia, where Turkish raids were once again reaching fever pitch.

The explanation for this sudden upsurge in activity came from some way to the south of the imperial frontier. It was not only in Hungary that the year 1159 had brought dynastic problems. In Jerusalem, the Salghurid Atabeg Ibrahim Mesud had passed away, leaving a behind him a savage struggle for power between his young son Zülkarneyn and the state’s chief Wazir[4], an influential and enterprising man named Kürboğa who claimed a distant membership of the broader Salghurid clan. Kürboğa had initially done well, seizing power and fortifying several key locations, but had been forced into retreat two years later by the intervention of a Fatimid Egyptian force, which had returned Zülkarneyn to power. Undaunted, Kürboğa had headed north and stirred up trouble on the ever war-torn Christian frontier, hoping to gain there men and money to regain power. This he had succeeded in doing magnificently, holding a string of towns to ransom and exacting tribute from the ever-present Smbat of Syunik, who had hoped to use the Turks to deflect imperial attention from his own principality. As it turned out, the death of George Komnenos meant that Smbat’s money was wasted from the Armenian’s point of view- but Kürboğa would be careful to put it to good use.

With his army now battle hardened and his coffers overflowing the Turkish general returned to Jerusalem late in 1165, deposing Zülkarneyn for the second time. Once again, the playboy Salghurid prince fled to the Egyptian frontier for aid, but he was pursued by Kürboğa, unwilling to let his quarry slip from his grasp. In February 1166, a Fatimid army was destroyed by the Turks towards the eastern end of the Nile Delta, and by June, the last Fatimid Caliph had fled Cairo on a ship for Constantinople, only to be overwhelmed by a storm and killed before reaching port at Chandax[5] on Crete. Kürboğa, meanwhile, found himself more successful than in his wildest dreams. Jerusalem was his, to be sure, but even the Holy City paled in comparison with the powerhouse of the Mediterranean world which he now controlled[6].

This sudden rise of a new power in Egypt abruptly transformed the balance of power in the East. Previously the Fatimids had been relatively docile and peaceful allies of the Empire, interested mostly in fleecing their subjects and only occasionally indulging in bouts of warfare with Zülkarneyn’s Salghurid ancestors. Now, all of their vast wealth was able to exploited by a new and belligerent figure on the political scene- Kürboğa. The former Wazir now promoted his title to that of the much more imposing Sulṭān, as he felt befitted the man who had restored Egypt back to Sunni Orthodoxy from the Fatimid heretics. Alarmed at the perceived challenge to his authority,Maḥmūd of Baghdad[7] decided to send a large army under the command of one of his nephews westward, to slap down the man he saw as a mere uppity Atabeg. He had reckoned, though, without the intervention of the Atabeg of Harran, an ally of Kürboğa, who attacked the royal Saljūq army as it passed through his lands, causing the refugees to scatter westward into Roman occupied Cilicia. By the end of 1166, a general war had broken out across the Islamic world that would blaze for a generation.

The man most immediately threatened by all of this was the Ildenizid Atabeg of Damascus, who had made the mistake of supporting the deposed Zülkarneyn over Kürboğa, and indeed continued to harbour the former’s wife and infant sons. After a year of preparation, spent marshalling Egyptian resources and defeating a short-lived Christian revolt[8], Kürboğa marched north, routing a Damascene army in the Jawlān Heights[9] and settling down to besiege the great city itself. With the Saljūqs unable to response thanks to his support in Harran, the Salghurid Sultan felt he had little to fear. He had reckoned without the intervention of John II Komnenos.

For, as with Hungary in the previous decade, the Emperor (egged on by his most senior minister David Angelos[10]) had seen an opportunity in the chaos brought on by Kürboğa to remake the world around him, and to advance the cause of God’s peace. An alliance was signed with the panicky Damascenes and in 1168 the Emperor himself marched south along with Andreas Skleros and the newly promoted Strategos David Bringas[11]. The Egyptians were forced reluctantly to abandon a Damascus just days away from capitulation, in order to meet with the Christian threat as it approached. The luck of Kürboğa now seemed to abandon him, as his army was badly mauled and forced to retreat from the imperial army at the Battle of Emesa in January 1169[12].

If the Basileus had hoped for a quick and easy victory, though, he would be disappointed when Kurboga decided to call on the help of his oldest ally and that inevitable enemy of the Roman Empire Smbat of Syunik. Buoyed with Egyptian gold and encouraged by the loss of troops, Smbat took it upon himself to stir up trouble with the Armenian princes to his west who, unlike him, were caught under imperial sovereignty and lacked his freedom of action[13]. A revolt broke out just a few months after the triumph of Emesa, forcing John and his armies to move back north to quell the flames that were rapidly engulfing the eastern provinces. A savage war in the Cappadocian highlands was eventually won by the Emperor, but at a high cost- Caesarea was left a ruin, and other towns of the once prosperous province fared little better. By the time John could once more look south at the end of 1170, Damascus had fallen, and, far worse, the Egyptians had seized Laodicea[14] as a base to launch attacks on Antioch itself.

Fortune, though, never liked to smile on Kürboğa of Egypt for too long. Even as his armies began to set up camp around the walls of Antioch, a small army under the command of the dashing David Bringas had swept round behind them, and returned to southern Syria. Damascus, recently sacked by the Egyptians, was in no position to put up any resistance and Bringas entered the city peacefully, quickly making sure to force the exhausted populace to restore its fortifications[15]. The appearance of the imperial army in the nick of time spared Antioch from the sort of devastation that had befallen Cappadocia and Syria, and now, with the Saljūqs striking hard against the Atabeg of Harran and pinning his armies in place. John could finally move on to a sustained offensive. The cities of the coast surrendered one after another, and were placed under the control of another young new general called Theodore Evagoras. By the opening of 1173, the Emperor was in Palestine.

At this juncture, we come to one of the great “what ifs” of history. While besieging one particularly well-fortified town, the Emperor was hit by a piece of falling masonry, and knocked unconscious, awaking only to rant on occasion. Days passed before he fully came round, by which time Andreas Skleros, who had been contemplating abandoning the whole war to march on Constantinople as “protector” of the child Emperor Michael had captured Bethlehem. John was able to take communion none the worse for wear in Justinian’s Church of the Nativity while perhaps somewhere, in an alternate universe, Andreas Skleros proclaimed himself Emperor and the whole disaster that was the regime of Eirene never came about[16]. As it was, 1173 marked a generally successful year for John Komnenos.

Luckily for Kürboğa, whose position in Egypt was coming increasingly under threat from rival Salghurids, the Emperor was unable to operate in a vacuum. Probably even before the Emperor had suffered his blow to the head, the Bulgars had risen in a revolt more serious than any western problem the Empire had faced since the Serbian revolt at the beginning of Manuel’s reign[17]. The Domestikos tēs Dyseōs[18] Rōmanos Doukas[19]had actually been killed, and the victorious Bulgars had briefly had the nerve to besiege Constantinople itself for a week or so, causing mass panic within the capital. John was needed back in the West with all haste, and took Andreas Skleros with him. Though the Bulgarian revolt had collapsed in on itself before the Emperor had even arrived back in Europe, momentum had been lost. Kürboğa was able in 1174 to inflict several minor stings on the overstretched and demoralised armies under the temporary command of Bringas, doing much to shore up his own position back in Egypt.

John had spent 1175 in the capital, mostly confined to his bed. He had now long passed his sixtieth birthday, and it was becoming clear to many that his mental faculties were not what they had been[20]. An attempt by David Angelos to persuade John to come to terms with the Egyptians was angrily denounced by an Emperor who had once been renowned for his general quiet and bookish character. Despite the pleas of the Empress Theodora, the Basileus was once more on the march shortly after the Christmas celebrations were over[21]. This time, there would be no distraction. Antioch was reached in April, and by midsummer, John was back in Palestine, impatiently leaving behind the exhausted and dying Andreas Skleros. Kürboğa was brushed aside, and sent scurrying back to Egypt. At the sight of John’s massive army, the citizens of Jerusalem knew that serious resistance would be folly, and, on September 15th 1176, a Christian army returned to the Holy City for the first time in over five hundred years.

Celebrations exploded across Christendom, with even enemies of the Empire like the German Emperor and Smbat of Syunik sending John letters of congratulation that survive to this day[22]. John was hailed by the Bishop of Rome as the consummate autocrat, a new Constantine, “defender of the Faith”. For such a pious man, it was all heady stuff. Perhaps too much so- for John would now go one step too far.

As far as the Emperor was concerned, his triumph would never be complete until the “wretched demon”[23]Kürboğa was defeated once and for all. Barely four months after the fall of Jerusalem, the Emperor marched yet further south, at the head of the first Imperial army to set foot in the Sinai since the long-gone days of Heraclius. Ahead of him lay the squat, brooding fortress of Gaza, the last major obstacle before the fat towns of Egypt were his for the taking. John did not hesitate to immediately throw his men at Gaza, and, in doing so, he came very close to throwing away a whole decade of work.

For Kürboğa had not sat around placidly waiting for the imperial armies to come to him; rather, he had spent the months since the fall of Jerusalem in frantic preparation for a final stand. Every resource that Egypt could muster was squeezed from the country by its Sultan, in order to give the very best chance of survival. When John plunged into battle without so much as setting up a defensive command centre, it was as though all of Kürboğa’s wildest dreams had come at once. The imperial armies were, despite their enthusiasm, overstretched and exhausted by a fast march south from Jerusalem, while the Egyptians were fresh and ready to die for their Sultan. Kürboğa and his lieutenants enveloped the Christian soldiers as they attempted to enter Gaza, capturing them in a wide pincer movement as men poured out from within the city. The Battle of Gaza was a bloody massacre. John II himself was almost killed, and would have certainly been taken prisoner were it not for the heroism of an Arab Christian, the exotically named Abd al-Yasu ibn Yusuf[24]. In chaos, the survivors fled back to Jerusalem, led by their broken Emperor. Kurboga had stood his ground, and emerged triumphant from it. A march around Palestine, looting Christian holy places now followed, with the Emperor shut up in Jerusalem “like a monkey in a cage”[25]. Not for months was the Emperor able to limp back to Constantinople, and, by the time he arrived in his capital in the autumn of 1178, he was a scarcely recognisable figure. His public appearances became few and far between, with effective governance left to his younger son Alexander and his grandson Michael[26]. Though, thanks to titanic effort on the part of ibn-Yusuf, the Palestinian conquests were secured and a peace treaty with Kerbogha was patched up, the Empire had paid a heavy price. God’s vice-gerent on Earth had lost his mind to bring the land of Christ back to His people.

Within a few months, John II was dead, to the scarcely disguised relief of many in court. His life, to this day, is one of great contradictions- the instinctive pacifist who spent his reign at war, the great conqueror who died a weeping, incontinent wreck, the Christian intellectual who was forced to dedicate much time and money into shedding the blood of fellow Christians. He left his Empire at a pinnacle in terms of territory, but a nadir in terms of economic security, for the treasury had been utterly emptied by the cost of war and revolt. This, then, was the divided legacy of the Emperor John II- and it would be for a new generation to struggle to work out how to use it.
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[1] Joseph the Naturalist is an encyclopaedist, compiling his works in the early part of IE’s fourteenth century. Though he was (as the name suggests) primarily interested in animals, Joseph also found time to write two short histories, one of the “Hagarenes” (Muslims) and one of the Armenians.

[2] He’s now around fifty years old

[3] Michael’s similarly youthful uncle Alexander is raised to the Purple a few weeks later, but his name is placed behind that of Michael. John has no wish to provoke Hungarian opinion.

[4] The original Arabic root behind the English “Vizier”, a Wazir was a minister in Islamic states of the middle ages.

[5] The Byzantine name for the town now known as Heraklion.

[6] To put Egypt’s wealth into context for any pre-modern society, Ottoman records from the 16th century have it supplying something like 40% of the Empire’s budget on its own.

[7] See chapter nine.

[8] Copts still probably made up a plurality of the Egyptian population in the twelfth century.

[9] “Golan” is a Modern Hebrew word for the region. In the IE world, I suspect the Arabic would be used.

[10] Angelos recently enjoyed a promotion to a new title- Mégas logothétēs. This will perhaps be more familiar to IE longtermers in its Anglicised variant of “Grand Logothete”. From Angelos onward, the title of Grand Logothete will become more and more associated with the most senior non-eunuch courtier.

[11] Born in the 1130s, Bringas had originally been on course for a career in the capital’s administration thanks to his association with the former Parakoimomenos Basilios (see chapter nine). The rise of David Angelos curtailed this, though, and instead Bringas moved to a military career where he has flourished.

[12] Emesa is the modern Homs, in central Syria.

[13] There were Armenian royals who had been settled as far west as Cappadocia during the eleventh century- see chapter six.

[14] Modern Latakiyah, the major port city of Syria.

[15] Medieval warfare is nasty stuff!

[16] Alternate-alternate history!

[17] See chapter eight

[18] Supreme commander of the imperial armies of the Balkans.

[19] The Doukai have carved out quite a niche since we last met them at the beginning of Alexios’ reign. From their Anatolian origins they have almost entirely transferred their base of operations to the Balkans, and have supplied eleven of the sixteen Western Domestics since the Komnenoi first came to power.

[20] It seems likely John’s encounter with the falling masonry had not been entirely consequence-free, in the long term.

[21] This would have been in January, as the Byzantines focused much of their attention on Epiphany.

[22] One can easily imagine the smugness of the Constantinopolitan civil service at receiving letters of congratulation such as these.

[23] The phrase is put in John’s mouth by a fifteenth century chronicler, Basil of Ephesus.

[24] Which means, if I’ve got my Arab names correct, “servant of God, son of Joseph”.

[25] The rather derisive phrase is found on several inscriptions of Kürboğa.

[26] This is leading to a serious rivalry between the two, in the absence of clear direction as to the order of seniority from John.