As Winter finally turned to Spring, Isaac’s army finished final preparations for the coming campaign, likely leaving their garrisons in Antioch in early April 1065. The force (probably around 10,000 strong, mostly Tagmatic cavalrymen with the usual supporting cast of Thematic infantry) made good time heading east, crossing the Euphrates River and arriving in Kurdish territory only two weeks later. The Romans apparently ran into very little resistance, and Isaac’s army was able to lay siege to the Marwanids’ capital of Amed on the 17th. While the Kurds had left 3,000 militia to defend the city’s fortifications, Shah Nasr al-Dawla and the bulk of his army were conspicuously missing. Evidently this didn’t concern the Basileus much, as he soon received word that his eastern flank was secure, thanks to a second Roman army advancing south towards Kurdish territory from Theodosiopolis. [1] This pincer movement of sorts was planned over the proceeding winter, where Isaac made a very uncharacteristic decision-- letting another man command a field army.
Romanos Diogenes was a member of that ever-threatening group of Anatolian aristocrats, which too often were the lynchpin of security and political instability in the eastern Themes. His combination of military skill and theoretically royal blood (the nephew of the emperor Romanos III) had led him to a successful career in the Army, where he had served under Isaac in the battles against the Pechenegs along the Danube frontier. These talents, connections, and experience of course led him to be viewed by the Basileus as a potential rival claimant to the throne [2], which is almost certainly why Isaac chose to award him command of 10,000 Thematic troops which were gathering in the Armenian highlands. Hailing from the central plateau region of Cappadocia, the Basileus likely also viewed his familiarity with the eastern borderlands as strategically useful. The intent was to use Diogenes’ army as a slow-moving distraction force which would provide the anvil that Isaac’s more mobile Tagmatic troops would be able to push the Kurds into. As is typical in warfare however, this plan did not survive the opening moved of the conflict, and the Basileus’ uncontested advance on the Kurdish capital was the first indication that this was the case.
Initial Roman plan of attack into Kurdish territories.
Events quickly came to a head by June 15, when the garrisoned town of Van fell to a surprise attack from Nasr ar-Dawla. Evidently the Kurdish Shah had snuck his 7,000-strong force through the rough terrain around Lake Van, and seized the area around the city, eventually securing Bayazid to the north as well. As part of this flanking maneuver, the Kurdish raiders also sacked and burned numerous churches and monasteries, including the prestigious Cathedral of the Holy Cross. With one move, the Kurds had swung north of the Lake, outflanked both Isaac and Diogenes’ armies, and threatened the now lightly defended Theodosiopolis.
The Holy Cross Cathedral, a 10th-century Armenian church and monastic complex located on an island in Lake Van.
Upon receiving reports of the situation, Isaac immediately lifted the siege of Amed and moved east, believing it was more important to surround and crush the Kurdish Army before it could cut both of his armies’ supply lines in the north. Sending orders to Diogenes to do the same, the Romans spent nearly the entire months of July and August maneuvering inside Kurdish territory, attempting to convince the Shah to come south out of the Armenian highlands. Despite a small battle outside Hisn Kayfa (which saw Isaac’s army stumble across and wipe out a detachment of 1,000 enemy cavalry), this period of the war saw little action besides posturing on both sides. This stalemate of course, could not last forever.
On August 18th, Isaac received a letter from Diogenes stating that his army had rounded the northern coast of Lake Van, re-secured Bayazid, and pushing ar-Dawla’s troops south. However, Roman scouts had lost track of the Kurdish positions, and there was telling if the Kurds had decided to sit tight in Van itself, or retreat back into their own territory. Unfortunately for Isaac, his army would soon be the ones to stumble across the missing Kurdish troops, who had once again outmaneuvered the Romans by moving significantly faster than any of Isaac’s generals believe they could. Only two days later, the lead echelon of the Basileus’ army found itself ambushed along the Tigris river. The Roman troops very quickly found themselves surrounded, with a second group of enemy soldiers advancing rapidly from the south and west. The initial reports of the Shah’s army being only 7,000-strong were clearly very, very wrong.
Evidently, ar-Dawla had negotiated the recruitment of at least 7,000 Harwan Syrian mercenaries sometime earlier in August. This force was advancing north-east, aiming to link up with the Shah, eventually doing so only a few days before engaging the Romans. With this combined force, Isaac was outnumbered by nearly 4,000 men, and fighting on both the east and south. Despite the superior discipline of the Basileus’ well-drilled Tagmatic troops, the Romans were handily defeated in the hills outside Hisn Kayfa by the more mobile Muslim army. To his credit however, Isaac managed to keep his army together as a coherent unit, retreating in good order back towards Cilicia. Unfortunately for the beleaguered emperor though, the bad news was not over. The Kurds had called up on another ally in the north, and only a week after the disaster at Hisn Kayfa reports started arriving that Roman territory in the Crimea was being ravaged by Gazakh raiders. With Isaac’s army retreating all the way into the Taurus Mountains, and Diogenes alone on the coast of Lake Van, there was little the Romans could do to stem the tide of the Kurds. As Autumn turned to Winter, ar-Dawla advanced further west, capturing Edessa and eventually putting the great city of Antioch under siege in early December. As 1065 came to a close, the situation for the Romans looked bleak at best, and potentially disastrous at worst. Michael Psellus (who claimed to be on campaign with Isaac at the time) writes that there was significant discontent in the army camp. Even the news of Diogenes’ successful recapture of the city of Van on December 18th could do little to improve overall morale. Despite this, the Basileus remained committed to the war, adding 3,000 local troops from the Cilician Theme and beginning the cold march south towards Antioch, braving the passes of the coastal Taurus ranges in order to relieve the city.
Similar to the year before though, 1066 began well for the Romans. Almost immediately after exiting the mountains, Isaac’s troops cornered another detachment of Kurdish cavalry and slaughtered them almost to a man. The loss of this force (likely intended to reinforce ar-Dawla outside Antioch) convinced the Shah that his position so far west was untenable, especially with the steady advance of Diogenes’ army in the east. Isaac’s scouts reported this movement almost immediately, and he quickly swung his troops round to pursue the Shah’s retreating army.
Luckily for the Romans, the Basileus’ Tagmatic troops were mostly mounted, and even most of the auxiliary infantrymen from the surrounding themes had mules to ride on. Isaac was able to make up the gap between him and the retreating Kurds within ten days, cutting them off from the fortress city of Ayntab, where the Romans forced a battle on February 18th. While strategically a sound move, Isaac’s gamble to engage the Kurds in the broken and hill terrain surrounding the city could have very easily backfired. Despite this, Psellus tells us of a relatively straightforward battle, where the Roman Kataphraktoi easily drove off the Kurdish light cavalry, enabling the Thematic infantry to move in and disperse the Shah’s remaining troops into the hillside. When all was said in done, the Romans lost over 4,500 soldiers (nearly 30% of the troops in Isaac’s army), while the Kurds probably took slightly more casualties. Despite the heavy casualties, the Battle of Ayntab quickly turned the tide of the war, as the Shah was now unable to put an army into the field that was capable of resisting either of the Roman hosts approaching his territory. Follow-up Roman victories outside Edessa in March paved the way for Diogenes’ troops to completely occupy the eastern half of Kurdish territory by the end of April.
The remainder of 1066 is relatively fuzzy to historians-- at some point in the summer Isaac was able to advance back into ar-Dawla’s territory and put his capital Amed under siege. Diogenes followed suit by swinging south of Isaac and capturing the last Kurdish fortress in the south sometime in December, engaging and defeating 6,000 enemy infantry in the process. The next major event Psellus speaks of in his history is Isaac marching victoriously into Amed on 1 June, 1067, and accepting the Shah’s surrender. This gap of a year makes it even less likely that the infamous bureaucrat was actually on campaign with Isaac, but his incessant need to place himself at the center of Imperial action during his lifetime is endearing to readers nonetheless. Commentary on medieval historians aside, the Isaac’s only major expedition eastward ended in a successful peace shortly after the Kurdish capital fell. The Shah agreed to surrender the city of Amed and the surrounding land to the Roman Empire, provide yearly tribute payments as reparations, allow Roman traders full access to Kurdish markets, and a final donative of 10 ducats. What is interesting about this peace treaty is that it resulted in the first time a Sunni-majority city was absorbed into the Empire and the Muslim population was not forced to either convert or leave. Isaac (supported by the civil service and infuriating the Anatolian magnates) likely figured that there was no way to successfully expel and re-colonize Amad with a Christian population so quickly after the conflict. For now, the Kurdish city would be given a high degree of autonomy and allowed to continue much as it did before-- only their taxes would now go west to Constantinople.
Modern-day ruins of the Amed city walls, which Isaac broke in a siege in 1067.
Unfortunately, after the conclusion of hostilities in Kurdistan, we know painfully little about the rest of Isaac’s reign. The political problems he faced before the war certainly still remained, but likely to a lesser degree now that he had proven himself militarily on both the east and western frontiers of the Empire. Romanos Diogenes by most accounts proved himself relatively capable (and loyal) during the war, and was rewarded handsomely with promotion to become Strategos of the prestigious Armeniakon Theme. Unfortunately, Isaac still suffered ironically poor relations with the military aristocracy throughout the rest of his reign. By the time of his death, the bureaucratic faction (led by Michael Psellus of course) cemented their control over the institutions of government in Constantinople.
One area where Isaac’s reputation was rehabilitated though was with the urban mob of the capital. Military victory always breeds popularity, but the Basileus’ wife was arguably the real reason why the Imperial Family felt confident leaving the confines of the Palace occasionally. During the Kurdish war, the Balissa Catherine invested significant resources into rebuilding public health infrastructure in the city. Leper Hospitals, poor houses, and other public facilities were refurbished with gold captured in the east, all of which endeared her to the urban mob. Catherine was also likely responsible for negotiating another marriage, sending an unnamed princess to Georgia to solidify the bond between Constantinople and Kutaisi. By all accounts, she acted as something of a regent while the Basileus was off on campaign. With no male children of their own, it was probably Catherine that began grooming her nephew Alexios as heir, a situation that became official upon Isaac’s return to the capital. The young Alexios was crowned Caesar sometime in late 1067, and began accompanying the Basileus during all major court ceremonies. Noticeably, Isaac allowed the young Caesar to preside over the Ambassador of Salerno’s visit to Constantinople in August, where the small Duchy willingly offered itself as a vassal to the Empire.
The remainder of the 1060s was relatively quiet. The Basileus spent a good deal of time in Constantinople trying to keep the balance of power between the bureaucrats and the aristocrats, but he conducted at least one small-scale purge of the civil servants sometime in early 1069, eventually also having to confront the monasteries again for accumulating too much land around the Capital. Although he was approaching 63 years of age, Isaac had lost none of his characteristic energy and work ethic, and began laying the groundwork for a major campaign to the west. Taking advantage of the remaining captured Kurdish wealth, Isaac began to plan a major series of military reforms. While he would not live to see the results of these efforts, these changes almost certainly allowed the Roman Army to more effectively conduct expeditionary-style wars in Italy over the coming decades. Isaac’s long-term plan to begin the reconquest of Sicily was beginning to come to fruition, but the Basileus was realistic enough to realize it would take years of preparation to both the military and the Empire’s infrastructure to allow him to sustain such a campaign. Unfortunately, he never had the chance to see these preparations through, as word reached the Capital in June of 1070 that a massive revolt had broken out in the Duchy of Salerno.
While Salerno had been an Imperial vassal now for over three years, this decision had been extremely unpopular with most of the elites of the Duchy. Principally, this resentment festered in the predominantly Catholic clergy and nobles, who still believed they owed their true allegiance to Rome-- not Constantinople. The 20,000 or so peasants which were convinced to rebel quickly overpowered the Duke’s small regiment of guardsmen, and the entirety of the countryside was soon lost. This news (as can be imagined) did not please Isaac, who immediately ordered the Imperial Navy to set sail for Dyrrachium on the Adriatic coast. The Basileus quickly gathered the Tagmata, summoned the western Thematic troops to meet him, and began marching across the Balkans. It came as a huge shock to all when one the morning of August 2nd, 1070, the Besieus Isaac I Komnenos was found dead in his tent, probably from a heart attack in his sleep. It was now up to the young Alexios to carry on the torch of Roman civilization against the Catholic forces in Italy.
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[1] Modern-day Turkish city of Erzurum.
[2] Historically he became Romanos IV, the Emperor who lost the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 and was captured by the Seljuk Sultan Arp Aslan.