When the long war between Byzantium and Sasanian Persia ended with Heraclius's victory in 628, both empires were exhausted. The Persian occupation of the Pontic and Cappadocian highlands had ended only in the late 620s, the cities were worn down, and the tax system was in disarray. Within a few years a new power from the south, the Muslim Arab armies, took Syria, Egypt and Armenia from Byzantium. Anatolia, which lay beyond the Taurus Mountains, became the target of annual campaigns. Amaseia, in the valley of the Yeşilırmak, was the most important administrative and military centre in the north-east of the peninsula during this age of raids. The events that touched the city and its surroundings between the middle of the seventh century and the end of the ninth offer a good example for understanding both the defensive arrangements of Byzantium and the routes taken by the Arab raiders.

The Withdrawal of the Armeniac Army into Anatolia

The first wave of the Muslim conquests inflicted heavy losses on the Byzantine field armies. The surviving units withdrew into Anatolia, the last large contiguous territory still in imperial hands, and formed the core of the military-civil districts known as themes, each named after the region where its troops settled. The old field army of the command of Armenia, the Armeniakoi, was settled in Pontus, Paphlagonia and part of Cappadocia, and the region took its name from them. The Armeniac theme is generally thought to have taken shape in the 640s or 660s. The mention of "George, tourmarches of the Armeniakoi" in 629, during Heraclius's Persian campaigns, suggests to some scholars that the theme existed very early, but the first unambiguous record of its commander is the revolt of Saborios in 667-668. The centre was Amaseia. The strategos who governed the theme ranked with the strategoi of the Anatolikon and Thrakesion themes in the highest class and drew an annual salary of forty pounds of gold.

The Armeniac theme lay just behind the northern frontier that Byzantium shared with the Islamic world. Armenia lay to the east, Melitene (Malatya) and Cappadocia to the south. In summer the Arab raiders used annual campaigns, known as sa'ifa, to pass through these regions and enter the interior of Anatolia. The commander of the theme was therefore more than a provincial governor, since he was the first to face every threat from the east. His size and frontier position made the strategos one of the most powerful men in the empire, and this is also why the theme's troops took part in so many revolts in the eighth century.

The Defensive Value of the Fortress

The security of Amaseia rested first of all on the advantage of the terrain. Strabo, a native of Amaseia, found the city well suited as both a city and a fortress and describes it on a rock that drops steeply toward the river. The two summits of the rock are joined by a narrow neck, magnificent towers rise on the summits, and the palaces and monuments of the kings stand inside the wall. Two tunnels are cut into the rock, one toward the river and the other toward the neck, so that the city cannot be deprived of its water. Two bridges cross the river. The documents do not show how much of the arrangement Strabo describes was still standing in the age of the Arab raids, but the steep slopes of Mount Harşena and the narrowness of the valley had not changed.

Who built the fortress is not known with certainty. Some accounts trace its origin to Mithridates, king of Pontus, but the importance of the structure lies in the fact that, however often it was repaired and changed hands over the centuries, it never lost its defensive value. In the seventh and eighth centuries Byzantine commanders generally avoided pitched battle with the Arab armies, withdrew their forces into fortified places to preserve them, and tried to wear the raiders down on their way home. This approach turned into counter-raiding only after 740. In the years of heavy raiding the fortress and the rocky refuges around it were the only guarantee of safety for the villagers of the region.

Raids into Pontus in the Mid-Seventh Century

Muawiya, as governor of Syria and in the first years of his caliphate, made campaigns against Byzantium a regular practice. Muslim armies had begun to enter the interior of Anatolia as early as the 640s. In 647 the great Cappadocian city of Caesarea Mazaca (Kayseri) was sacked, and armies under Muawiya's command reached as far as Amorium. The first details about the immediate neighbourhood of Amaseia concern Euchaita, the neighbouring town on the road to Ancyra. This town, an important pilgrimage centre of Pontus tied to the memory of Saint Theodore of Amaseia, is reported to have been attacked by the Arabs in 640, and in 663 the raiders captured it, destroyed the church of Saint Theodore, plundered the place and spent the winter there. The population had meanwhile fled to the fortified refuges of the countryside. The town was later rebuilt and recovered. According to a hagiographical text written in the eighth or ninth century, the relics of Saint Theodore were at that time still in Amaseia, while the Christians of Euchaita were asking with growing insistence for them to be moved to their own city.

Arab historians place the first Byzantine campaign of Muawiya's caliphate in 662 or 663 and write that a Byzantine army suffered a heavy defeat in it. In 664 or 665 Abd al-Rahman ibn Khalid raided Koloneia in north-eastern Anatolia. Koloneia is the region around present-day Şebinkarahisar and formed the eastern flank of the Armeniac theme. These campaigns kept the Byzantine presence in Pontus, and Amaseia as the theme's headquarters, under constant pressure.

The Revolt of Saborios and the Bargain with the Caliph

Emperor Constans II had been living for years in Syracuse in Sicily, leaving Constantinople to his young son Constantine IV. In the emperor's absence Muawiya sent devastating raids aimed above all at the Armeniac theme. In late 667 the strategos of the Armeniacs, Saborios, rose in revolt, taking advantage of the fact that many soldiers of the other themes were with Constans in Sicily. Theophanes writes that he was of Persian origin and that his name derives from Shapur, while most modern scholars regard Saborios as an Armenian. To secure his rear, Saborios sent one of his generals, Sergios, to Damascus, to the caliph. The government in Constantinople likewise sent the cubicularius Andrew to Muawiya. According to Theophanes, Saborios had offered a tribute as heavy as "the entire public revenues", Andrew could not match that offer, and Muawiya agreed to send troops to Saborios. Andrew nonetheless managed to have Sergios seized at a pass near Arabissos in Cilicia, where he was castrated and impaled.

With his eastern flank secured, Saborios advanced west toward Constantinople and brought most of Anatolia under his control. He made camp at Hadrianopolis in Bithynia, where he drilled his troops while awaiting the arrival of the Arab army and the army of the loyalist patrikios Nikephoros. At that point his horse bolted, he struck his head on a city gate, and Saborios died. The Armeniac soldiers, left leaderless, quickly surrendered. The Arab army took advantage of the confusion, raided as far as the Bosporus and captured Amorium, which the Byzantines retook the same winter. The revolt cost Byzantium no territory, but as the first recorded revolt of a theme army it opened the way for similar attempts in the following century. The oft-repeated belief in Byzantine and Syriac sources that a rebel, or a commander who dealt with the Muslims, would meet death is also fed by this episode. The sources do not separately say what happened to Amaseia in this affair.

The Battle of Sebastopolis

The peace established in 680 ended in 692 when Justinian II broke the tribute arrangement. Justinian had had his own portrait struck on one face of the coins and Christ's on the other; when the caliph Abd al-Malik issued similar but slightly lighter coins without the image of Christ, the emperor claimed the tribute was being underpaid and broke the treaty. The battle was fought at Sebastopolis (near present-day Sulusaray), in the very middle of the Armeniac theme. The Byzantine army under Leontios, strategos of the Anatolikon, met the forces of Muhammad ibn Marwan. The Arabs used the texts of the broken treaty in place of banners to stress the justice of their cause. The Byzantine army was at first on top, but Neboulos, head of the Slavic corps that Justinian had brought from the Balkans and settled in the Opsikion, went over to the Arab side with most of his men, some twenty thousand. It is alleged that Neboulos had been bought by Muhammad ibn Marwan. This betrayal decided the defeat. After the battle the Arab raids resumed, and Neboulos and his men were settled in Syria and used in later campaigns in Anatolia.

712: Maslama Takes Amaseia

The event in which Amaseia was captured by an Arab army, clearly recorded in the sources, dates to 712. Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik, brother of Caliph al-Walid I, had been commanding the annual summer campaigns since 705. In the winter of 707-708 he besieged Tyana (Tüvane, near Kemerhisar); once he had routed a Byzantine relief army, the city surrendered in spring. The same summer he defeated a Byzantine army near Amorium, and in 709 he raided Isauria. When he was appointed governor of the Jazira, Armenia and Azerbaijan in 710, the whole north-western frontier of the caliphate came under his command. From that position, in 712, he devastated Galatia and took Amaseia. Theophanes and the Syriac Chronicle of 1234 record that Maslama captured Amaseia together with the surrounding forts and took many prisoners. Turkish works based on the Islamic sources likewise write that in his campaigns of 711-712 Maslama conquered Amasya and several other centres around it. In 714 Maslama took Melitene and plundered Galatia again.

The sources do not report how the capture of 712 was carried out, how long a siege lasted, or whether the fortress resisted. How long the city remained under Arab rule is also unclear. Whether Maslama took Amaseia in a brief raid only, or left a garrison, cannot be told from the surviving records. All that is known is that the city appears under Byzantine control again in the following years; Turkish works also mention briefly that Byzantine forces in the time of Emperor Leo III retook it.

In 715-716 Maslama began preparing the great campaign against Constantinople. In Byzantium there was at that moment something close to civil war. Konon, strategos of the Anatolikon and the future Emperor Leo III, had made contact with Maslama, and the Arab commander considered him an ally. Artabasdos, strategos of the Armeniacs, stood with Leo. When Maslama crossed the Taurus in 716 and marched on Amorium, he did not ravage the Armeniac and Anatolic lands whose governors he took to be friends. When Leo was crowned emperor in Constantinople in March 717, he gave Artabasdos the title of kouropalates and married his daughter Anna to him. Artabasdos was at that time still commander of the Armeniacs as well, and so the headquarters at Amaseia stayed within the same circle as the new head of the empire. The Arab siege of Constantinople ended in failure in 718; under the new caliph Umar II, military activity was halted for a time.

The Age of Hisham: 730 and 740

Under Caliph Hisham (724-743) Arab raids became annual again from 725-726. Armies under Muawiya ibn Hisham, Maymun ibn Mihran and Maslama crossed the Byzantine frontier. In the following years Maslama took Kayseri and Ibrahim ibn Hisham conquered several important Byzantine fortresses. Turkish studies list the campaigns of this period as reaching Konya, Kemah, Kayseri, Malatya, Niksar, Çankırı and Ankara. This line encircled Amaseia both to the east and to the west. In late 730 the fortress of Charsianon, part of the Armeniac theme, the ruins of Muşalikale near present-day Akdağmadeni, fell to the Arabs for the first time. Theophanes attributes the event to Maslama, while the Arab sources attribute it to Muawiya ibn Hisham. The fortress changed hands continually between the two sides over the following century. The fall of this fortress, to the south of the Armeniac theme, left the roads toward Amaseia open.

In 740 a large Arab army met the forces of Leo III's son Constantine V near Akroinon (around present-day Afyon) and suffered a heavy defeat. This rout ended the annual Arab attacks on the Anatolian interior. From then on the Umayyad state had to deal with tribal wars and with the stirrings in Khorasan, and the Anatolian campaigns fell off the agenda. On the Byzantine side too, the approach to defence changed: after 740 the Byzantines began raiding Arab territory and trying to recover lost lands. In the same period the Armeniac soldiers were in the middle of a civil war. In 741 Artabasdos, brother-in-law of Constantine V, seized the throne, and the Armeniac troops stood at his side. These troops, under Artabasdos's son Niketas, were defeated at Modrina in 743.

Accounts in Local Chronologies and Reservations

In one sequence circulating in local publications on the history of Amasya, it is said that Maslama took the city in 708, that Byzantium retook it the following year, and that he besieged it again in 710 and completed the conquest of Pontus in 711-712 by entering the city from the direction of Karaman Mountain. According to the same chronology the city changed hands several times between Arab commanders and Byzantine governors in 716, in 730-733 and in 736-738. Details such as a Byzantine patriarch being killed by the sword of a fighter named Battal Gazi, an Umayyad prince fleeing the dynasty being killed in the city around 751, and Abbasid forces taking the city in 761 also belong to these accounts. The names and dates do not match the records of Theophanes and the Arab historians. The events that can be verified are the capture of 712, the fall of Charsianon in 730 and the defeat at Akroinon in 740. Although the year 730 in the local chronology is attached to Amaseia, in the reliable sources the place the Arabs took in that year is Charsianon. The additional details mentioned therefore cannot be treated as established fact.

Raids along the Frontier under the Abbasids

With the Abbasids moving the capital to Baghdad, pressure on the Byzantine front eased for a time, but the fighting on the frontier never stopped entirely. In 778 the Byzantines mounted a large expedition against Syria made up of several theme armies, and the Armeniac troops took part under their strategos Karisterotzes. In 782 Harun al-Rashid, helped by the defection to the Arab side of the Armenian commander Tatzates, advanced as far as the Bosporus and Byzantium was forced to accept peace on favourable terms. In 797-798 Abd al-Malik ibn Salih entered Cappadocia and Galatia, reached Ancyra and plundered the great Byzantine army base.

A striking record concerning the surroundings of Amaseia belongs to 810-811. In a victory won by the Arabs near Euchaita, the strategos of the Armeniacs and his treasury were captured. The sources place the event in 810, or in another account in 811. That the roga, the soldiers' pay of the Armeniac theme, amounting to 93,600 nomismata, fell to the Arabs shows the scale of the loss. Payment of the pay was indispensable for the army to stay in being. In 830 Caliph al-Ma'mun entered Cappadocia and took Tyana; in 831 the army of Emperor Theophilos destroyed a large Abbasid raiding army at Charsianon and then plundered Cilicia.

838: The Battle of Dazimon

The largest clash in the surroundings of Amaseia took place in the summer of 838 on the plain of Dazimon. In 837 Theophilos had campaigned in the Euphrates region, destroyed Arsamosata and Sozopetra, and taken tribute and hostages from Melitene. In return Caliph al-Mu'tasim decided to take Amorium, one of the greatest cities of Anatolia and considered the origin of the ruling dynasty. According to the sources his soldiers had written "Amorium" on their shields and banners. The army assembled at Tarsus was divided into two main columns. The main army under the caliph would enter Cappadocia through the Cilician Gates and march on Ancyra. The second army, under Afshin, prince of Ushrusana, which included some ten thousand Turkish horse-archers and is estimated at twenty to thirty thousand men, would enter the Armeniac theme through the Hadath pass together with the forces of the emir of Melitene, Umar al-Aqta, and of the Armenian princes.

In mid-June Afshin crossed the Anti-Taurus and camped near the fort of Dazimon, between Amaseia and Tokat. Dazimon was a strategic place that the Byzantines also used as an assembly point. Theophilos learned of these movements in mid-July. Leaving a small force to watch the caliph's army on the Cilician Gates side, he marched east against Afshin with the larger part of his army (scholars put its size at roughly twenty-five to forty thousand men). On 21 July the two armies came in sight of each other, and the Byzantine army settled on the hill of Anzen south of Dazimon. Theophobos and the Domestic of the Schools, Manuel, proposed a night attack, but the emperor decided to leave it until the next day. In the fighting that began on the morning of 22 July the Byzantines were at first on top, pushed back the enemy wing and killed three thousand Arabs. Toward noon Theophilos detached two thousand men and the Kurdish contingent from the field to reinforce the other wing, and Afshin's horse-archers counter-attacked at precisely that moment. The Byzantine soldiers, unable to see the emperor in his place, thought he was dead, and the retreat turned into a rout.

Theophilos was surrounded on the hill of Anzen with his guard units and the Kurds. A sudden rain loosened the strings of the Turkish bows and made them unusable, while Afshin sent for catapults. The emperor, wounded several times, broke through the Arab lines and reached Chiliokomon. Whether it was Manuel or Theophobos who saved him is told differently in the sources. After the defeat at Dazimon, Ancyra was abandoned, the Arab armies united and marched on Amorium, and the city fell after a siege of two weeks. It is written that of a population of about seventy thousand only half survived, and the rest were sold as slaves. The event was among the heaviest blows to Byzantium in the ninth century, but the Abbasids did not follow up the success, and the caliph turned back on news of a revolt in his own country. When the rumour of Theophilos's death spread in Constantinople, Theophobos, commander of the Kurdish corps that had converted to Christianity, was proclaimed emperor at Sinope, surrendered peacefully the following year, and the "Persian" corps was dispersed. Dazimon is also important as the first encounter of the middle Byzantine army with Turkish horse-archers. The descendants of the same peoples, the Seljuks, would be Byzantium's principal rival in Anatolia a century later.

The Fragmentation of the Theme and the Defensive System

While the raids continued, Byzantium reorganised the defence of its frontier regions. In the late eighth and early ninth centuries small frontier districts called kleisourai were created to protect the interior of Anatolia from Arab raids. The term had earlier been used for fortified mountain passes of strategic importance, and then came to mean turning a whole district into a separate command under a kleisourarches. The task of these commanders was to wage regional guerrilla warfare against small and medium-sized raids. The Armeniac theme was affected by this division: to the south and east of the large theme, Charsianon and Cappadocia became first kleisourai and then full themes. Around 819 the coastal themes of Paphlagonia and Chaldia were split off, and the Koloneia region was placed under a doux and, by about 863, under a strategos. The Armeniac theme shrank to a core covering western Pontus.

In the ninth century the region of the Armeniac theme is recorded as able to field about nine thousand men and to contain seventeen fortresses. Charsianon was raised to full theme status between 863 and 873; according to Arab sources its strategos commanded four thousand men and four fortresses. The decisive period of the Arab raids closed with the weakening of the Abbasid state after 861 and the strengthening of Byzantium under the Macedonian dynasty. Even during the divisions Amaseia remained one of the centres of the defence of northern Anatolia. The settlement that Strabo had once described as a peaceful city of culture was now a frontier city where armies gathered, refuges were prepared and fortresses were watched.

Chronology

629: George, tourmarches of the Armeniakoi, is mentioned; this is the record that points to the early existence of the theme.

640s: The Armeniac theme forms from units withdrawn after the first wave of the Muslim conquests; it is also argued that the process extended into the 660s.

647: Muslim raiders sack Kayseri (Caesarea Mazaca).

663: Euchaita, on the road to Amaseia, is captured by Arab raiders and the church of Saint Theodore is destroyed.

667-668: Saborios, strategos of the Armeniacs, revolts; Muawiya sends him troops; the revolt ends with Saborios's death.

692: Battle of Sebastopolis; Byzantium is defeated after the betrayal of the Slavic corps of Neboulos.

712: Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik takes Amaseia together with the surrounding forts.

716-718: Maslama's campaign against Constantinople; Artabasdos, strategos of the Armeniacs, supports Leo III.

730: The fortress of Charsianon falls to the Arabs.

740: Battle of Akroinon; the Arab army is defeated by Constantine V.

743: Niketas, son of Artabasdos, and the Armeniac troops are defeated at Modrina.

810 or 811: The strategos of the Armeniacs and his treasury pass to the Arabs near Euchaita.

831: Theophilos destroys an Abbasid raiding army at Charsianon.

22 July 838: Battle of Dazimon (Anzen); Theophilos is defeated by Afshin, and Amorium then falls.

863-873: Charsianon is raised to full theme status.

Sources

Primary sources

  • Strabo. Geography, Book XII (description of Amaseia).

Academic studies

  • Apak, Adem. "Emevîler Döneminde Anadolu'da Arap-Bizans Mücadelesi." Uludağ Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 18/2 (2009): 95-122.

Books

  • Haldon, John F. Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformation of a Culture. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
  • Haldon, John F. Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World, 565-1204. UCL Press, 1999.
  • Treadgold, Warren T. Byzantium and Its Army, 284-1081. Stanford University Press, 1995.

Other sources

  • Şahin, İlhan; Emecen, Feridun. "Amasya." TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Mesleme b. Abdülmelik." TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Theophanes the Confessor. Chronographia (Anno Mundi 6204: Maslama's capture of Amaseia).
  • Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire I: Maslama 1.
  • Entries on the Armeniac Theme, Charsianon, Euchaita, Saborios, Sebastopolis and the Battle of Anzen (encyclopaedic compilations based on the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium).

Online sources