Formation of The Empire
In April 1204, shortly before the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade, the 22-year-old Alexios, occupied Trebizond with the aid of a Georgian contingent provided by his aunt, Queen Tamar of Georgia.
The Komnenos family was popular on the Black Sea coast, from which it had come originally and had long ties to the region. In 1182 his grandfather Andronikos had a stronghold at Oinaion between Trebizond and Sinope. Those three places all declared for Alexios, and while he remained cautiously in the neighbourhood of Trebizond, his brother David, aided by the Georgians and local mercenaries, made himself master of Pontus and Paphlagonia, including Kastamonou, said to be the ancestral castle of the Komnenoi. David conquered as far west as Herakleia Pontike well on the way to Constantinople.
Alexios took the title of Emperor of the Romans and may have also taken the title Grand Komnenos (Megas Komnenos), but this appellation does not appear until the Annales of George Acropolites. The new title and the Trapezuntine dynasty would last 257 years — the longest, as Bessarion wrote, in Byzantine history. From Herakleia the new state extended east to Trebizond itself and then to Soterioupolis on the Georgian frontier. Alexios made parts of the Crimea tributary to Trebizond. Cherson, Kerch and their hinterlands were governed as an overseas province called Perateia ('beyond the sea'). The loss of Sinope to the Seljuk Turks of Rum in 1214 isolated Trebizond from direct contact with (and further territorial encroachment by) the Empire of Nicaea. Trapezuntine foreign policy now focused on relations with Georgia, the Sultanate of Iconium, the Italian maritime cities (especially the Genoese, and the small emirates of Erzerum and Erzincan.
The Komnenoi faced dangers. Besides the Empire of Nicaea established by Theodore I Laskaris, Theodore Mangaphas held Philadelphia, and Manuel Maurozomes made himself secure on the Maeander by giving his daughter in marriage to Kaykhusraw I, the Seljuk Sultan of Iconium who was lord of the greater part of Asia Minor. The distant Armenian kingdom in Cilicia and the Armenian colony in the Troad were not threats. Alexios was allied to Georgia. The treaty by which the Latin conquerors of Constantinople had partitioned the empire assigned much of the new Trapezuntine state - Paphlagonia, Oinaion, Amisous, and Sinope to the Latin Emperor.
Read more about this topic: Alexios I Of Trebizond
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