Foundation and Enlargement
The theme was created by the emperor Basil II (976-1025) from the lands inherited from the Georgian prince David III of Tao. These areas – parts of the Armeno-Georgian marchlands centered on Thither Tao / Tayk as well as several northern districts of western Armenia including Theodosioupolis (Karin; now Erzurum, Turkey), Basean, Hark’, Apahunik’, Mardali (Mardaghi), Khaldoyarich, and Ch’ormayari – had been granted to David for his crucial assistance to Basil against the rebel commander Bardas Sclerus in 979. However, David’s rebuff of Basil in Bardas Phocas’ revolt of 987 evoked Constantinople’s distrust of the Caucasian rulers. After the failure of the revolt, David was forced to make Basil II the legatee of his extensive possessions.
Basil gathered his inheritance upon David’s death in 1000, forcing the successor Georgian Bagratid ruler Bagrat III to recognize the new rearrangement. Bagrat’s son, George I, however, inherited a longstanding claim to David’s succession. While Basil was preoccupied with his Bulgarian campaigns, George gained momentum to invade Tao/Tayk and Basean in 1014. Defeated in the ensuing Byzantine-Georgian wars, George had to relinquish further lands – Kola, Artaan and Javakheti – to the Byzantine crown in 1022. These provinces were organized by Basil II into the theme of Iberia with the capital at Theodosiopolis. As a result, the political center of the Georgian state moved north, as did a significant part of the Georgian nobility, while the empire gained a critical foothold for further expansion into the territories of Armenia and Georgia.
Basil next claimed the principal Armenian Bagratid kingdom of Ani, currently straddling the division between Gagik I’s sons, John-Smbat and Ashot I. In 1022, John-Smbat, as penalty for having supported Georgia, yielded his appanage to the Byzantine Empire. By the mid-1040s, Emperor Constantine IX (1042-55) had broken the resistance of the survived Bagratids of Ani and forced the catholicos Peter into surrendering Ani in 1045. The kingdom was merged with the theme of Iberia and the capital was transferred from Theodosioupolis to Ani. Henceforth, the theme of Iberia was administered jointly with Greater Armenia and the enlarged theme was frequently referred to as the "theme of Iberia and Armenia".
In 1064 the last independent Armenian kingdom, that of Kars, was absorbed into imperial territory when Gagik II of Kars was bullied into abdication in favor of Emperor Constantine X (1059-67) to prevent his state from being conquered by the Seljuk Turks. The royal family moved to Cappadocia, probably accompanied by their nobility who were inveigled by the Byzantine administration into ceding their estates in return for lands further west. The event was preceded by the Seljuk capture of Ani and the theme’s center was shifted back to Theodosioupolis.
Read more about this topic: Iberia (theme)
Famous quotes containing the words foundation and/or enlargement:
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... when I exclaim against novels, I mean when contrasted with those works which exercise the understanding and regulate the imagination.—For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers ...”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)