On Isaac Ducas Comnenus’ Cypriot “separatist” state (A.D. 1184/85-1191)

The last of the Cypriot revolts against Byzantium

ISBN978-960-02-3539-5
Σελίδες184
Έτος πρώτης έκδοσης2019
Έτος τρέχουσας έκδοσης2019
Σχήμα 14 x 21

8,48

Σε απόθεμα

T­his monograph consists of a detailed examination of the career of the rebel ex-governor of Byzantine Cyprus, Isaac(ius) Ducas Comnenus, who succeeded in setting up an independent ‘Territorialstaat’ from the last Comnenus and the first Angelus emperors of Constantinople, between A.D. 1184/85 and 1191, ruling despotically with the title basileus, thwarting in collusion with the Normans of Sicily a menacing Constantinopolitan expedition against him (1186/87) and even minting his own coinage there. Following his defeat by a landing force of the knights of the Third Crusade (1191), he was forced to surrender his possessions and territories to the English crusader king Richard I Lionheart. His seven-year tumultuous regime, which was to earn him countless negative assessments from a variety of divergent contemporary and later primary sources (Greek, Latin and Oriental), was associated with the final period of Byzantine rule –albeit of a separatist nature– in Cyprus, which from A.D. 1191/92 onwards, havingbeen violently severed from the main body of the Byzantine Empire, was to play a significant part in the historical developments within the ‘Latinocracy’ period in the south-eastern Mediterranean.

Συγγραφέας

Savvides Alexios G.C.

Alexios G.C. Savvides (Athens, 1955) is Professor of Medieval and Byzantine history at Peloponnesos University (Kalamata-Greece), vice-chairman of the Committee for Pontic Studies (Athens), founding editor of the annual «Byzantinos Domos» (Athens-Thessalonica) and co-editor of the collective «Encyclopaedic Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine history and civilization» (Turnhout: Brepols). Formerly a researcher of Byzantine history at the Hellenic National Research Foundation (Athens) and a professor of Medieval and Byzantine history at Aegean University (Rhodes), he has published extensively, while he is a contributor to the «Encyclopaedia of Islam» (2nd & 3rd editions, Leiden: Brill) and to «The Crusades: an encyclopedia» (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio). His main research interests include Byzantium’s relations with the Turcophone peoples, Byzantine prosopography and genealogy, the history of Byzantine Pontus and the Empire of the Grand Comneni and the history and historical geography of Greek lands and islands in the Middle Ages and the early Ottoman domination period.