[Armagan]

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from Pachymeres it becomes quite clear that the sultan reached the imperial court (probably at Nymphaeum) before Constantinople was retaken from the Franks (25th July, 1261) and only entered the capital afterwards (probably in the retinue of the emperor who always kept him at his side). This mistake of the Seljuk author, who in general is well informed, must not astonish us: once the fugitive Sultan was beyond the frontiers genuine information about him was no longer available at Konia. Of course, also in exile he remained an object of interest — but news was rare, vague, belated — sometimes mere rumour. Ibn Bībī’s entire account of the ‘Izzeddīn episode is mixed with romance [52] and may well be due to the tales of the late sultan’s servants who had returned with Mas’ūd. Therefore the somewhat later Byzantines are here not only more explicit but also more trustworthy than the strictly contemporary Seljuk author.
§ 2. No trace of this is found in Ibn Bībī, a fact which was used to discredit the entire information given in this paragraph [53] — as if the chancery in Konia either would or could care about nomad movements on a distant frontier. As we have said, Yazjoghlu relies here on the genuine, oral Qaras tradition, but in order to link it closely with the preceding passage he introduces a meeting of the basileus with the sultan and one of his generals. It is in the form of their complaint to Michael VIII that we learn about the general situation. They describe it admirably: how understandable, indeed, that the Turkish soldiers who now fought for the emperor did not like the idea of spending their life, far from their families, in barracks. Recruited among nomads, they naturally desired that their clans should be near them. As Michael VIII’s campaigns were fought at that time exclusively in the Balkans, the kinsfolk of these Turkish troops had to be brought to Europe though, if possible, not into a Byzantine province. To assign to them the Dobruja was the ideal solution: this ‘corridor’ through which the Tatars of the Golden Horde again and again swept down for deep incursions into the Balkans, was nominally part of Bulgaria but in reality more or less a no-man’s-land. Besides, Michael VIII was on bad terms with the Bulgarian’s and as ‘restorer of the empire’ would not have hesitated to dispose of a territory once Byzantine, though actually not in his possession. Immediately after the reconquest of Constantinople he had re-established Byzantine control of the Danube delta, where Vicina was an outlying possession, communicating with the empire only by sea. [54] To back this outpost by filling its hinterland, the Dobruja, with warlike allies and to erect there an obstacle against the Tatar incursions was excellent policy. The nomads, on their part, would slip into the Bulgarian Dobruja as inconsiderately as they had crossed the Byzantine-Seljuk frontier — and again, of course, no
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(this time Byzantine) source would take notice of their movement. Our text says expressly that the immigrants, in their new abode, had to fight with the emperor’s enemies and overwhelmed them. The figures it ascribes to them are no more than a way of saying: numerous. As already stated, the mention of Ṣar Ṣaltq is here but a ‘fore-runner’ of the Ṣar Ṣaltq-Baraq story. On the other hand, the latter as well as the Karaferia story must also have contained something about the Dobruja Turks whose existence they presuppose.
§ 3. Here the account returns to Ibn Bībī but with the addition: ‘(two) older (sons)’ and the omission of the ‘mother’. [56] The addition is made in view of the Karaferia as well as the Baraq story, each of which presupposes a prince left behind for good. Since Ibn Bībī later shows Mas’ūd and Kayūmerth as present in the Crimea at their father’s death (though he does not say how they came there), Yazjoghlu had to present them as the ‘older’ princes (leaving the reader to infer their escape with ‘Izzeddīn) and to invent the two younger sons of § 4. The mother, on the other hand, had to be omitted here since she was needed for the Karaferia story (§ 4).
§ 4. First instalment of the Karaferia story: here we find the ‘mother’ left out in the preceding paragraph; she is described as ‘a sister of the basileus’ which does not come from Ibn Bībī and is certainly not true; we know, however, that she was a Christian. [57] One of the two princes is evidently only a ‘fore-runner’ of the Baraq story.
The linking of Ibn Bībī’s account with the Karaferia story was obviously facilitated, and even perhaps suggested, by the occurrence in the latter of the Anaqaps, the ‘Mother-Gate’, thus named because the tolls collected there had been assigned to ‘Izzeddīn’s mother. But how, in a Byzantine town, should a gate bear a Turkish name? Clearly, anaqaps must represent something Greek. In a text of 1219 we see tenants (in this case: of vineyards) liable to make to
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their landlord an annual payment called anacapsi. [58] No doubt, the gate in Karaferia, where ‘tolls’ were levied, was the place where the peasants had to deliver to the landlord (residing in the town) their annual due, the anacapsi, and was therefore called ‘Anacapsi-Gate’, a name which inevitably had to become in Turkish Anaqaps. In this Turkish form the gate assumed an important role in the Karaferia story — it is even possible that the figure of the ‘mother’, who is the ‘sister of the basileus’, is entirely derived from Anakaps.
§ 5. Ibn Bībī unchanged. [59] As to the facts told by Ibn Bībī in § 3 and in this passage, they are again in general confirmed by the Byzantine and some other sources though concerning the details these sources are at variance with Ibn Bībī as well as with each other. [60] ‘Izzeddīn’s liberation by Berke Khān’s Tatars appears to have taken place towards 1265.
§ 6. Ibn Bībī, [61] but adapted to the Karaferia story: the tower from which the mother throws herself is in the original the tower of the fortress where she shares the captivity of her grandsons Mas’ūd and Kayūmerth. To locate the suicide at the Anakaps is little short of explaining the name of the gate by this dramatic event. This, however, Yazjoghlu does not do — obviously out of respect for the Karaferia tradition, where the name Anakaps already had an explanation (§ 4), though a much less romantic one.
§ 7. The Karaferia and Baraq stories combined.
§ 8. Ibn Bībī. [62] Only whereas he speaks of the captivity of two sons (i.e. Mas’ūd and Kayūmerth), Yazjoghlu tacitly understands by the ‘two sons’ the two younger princes of his invention.
§§ 9 and 10. This emigration from and re-emigration into the Dobruja may seem at first to be nothing but an invention of Yazjoghlu intended to keep the Dobruja story in step with that of ‘Izzeddīn. If it be an invention, how admirably does it fit into the context! For ‘Izzeddīn, as Ibn Bībī shows him, resided in the Crimea with many followers, all endowed with fiefs by
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Berke Khān, which presupposes that many of the Turkish soldiers had been able to make their way to him. Since their escape route led through the Dobruja their kinsfolk there were informed of what was happening. Soon there was again a Turkish army — this time in the Crimea — wanting to have their clans near them — a desire which, of course, needed Berke Khān’s agreement to be fulfilled. However, certainly not all the nomads will have left the Dobruja since, according to Gregoras, [63] many of their young men were still fighting as Tourkopouloi under the emperor’s banners (having accepted baptism). That after ‘Izzeddīn’s death in 1280 it should have been Berke Khān who ordered the nomads back to the Dobruja, is of course an anachronism — he had died in 1266. The mention of Ṣar Ṣaltq in both paragraphs is nothing but a ‘forerunner’ of the Baraq story.
That such a migration to and from the Crimea did take place finds strong support in Pachymeres [64] who, dealing with the Tourkopouloi in the years soon after 1300, describes them as Christians of only recent date and only recently arrived in the empire ‘from the Northern regions’. Furthermore, when mentioning their defection to the Catalans in 1307 and the possible reasons thereof, he speaks of their fear that the emperor might yield to the demand of the khān of the Golden Horde who wanted them back as his subjects. [65] The khān must therefore have had a real claim upon them, and one which was of fairly recent date. On the other hand, Gregoras says that the Tourkopouloi were those Turkish soldiers who after the sultan’s flight stayed on in the empire; they were baptized and enrolled in the army, [66] their numbers being maintained by their own offspring. [67] To a certain degree he may be right: undoubtedly there were isolated groups of Turkish soldiers who being posted to various duties were unable to leave the empire with the sultan — but the bulk of the ‘Seljuk army in exile’ must, at the critical moment, have been in winter quarters (the Tatars had come over the frozen Danube!), i.e. with or near their families — as we assume in the Dobruja — and could therefore join their sultan. They may have remained with the Tatars for some time after ‘Izzeddīn’s death; when at length they returned, for whatever reason, the emperor accepted them no longer as a ‘Seljuk army in exile’ but as a regular corps of his army, i.e. as Byzantine, Christian soldiers. Significantly enough this corps is not mentioned before the events of 1307 in which, as we shall see, it played a considerable role.