Empire of Trebizond

Politics and institutions

Trebizond was founded in April 1204, weeks before the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople, when Alexios and David Komnenos, grandsons of the deposed Andronikos I, seized the city with troops lent by Queen Tamar of Georgia. Alexios claimed the imperial title, and for two decades Trebizond competed with Nicaea and Epirus for the Byzantine succession. After Nicaea recovered Constantinople in 1261, John II gave up the claim to the imperial throne in 1282, keeping the lesser title of emperor of the East, Iberia and Perateia. The state was a narrow coastal monarchy, divided into bandon districts and dominated by a court that never stopped calling itself Roman.

Economy and finance

The empire lived by the sea and the mountains. Trebizond was the western terminus of the Silk Road after the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258, and its port funneled Persian silk, Armenian alum, Pontic silver, wine and hazelnuts to Genoese and Venetian ships. The emperors granted quarters and privileges to the Italian republics, taxed the transit trade, and minted silver aspers; land revenue, estates and tithes supplied most of the court's income. The wealth was real enough to build churches and monasteries and to pay tribute to Mongols, Turks and Genoese, but it was also vulnerable: the Black Sea trade could be diverted, and the empire's narrow hinterland could not support a large army.

Society and culture

Trapezuntine society was Greek Orthodox and Pontic. The court of the Grand Komnenoi cultivated the imperial style, patronized churches and monasteries such as Sumela, and produced chronicles that kept the memory of Constantinople alive. The population was mixed — Greeks, Laz, Armenians, Turks and Italians — and the countryside of Matzouka was organized around Christian villages and monastic estates. Education and literacy were limited, but the court attracted scholars and the city's churches, including the Hagia Sophia of Trebizond, rank among the finest of late Byzantine architecture. The empire's cultural conservatism was itself a political statement: in a fragmenting world, it insisted that the Roman order had not ended.

Military and frontiers

Trebizond's army was small and defensive. The Pontic Alps and the narrow coastal plain made invasion difficult, and the emperors relied on mountain forts, bandon garrisons, mercenaries and diplomacy rather than on massed field armies. They fought the Seljuks of Rum, the Mongols, the Genoese and later the Ottomans, usually by paying tribute or marrying daughters to neighbouring rulers. Murad II failed to take the city by sea in 1442; Mehmed II succeeded in 1461 after a month-long siege, having first neutralized Sinope and the Ak Koyunlu. The empire's military history is a study in survival by geography, fortification and the careful avoidance of decisive battles it could not win.

Foreign relations

Trebizond's diplomacy was its main weapon. It began as a Georgian client, married into the Komnenian, Georgian, Seljuk and Byzantine houses, and after 1261 accepted the loss of Constantinople while keeping its imperial title. The emperors paid tribute to the Mongols of Iran, traded with Genoa and Venice, and played the Turkish emirates against one another. In the fifteenth century they allied with Timur, then with the Ak Koyunlu and Kara Koyunlu, and sent envoys to the Council of Florence in 1439 in search of Western help. None of these alliances could save the city from Mehmed II, but they explain how a state with a few thousand soldiers lasted two and a half centuries.

Legacy and influence

Trebizond outlived Constantinople by eight years and was the last Byzantine successor state to fall. Its Komnenian court, its churches and monasteries, and its Greek-speaking Pontic population kept a Roman identity alive on the Black Sea; the title of emperor survived until 1461, and the Principality of Theodoro in Crimea, an offshoot, held out until 1475. After the Ottoman conquest the city became Trabzon, the Pontic Greeks remained until the population exchange of 1923, and Sumela and the Hagia Sophia still mark the landscape. In European literature, Trebizond became a byword for remote imperial splendor — Cervantes and Rabelais both invoked it — while for the Greeks of Pontus it remained the last capital of their world.