The Armeniac dynasty, from 677 to 768
(Also called the Persian dynasty or the Saborian dynasty)
Rebellion of the Strategoi of 677 to 679
After sixteen years of rule by Constantine IV, the Strategos of the Armeniakon, a man of presumed Persian and Armenian extraction named Saborios, revolted against imperial rule. The army of the Armeniakon theme was the second biggest in the Empire, surpassed only by that of the Anatolikon theme. governed at the time by a Roman named Andronikos. While Saborios was the first of the imperial generals to revolt, the deeply unpopular rule of Constantine IV had made sure that he would not be the only one. At least two other strategoi-revolts occured immediately after Saborios' proclamation, which disrupted his plan of simply marching west from his thematic capital in Amaseia until he reached Constantinople. The first disruption was the revolt of the strategos of the Theme of the Bucellarians, one of the provinces located directly between Saborios' Armeniakon and the imperial capital. However, far more significant than this revolt, was the revolt of the aforementioned Andronikos. The revolt of the Bucellarians was easily crushed by Saborios' army, superior as it was in both size and tactical ability. Against the Anatolics, though, he only had one of those two advantages. Saborios proved a superior military mind than Andronikos. Near the town of Amorion, Saborios ambushed the army of Andronikos, surrounding them in such a fashion that advance would mean encountering elite infantry units, and retreat would mean tangling with cavalry. Seeing that he had been outfoxed and that any attempt to fight, even if his forces could prevail despite the advantages of the enemy in the situation, would inevitably result in heavy losses, Andronikos surrendered, and pledged his support to Saborios' rebellion.
In May of 679 AD, two years after his forces left the Armeniakon and without a single altercation with imperial forces, Saborios entered Constantinople. Constantine IV was nowhere to be seen, having fled the capital at least a week prior. Saborios was proclaimed in the Hippodrome the next day, and the Armeniac dynasty began. Constantine would be found, returned to the capital, and subsequently executed in September of that year.
Saborian Civil War of 687 to 703
Saborios ruled uncontested for eight years; the support of both his successor in the Armeniakon and of the strategos of the Antolikon meant that there were few who dared rebel against him. These years were characterized by a string of battles against the Bulgar khan Asparukh, who despite losing most direct confrontations nonetheless managed to do extensive damage to the Balkan themes. The unopposed status of Saborios' reign ended in 687, just over a year after the death of Andronikos, when Saborios' own nephew, Niketas, along with a conspiracy of court nobles, attempted to assassinate Saborios and seize the capital. Saborios managed to survive, fleeing home to Amaseia to gather his supporters, as Niketas was proclaimed emperor. This began a civil war that would last for sixteen years.
Emperor Niketas I did not rule for long, as the deposed Saborios returned the following summer, in 688, retaking his capital and having both of Niketas' hands cut off as punishment. In 690, Niketas again conspired, this time with his brother Nikephoros, Count of the Excubitors, to seize the throne. This time, they made their move while Saborios was campaigning against yet another Bulgar incursion. Nikephoros used connections within the military and the demes of Constantinople to take control of the city. When Saborios arrived, in 691, Nikephoros was there to meet him with his elite guard of Excubitors. As the battle between the two unfolded, a eunuch bureaucrat paid by Saborios managed to murder Niketas. The battle ended with heavy losses on both sides, as Nikephoros retreated inside the Theodosian walls, and Saborios fled to Arcadiopolis and later to Thessalonica, from where he would rule as emperor-in-exile for eleven years. Finally, in 701 AD, Saborios once again entered Constantinople victorious after eighteen months of siege. Nikephoros I fled to Nicaea with his royal guards, but Saborios never got to follow him, as he died just five months later. His son, Basileios, is proclaimed emperor, and launches the final campaign of the civil war against Nicaea.
An advance force of the imperial army encountered Nikephoros' small but skilled army outside of Nicaea. The former eventually retreats, but it becomes clear to the fugitive Emperor that his small army of elite soldiers will not be a match for the entire imperial military. He flees to Smyrna, where Basileios I arrives in 703, and the siege of Smyrna begins. As the siege drags on and it becomes clear that this is the end of the line for Nikephoros, the Excubitors defect. Their leader of the Excu, despite the desire for blood of many of his subordinates, gives Nikephoros enough time to flee. The royal person, family, and several loyal nobles manage to escape by sea, eventually landing in Cyprus, which was at the time ruled under a strange agreement of condominium between the Arab imamate and the Roman empire. Here, at long last, Nikephoros establishes himself, sending a missive renouncing his emperorship to Constantinople. Nikephoros' descendants would eventually rule as independent basileis on Cyprus.
Reign of Basil, Theodore, and Basil II, 703 to 765
As with most of medieval Roman history, the reign of Basileios I and his two successors was, at least after Nikephoros was finally exiled, primarily characterized by Balkan wars, specifically against the Bulgars and, on occasion, the Slavs. The latter were generally less warlike, only having to be occasionally forced into submission when they stopped paying taxes. During the golden period of the Armeniac dynasty after the civil war, Constantinople managed to re-establish a semblance of Roman authority in the territories settled by the Slavs, including the themes of Hellas, Nicopolis and Peloponnesos. While these three westermost provinces grew increasingly peaceful, the northern frontier of Thrace and Macedonia grew increasingly militarised. War with the Bulgars was perpetual, both sides would constantly raid and counter-raid, and the Bulgars managed to lay siege to Constantinople twice in the 8th century. The first of these sieges began in the spring of 729. Basil I had been leading an army attempting to capture a force of Arab raiders in Cilicia, to little avail. The Bulgars seized on the opportunity to raid deep into Roman territory, beginning in 728, culminating in the siege of Constantinople in 729. In response, Basil wanted to break the Bulgars, not just wait them out behind the great walls of his capital. As he returned from the south-eastern provinces, he crossed the Hellespont and approached the Bulgar forces sieging the capital from the rear. Theodoros, the close friend and "adopted" brother of Basileios' father Saborios, was orchestrating the defense of the city. When the emperor's forces crashed into the Bulgar rear guard, there was a moment of great disarray, as Bulgar khan Kormesiy realised that he was trapped between the Theodosian walls and the imperial forces. He ordered his men to fight their way out and, as Theodore led his defenders out of the city, that is what the Bulgars did. During the chaos of the fighting, Basileios was killed, but his uncle Theodoros rallied the forces and won the battle. Roughly a tenth of the Bulgar forces managed to escape, including the khan Kormesiy. Theodoros was hailed as a hero for defending the city, and, despite his advanced age, was proclaimed emperor less than a week later. One of his first actions as emperor was the appointing his son as co-emperor. This son would take the name Basileios II three years later, in 732, when Theodoros died.
Theodoros had spent his short reign on the throne consolidating power and stabilising the empire, doing what he could to pave the way for his son to have a successful emperorship. When the time came, Basil II's first order of buisness was revenge for 729; he demanded that the Bulgars turn over their khan for punishment. Of course, this was simply a way to justify a war against the turkic nomads. No one ever expected a people to turn over their ruler just because another ruler demanded it. And so Basil got his war; in 736, after a series of successful battles, the Romans sacked Pliskovu, the capital of the Bulgar Khanate, capturing and beheading Kormesiy. The scorched-earth tactics employed by the Romans during their return to Roman territory spurred the start of Bulgar migrations further west, which would eventually culminate with the arrival of the Magyars in the lower Danube region and the establishment of the Bulgarian Kingdom in Pannonia.
After this war, the Bulgars payed tribute to the Romans for some thirty years and, even after the tributary relationship ended, the conflicts between the Bulgars and Romans would not return to the level they had been until a century later.
Religious matters and the Fall of Crete
After the Bulgar-Roman War of 732 to 736, Basileios' empire enjoyed a period of relative peace. Incursions by Arab raiders and rebellions by Slavic peoples occurred, but there were no more total wars like those that had characterised the preceeding decades. The islands of the southern Aegean were experiencing a rise in Arab naval raids, but it did not truly become a major concern until very late in his reign. This allowed Basileios to focus on other matters, and during this period hed became deeply involved with the buisness of the Church, primarily as a student. He authorized attempts to convert the Bulgars and the Slavs that lived in his realm. The former failed completely, and the latter only saw very limited success. Basil also became embroiled in the iconoclasm debate, personally believing that veneration of icons was acceptable. In 758 the Fourth Council of Constantinople was convened, which accepted the veneration of icons as formally legitimate. This decision was accepted by the all five patriarchs of the Pentarchy as well as the legation from the Church of the East, but it caused a minor schism within Oriental Orthodoxy, as the West Syriac and Coptic churches rejected it, holding to their position of iconoclasm, while the Ethiopian and Armenian churches accepted it. This schism was closed eleven years later at the Council of Damascus, where legations of all four autocephalies of Oriental Orthodoxy agreed to reject the Fourth Council of Constantinople and held iconoclasm as necessary and derived from the ban on worship of graven images in the ten commandments.
As Basileios II was focused on matters of theology, the sea-borne raids of Arabs from North Africa grew more intense. The strategos of the Carabisians, the Roman naval forces, a man named Leontios, became in this period extremely adept at combating the Arab fleets, but a force of Muslim marines still managed to land on Crete. Interestingly, the religious leaders in this small force were all followers of the teachings of Mansur al-Hadi, the dissident cleric whose movement had spawned democratic communities in al-Wahat in Egypt and in Nizwa in south-eastern Arabia. After the muslims took the island in 762, they elected a mullah named Salim as their imam, and began diplomacy with the local Christians. The Christian religious leadership of Crete had disagreed with the Fourth Council of Constantinople, as many churches located on the imperial frontiers did. They were in favour of iconoclasm, and when Salim informed them that they would not be harmed by his forces as long as they destroyed their icons, they happily agreed. This was the beginning of the Emirate of Crete, as while Salim was considered Imam by his followers, he had to present outwardly as just Emir, as the orthodoxy of Mecca considered Mansurism and its localised, community-elected imams a heretical movement. Despite the heresy of their beliefs, the Emirate of Crete became a crucial fulcrum of Arab naval policy, as it allowed deeper raids into the Aegean.
End of the Armeniacs
By this time, Basileios had had enough of ruling. He had become tired of his emperorship, and wanted a life of peace. More than that, he had grown so deeply religious that his primary desire was more time dedicated to the divine. In 765, he retired to a monastery, and spent the remainder of his days as a monk. When he did so, his wife Anna of Nineveh, with whom Basileios had frequently had spirited religious debates, assumed the imperial throne. She was the first empress regnant in five hundred years, and only the second ever. However, Anna had one crucial flaw: she was not orthodox. All those spirited debates with her husband had been founded on one principal disagreement: Basileios was a fervent believer in the rightness of the Roman Orthodox Church, while Anna was an Easterner, of Syriac extract, born into nobility in the city of Nineveh, and had never let go of her faith. She followed the Church of the East. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople protested Basil's decision to appoint her as successor, but due to a deep personal relationship between the two men, he relented. With the support of the church, Anna became empress in the year of her husbands abdication. She was a quiet ruler, aware that any major efforts or reforms might provoke the populace against her. She attempted to shift resources towards the naval forces, but the Arab raids flowing from the Emirate of Crete continued to intensify. A climax was reached in 768, when an Arab corsair by the name of Abdullah al-Sur launched a daring and utterly unpredicted raid all the way through the Hellespont and into Constantinople itself. The city was sacked for three days, when Leontios and the Carabisians finally arrived, destroying al-Sur's fleet. Leontios landed his forces in the harbour and, alongside the royal guard, cleaned out the Arab forces in a matter of hours. When the dust settled, protests against Anna began, and Church leaders proclaimed the this raid was punishment for allowing a heretic to become Basileus. Leontios, who held no particular animosity towards the empress, quietly gives her a ship and crew, enabling her eventual return to Nineveh. The protestors celebrate Leontios as a hero, and he is brought into the Hippodrome to be proclaimed emperor by the people. The last ruler with a connection to Emperor Saborios I is deposed, and a new dynasty begins.
(Also called the Persian dynasty or the Saborian dynasty)
Rebellion of the Strategoi of 677 to 679
After sixteen years of rule by Constantine IV, the Strategos of the Armeniakon, a man of presumed Persian and Armenian extraction named Saborios, revolted against imperial rule. The army of the Armeniakon theme was the second biggest in the Empire, surpassed only by that of the Anatolikon theme. governed at the time by a Roman named Andronikos. While Saborios was the first of the imperial generals to revolt, the deeply unpopular rule of Constantine IV had made sure that he would not be the only one. At least two other strategoi-revolts occured immediately after Saborios' proclamation, which disrupted his plan of simply marching west from his thematic capital in Amaseia until he reached Constantinople. The first disruption was the revolt of the strategos of the Theme of the Bucellarians, one of the provinces located directly between Saborios' Armeniakon and the imperial capital. However, far more significant than this revolt, was the revolt of the aforementioned Andronikos. The revolt of the Bucellarians was easily crushed by Saborios' army, superior as it was in both size and tactical ability. Against the Anatolics, though, he only had one of those two advantages. Saborios proved a superior military mind than Andronikos. Near the town of Amorion, Saborios ambushed the army of Andronikos, surrounding them in such a fashion that advance would mean encountering elite infantry units, and retreat would mean tangling with cavalry. Seeing that he had been outfoxed and that any attempt to fight, even if his forces could prevail despite the advantages of the enemy in the situation, would inevitably result in heavy losses, Andronikos surrendered, and pledged his support to Saborios' rebellion.
In May of 679 AD, two years after his forces left the Armeniakon and without a single altercation with imperial forces, Saborios entered Constantinople. Constantine IV was nowhere to be seen, having fled the capital at least a week prior. Saborios was proclaimed in the Hippodrome the next day, and the Armeniac dynasty began. Constantine would be found, returned to the capital, and subsequently executed in September of that year.
Saborian Civil War of 687 to 703
Saborios ruled uncontested for eight years; the support of both his successor in the Armeniakon and of the strategos of the Antolikon meant that there were few who dared rebel against him. These years were characterized by a string of battles against the Bulgar khan Asparukh, who despite losing most direct confrontations nonetheless managed to do extensive damage to the Balkan themes. The unopposed status of Saborios' reign ended in 687, just over a year after the death of Andronikos, when Saborios' own nephew, Niketas, along with a conspiracy of court nobles, attempted to assassinate Saborios and seize the capital. Saborios managed to survive, fleeing home to Amaseia to gather his supporters, as Niketas was proclaimed emperor. This began a civil war that would last for sixteen years.
Emperor Niketas I did not rule for long, as the deposed Saborios returned the following summer, in 688, retaking his capital and having both of Niketas' hands cut off as punishment. In 690, Niketas again conspired, this time with his brother Nikephoros, Count of the Excubitors, to seize the throne. This time, they made their move while Saborios was campaigning against yet another Bulgar incursion. Nikephoros used connections within the military and the demes of Constantinople to take control of the city. When Saborios arrived, in 691, Nikephoros was there to meet him with his elite guard of Excubitors. As the battle between the two unfolded, a eunuch bureaucrat paid by Saborios managed to murder Niketas. The battle ended with heavy losses on both sides, as Nikephoros retreated inside the Theodosian walls, and Saborios fled to Arcadiopolis and later to Thessalonica, from where he would rule as emperor-in-exile for eleven years. Finally, in 701 AD, Saborios once again entered Constantinople victorious after eighteen months of siege. Nikephoros I fled to Nicaea with his royal guards, but Saborios never got to follow him, as he died just five months later. His son, Basileios, is proclaimed emperor, and launches the final campaign of the civil war against Nicaea.
An advance force of the imperial army encountered Nikephoros' small but skilled army outside of Nicaea. The former eventually retreats, but it becomes clear to the fugitive Emperor that his small army of elite soldiers will not be a match for the entire imperial military. He flees to Smyrna, where Basileios I arrives in 703, and the siege of Smyrna begins. As the siege drags on and it becomes clear that this is the end of the line for Nikephoros, the Excubitors defect. Their leader of the Excu, despite the desire for blood of many of his subordinates, gives Nikephoros enough time to flee. The royal person, family, and several loyal nobles manage to escape by sea, eventually landing in Cyprus, which was at the time ruled under a strange agreement of condominium between the Arab imamate and the Roman empire. Here, at long last, Nikephoros establishes himself, sending a missive renouncing his emperorship to Constantinople. Nikephoros' descendants would eventually rule as independent basileis on Cyprus.
Reign of Basil, Theodore, and Basil II, 703 to 765
As with most of medieval Roman history, the reign of Basileios I and his two successors was, at least after Nikephoros was finally exiled, primarily characterized by Balkan wars, specifically against the Bulgars and, on occasion, the Slavs. The latter were generally less warlike, only having to be occasionally forced into submission when they stopped paying taxes. During the golden period of the Armeniac dynasty after the civil war, Constantinople managed to re-establish a semblance of Roman authority in the territories settled by the Slavs, including the themes of Hellas, Nicopolis and Peloponnesos. While these three westermost provinces grew increasingly peaceful, the northern frontier of Thrace and Macedonia grew increasingly militarised. War with the Bulgars was perpetual, both sides would constantly raid and counter-raid, and the Bulgars managed to lay siege to Constantinople twice in the 8th century. The first of these sieges began in the spring of 729. Basil I had been leading an army attempting to capture a force of Arab raiders in Cilicia, to little avail. The Bulgars seized on the opportunity to raid deep into Roman territory, beginning in 728, culminating in the siege of Constantinople in 729. In response, Basil wanted to break the Bulgars, not just wait them out behind the great walls of his capital. As he returned from the south-eastern provinces, he crossed the Hellespont and approached the Bulgar forces sieging the capital from the rear. Theodoros, the close friend and "adopted" brother of Basileios' father Saborios, was orchestrating the defense of the city. When the emperor's forces crashed into the Bulgar rear guard, there was a moment of great disarray, as Bulgar khan Kormesiy realised that he was trapped between the Theodosian walls and the imperial forces. He ordered his men to fight their way out and, as Theodore led his defenders out of the city, that is what the Bulgars did. During the chaos of the fighting, Basileios was killed, but his uncle Theodoros rallied the forces and won the battle. Roughly a tenth of the Bulgar forces managed to escape, including the khan Kormesiy. Theodoros was hailed as a hero for defending the city, and, despite his advanced age, was proclaimed emperor less than a week later. One of his first actions as emperor was the appointing his son as co-emperor. This son would take the name Basileios II three years later, in 732, when Theodoros died.
Theodoros had spent his short reign on the throne consolidating power and stabilising the empire, doing what he could to pave the way for his son to have a successful emperorship. When the time came, Basil II's first order of buisness was revenge for 729; he demanded that the Bulgars turn over their khan for punishment. Of course, this was simply a way to justify a war against the turkic nomads. No one ever expected a people to turn over their ruler just because another ruler demanded it. And so Basil got his war; in 736, after a series of successful battles, the Romans sacked Pliskovu, the capital of the Bulgar Khanate, capturing and beheading Kormesiy. The scorched-earth tactics employed by the Romans during their return to Roman territory spurred the start of Bulgar migrations further west, which would eventually culminate with the arrival of the Magyars in the lower Danube region and the establishment of the Bulgarian Kingdom in Pannonia.
After this war, the Bulgars payed tribute to the Romans for some thirty years and, even after the tributary relationship ended, the conflicts between the Bulgars and Romans would not return to the level they had been until a century later.
Religious matters and the Fall of Crete
After the Bulgar-Roman War of 732 to 736, Basileios' empire enjoyed a period of relative peace. Incursions by Arab raiders and rebellions by Slavic peoples occurred, but there were no more total wars like those that had characterised the preceeding decades. The islands of the southern Aegean were experiencing a rise in Arab naval raids, but it did not truly become a major concern until very late in his reign. This allowed Basileios to focus on other matters, and during this period hed became deeply involved with the buisness of the Church, primarily as a student. He authorized attempts to convert the Bulgars and the Slavs that lived in his realm. The former failed completely, and the latter only saw very limited success. Basil also became embroiled in the iconoclasm debate, personally believing that veneration of icons was acceptable. In 758 the Fourth Council of Constantinople was convened, which accepted the veneration of icons as formally legitimate. This decision was accepted by the all five patriarchs of the Pentarchy as well as the legation from the Church of the East, but it caused a minor schism within Oriental Orthodoxy, as the West Syriac and Coptic churches rejected it, holding to their position of iconoclasm, while the Ethiopian and Armenian churches accepted it. This schism was closed eleven years later at the Council of Damascus, where legations of all four autocephalies of Oriental Orthodoxy agreed to reject the Fourth Council of Constantinople and held iconoclasm as necessary and derived from the ban on worship of graven images in the ten commandments.
As Basileios II was focused on matters of theology, the sea-borne raids of Arabs from North Africa grew more intense. The strategos of the Carabisians, the Roman naval forces, a man named Leontios, became in this period extremely adept at combating the Arab fleets, but a force of Muslim marines still managed to land on Crete. Interestingly, the religious leaders in this small force were all followers of the teachings of Mansur al-Hadi, the dissident cleric whose movement had spawned democratic communities in al-Wahat in Egypt and in Nizwa in south-eastern Arabia. After the muslims took the island in 762, they elected a mullah named Salim as their imam, and began diplomacy with the local Christians. The Christian religious leadership of Crete had disagreed with the Fourth Council of Constantinople, as many churches located on the imperial frontiers did. They were in favour of iconoclasm, and when Salim informed them that they would not be harmed by his forces as long as they destroyed their icons, they happily agreed. This was the beginning of the Emirate of Crete, as while Salim was considered Imam by his followers, he had to present outwardly as just Emir, as the orthodoxy of Mecca considered Mansurism and its localised, community-elected imams a heretical movement. Despite the heresy of their beliefs, the Emirate of Crete became a crucial fulcrum of Arab naval policy, as it allowed deeper raids into the Aegean.
End of the Armeniacs
By this time, Basileios had had enough of ruling. He had become tired of his emperorship, and wanted a life of peace. More than that, he had grown so deeply religious that his primary desire was more time dedicated to the divine. In 765, he retired to a monastery, and spent the remainder of his days as a monk. When he did so, his wife Anna of Nineveh, with whom Basileios had frequently had spirited religious debates, assumed the imperial throne. She was the first empress regnant in five hundred years, and only the second ever. However, Anna had one crucial flaw: she was not orthodox. All those spirited debates with her husband had been founded on one principal disagreement: Basileios was a fervent believer in the rightness of the Roman Orthodox Church, while Anna was an Easterner, of Syriac extract, born into nobility in the city of Nineveh, and had never let go of her faith. She followed the Church of the East. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople protested Basil's decision to appoint her as successor, but due to a deep personal relationship between the two men, he relented. With the support of the church, Anna became empress in the year of her husbands abdication. She was a quiet ruler, aware that any major efforts or reforms might provoke the populace against her. She attempted to shift resources towards the naval forces, but the Arab raids flowing from the Emirate of Crete continued to intensify. A climax was reached in 768, when an Arab corsair by the name of Abdullah al-Sur launched a daring and utterly unpredicted raid all the way through the Hellespont and into Constantinople itself. The city was sacked for three days, when Leontios and the Carabisians finally arrived, destroying al-Sur's fleet. Leontios landed his forces in the harbour and, alongside the royal guard, cleaned out the Arab forces in a matter of hours. When the dust settled, protests against Anna began, and Church leaders proclaimed the this raid was punishment for allowing a heretic to become Basileus. Leontios, who held no particular animosity towards the empress, quietly gives her a ship and crew, enabling her eventual return to Nineveh. The protestors celebrate Leontios as a hero, and he is brought into the Hippodrome to be proclaimed emperor by the people. The last ruler with a connection to Emperor Saborios I is deposed, and a new dynasty begins.
Beginning, Middle and End of the Armeniac Dynasty
LtR: Revolt of the Strategoi, depicting the route taken by Saborios' campaign; during the Bulgar War of 728-729; the latter years of Basileios II's reign
(I'll probably proofread this at some other time, right now I've spent the last hours writing and want to do something else. I've been neck-deep in Roman Empire nonsense for the last forty-eight hours.)LtR: Revolt of the Strategoi, depicting the route taken by Saborios' campaign; during the Bulgar War of 728-729; the latter years of Basileios II's reign
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