Home ▸ Catalog ▸ |Byzantine Coins| ▸ |Byzantine Mints| ▸ |Trebizond||View Options: | | | Following the Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, Trebizond came under Seljuk rule. This rule proved transient when an expert soldier and local aristocrat, Theodore Gabras took control of the city from the Turkish invaders, and regarded Trebizond, in the words of Anna Comnena, "as a prize which had fallen to his own lot" and ruled it as his own kingdom. Alexius I recognized him as Dux of Chaldia. Although he was killed by the Turks in 1098, other members of his family continued his de facto independent rule into the next century. Following the dissolution of the Byzantine Empire by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the region became the center of the new Empire of Trebizond which survived until falling to the Ottomans in 1461. |