Two Works on Trebizond

Mediterranean Historical Review, 2021

This article examines the merchant and commodity networks of Trebizond as well as routes at the regional, interregional, and international levels that connected the city to Constantinople, the rest the Black Sea, Armenia, the Near East and the Caucuses in the early Middle Ages. After a brief survey of the commercial history of Trebizond from the late antique period to the eleventh century, the economy of the Pontic region and its commercial exchanges with various regions are investigated in detail. The available evidence shows that the list of commodities exchanged between Pontos and its neighbours were longer, and the networks of merchants and routes were more complex than assumed thus far. Trebizond's advantage as a port town for landlocked territories to its south and east (especially the large Iranian and Iraqi markets at the end of the Silk/Spice Route), as well as its close ties with Constantinople and the rest of the Black Sea, established the Pontic capital as a vital emporium. Benefiting from the increasing economic development in Byzantium and its neighbours, the prosperity of the Pontic region and is main city Trebizond is most visible in the period from the mid-ninth to the mid-eleventh centuries.

2011

Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 2019

It has often been said it would be impossible to write the history of the empire of Trebizond (1204-1461) without the terse and often frustratingly laconic chronicle of the Grand Komnenoi by the protonotarios of Alexios III (1349-1390), Michael Panaretos. While recent scholarship has infinitely enhanced our knowledge of the world in which Panaretos lived, it has been approximately seventy years since a scholar dedicated a historiographical study to the text. This study examines the world that Panaretos wanted posterity to see, examining how his post as imperial secretary and his use of sources shaped his representation of reality, whether that reality was Trebizond’s experience of foreigners, the reign of Alexios III, or a narrative that showed the superiority of Trebizond on the international stage. Finally by scrutinizing Panaretos in this way, this paper also illuminates how modern historians of Trebizond have been led astray by the chronicler, unaware of how Panaretos selected material for inclusion for the narratives of his chronicle.

Ankara Üniversitesi Güneydoğu Avrupa Çalışmaları Uygulama ve Araştırma Merkezi Dergisi, 2012

Bu makale, Trabzon Rum İmparatorluğu (1204-1461) hakkında yeni verileri, İtalyan arşivlelerinden çıkan materyaller ışığında analiz etmektedir.

The empire of Trebizond, founded by a grandson of emperor Andronikos I Komnenos in the chaos following the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the last Byzantine state to fall to the Ottoman Turks (in 1461), occupied a unique position in the later middle ages as a focus for transcontinental commerce and as a state which had close ties with the Georgian and Turkomen polities to its east as well as the Byzantine, French and Italian states to its west. These ties were solidified by a series of astute dynastic marriages that make the Grand Komnenoi, the ruling dynasty of Trebizond for the period of its history as an empire, of particular interest to the genealogist and prosopographer. The present paper corrects the accreted errors of past generations and sets out, for the first time, a scholarly account of the genealogy of the Grand Komnenoi.

CoinWeek.com, 2021

THE SOUTHERN SHORE of the Black Sea is a narrow strip of fertile land–famed for excellent hazelnuts–between the sea and the rugged Anatolian plateau. The coastal fortress of Trebizond (“Trapezus” to the ancient Greeks and Romans, now Trabzon, Turkey) was the capital of a small, but remarkably durable medieval empire, remembered as the last independent outpost of Byzantine Civilization. We know something about the coinage of this lost empire thanks to diligent research by a handful of scholars and collectors during the past century, notably the great British numismatist Simon Bendall (1937-2019).