History of Cilicia
The history of Armenian Cilicia[1] begins with the ill-conceived policies
of Constantinople. The tenth century was a period
of relative prosperity for the Armenians under the
Bagratid dynasty. However, in the first two decades
of the eleventh century the Greeks succeeded in occupying
much of Greater Armenia. By 1045 they forced King
Gagik II of Ani to relinquish his throne. Soon
Emperor Constantine Monomachus ordered the forced
resettlement of Armenians into the regions of Caesarea,
Sebastea, Tarsus, Antioch, Edessa, and Maras. The
latter three cities quickly became prominent Armenian
principalities that endured until they were absorbed into
various Crusader states. The reduced numbers of
indigenous Armenians in the regions of Van and Ani left
the Byzantines poorly prepared to halt the Seljuk
invasions. The fateful battle occurred in 1071 on
the hilly plain of Malazgirt (Manzikert), where the
Turkish forces decisvely defeated the Greeks and captured
Emperor Romanus Diogenes.[2] As a result, all of Anatolia was
opened to nomadic invasion.
Although Cilicia was to become the
most successful and enduring of the Armenian settlements,
the Greeks seem to have held political suzerainty there
throughout most of the eleventh century. The
earliest known Armenian migration into Cilicia occurred
in the first quarter of the tenth century when fifty
petty nobles from the house of Sasun moved there together
with their families.[3] By the mid-eleventh
century the trickle had turned into a flood. The
Byzantines were repopulating the garrison forts of the
Taurus with these displaced Armenians. As trusted
vassals the Armenians also assumed administrative roles
in the province. For at least four years between
1072 and 1085 we know that the Byzantine governor of
Tarsus was the Armenian noble Apllarip. His father,
Hasan, was a lesser prince in the province of Vaspurakan
and has served in the army of Emperor Michael V. Apllarip
is said to have given the fort of Lambrõ (Lampron) to
one of his generals, Õsin.[4] Õsin settled his family and
retainers at Lambrõn; his heirs founded the
Het’umid dynasty, one of the two great families in
Armenian Cilicia. Not only did the Het’umids
support Greek policy through the first half of the
twelfth century, but many even adopted the calendar and
liturgy of the orthodox Greek Church.
The history of the founding of the
Rubenids, the rivals of the Het’umids, is not so
easily confirmed in our extant sources.[5] It seems that the Bagratid King
Gagik II, who had resettled in the district of Caesarea,
was openly hostile to his Greek neighbors. Apllarip,
perhaps at the request of his Greek masters, sought an
alliance with Gagik by offering his daughter to
Gagik’s elder son, David. Soon after the
marriage David was imprisoned in the castle of Lambrõn
(or in Paperõn/Çandir). Gagik made the long
journey to Tarsus in order to ransom his son. On
his return trip Gagik was captured by the Greeks who were
waiting in ambush, and taken to the fortress of Cybistra,
where he was killed. His impaled body was chained
to the ramparts of the fort. Ruben, one of
Gagik’s semilegendary chieftains (and perhaps
relative), eventually fled with his retinue to the fort
of Kapitar[6] in Cilicia. We know that around
1097 Constantine, Ruben’s son, captured the fortress
of Vahga, a strategic link on the road connecting Sis to
Cappadocia. Both Constantine and Õsin of Lambrõn
provided supplies to the First Crusade in 1097.[7] Constantine avoided any
involvement in the struggle between Baldwin, Tancred, the
Greeks, and the Turks for control of Cilicia Pedias.
Eventually the Crusaders moved to the south and east,
retaining control of Tarsus, Adana, and Misis as well as
the fortresses at Anavarza, Savranda, and Toprak.
At Constantine’s death
(between 1100 and 1102) his son, T’oros I, assumed
the leadership of the Rubenid clan and framed a policy
for expansion that was eventually to lead to the
unification of Armenian Cilicia under one king. T’oros
built a number of mountain fortresses and, perhaps by
1111, had seized Anavarza from its Frankish (or
Byzantine) occupants. T’oros was the first
Armenian leader to establish permanent settlements in the
plain. The event in T`oros to which the Armenian
chronicles devote considerable attention is his capture
of Cybistra. In killing the sons of Mandale, the
lords of Cybistra and murderers of King Gagik, he avenged
his clan and preserved the honor of Armenia. T`oros
brough back considerable amount of booty including an
icon that he placed in his newly constructed baronial
church at Anavarza.[8] T`oros was successful in
maintaining a good relations with the Turks, Crusaders,
and Byzantines by following a policy of non-involvement.
The only exception was in 1118 when he dispatched a
company of Armenian troops under his brother Levon to
assist Roger of Antioch in his capture of `Azãz.
After the death of Baron T`oros in
1129 his brother Levon I continued his policies.[9] Having persevered against
Turkish and Frankish opposition in the early 1130s, Levon
temporarily occupied the major cities of the plain and in
1135 captured Savranda, the Frankish possession that
guarded the Amanus pass. Because of this new
alliance with the Danismendids, Levon felt confident
enough to counter the Frankish threat. However,
Baldwin of Maras and his allies reacted quickly, and,
despite the help provided by Joscelin of Edessa, Levon
was captured and detained for two months in Antioch.
The Latins changed their opinion of Levon when they heard
that Emperor John Comnenus was leading an army southeast
into the Levant. The Crusaders quickly made an
alliance with the Rubenid baron. From 1137 to 1138
the Greeks, backed by their faithful Het`umid allies,
systematically captured all of the Frankish and Rubenid
possessions in the plain and successfully carried their
campaign into the Taurus Mountains. Baron Levon I
and two of his sons, Ruben and T`oros II, were captured
and sent to Canstantinople in chains. Only T`oros
would survive and return to Cilicia. Mleh and
Stephen, the two other sons of Levon I, took refuge with
their cousin Joscelin of Edessa.
Between 1142 and 1144 T`oros II
escaped from Constantinople and began the reconquest of
Cilicia Pedias, which he completed in 1151. In 1152
Emperor Manuel sent his cousin Andronicus Comnenus to
subdue T`oros, but the latter routed the Greek army and
killed a number of their Het`umid allies, including Smbat
of Paperõn. Among the captured Met`umid nobles
were Õsin II of Lambrõn, Basil of Barjrberd, and Tigran
of Prakana. Emperor Manuel next tried to persuade
the Seljuks to attack T`oros; when that failed he turned
to Reginald of Antioch. However, Manuel refused to
send the money he had promised to Reginald, and the
latter made an allliance with T`oros. The two
allies jointly plundered the Byzantine possessions on
Cyprus. In 1158 the Byzantine armies quickly moved
across Cilicia in a surprise attack. Eventually
T1oros and Manuel were reconciled at Misis.[10] The
Armenian baron assumed the role of a penitent and
received from the emperor the title of sebastos. He
was left in control of the mountain forts and even joined
the Greeks and Crusaders in 1164 during the campaign
against Nur ad-Din. Although technically a vassal
of the Byzantine state, he maintained a remarkable degree
of independence in his foreign policy. Before his
death in 1168 T`oros expelled his younger brother Mleh,
who had become troublesome to the Armenian barons.
Mleh’s banishment was to have
far-reaching consequences for Armenian Cilicia.[11] He took
refuge with Nur ad-Din, who supplied him with a
sufficient number of Moslem troops to depose T`oros’
son, Ruben II, and the regent Thomas. Ruben II was
later murdered by his uncle’s agents in the castle
of Hrovmklay. With the support of his Turkish and
Arab allies Mleh drove the Crusaders from the castles of
the Amanus and captured the Byzantine governor of Tarsus,
whom he handed over to Nur ad-Din in exchange for the
district of Maras. When Nur ad-Din died in 1174 the
Armenian barons, long fearful of the Moslem alliance,
assassinated Mleh. Since Stephen, the brother of
T`oros II, had been murdered ten years earlier by the
Byzantines in the castle of Hamus, the Armenian nobles
turned to his two sons, Ruben III and Levon II. During
the reign of Mleh they had both been safely hidden at
Paperõn and were now ready to assume the leadershipof
the Rubenid dynasty. The elder, Ruben, took firm
control over the administration of his lands. In
1181 he arranged to marry the daughter of Humphrey of
Toron in Jerusalem, thus forging a bond with the leading
Frankish states in the Levant. After a series of
skirmishes with the Seljuks on his northern border, Ruben
made an alliance with Kilij Arslan. Ruben succeeded
in capturing the few remaining sites in Cilicia that were
still under Byzantine control.[12] Despite
his many years of association with the Het`umids at
Paperõn, he was not successful in preventing them from
periodically raiding the Rubenid settlements in the
plain. Following the example of his ancestors,
Ruben laid siege to Lambrõn. In response, the
Het`umids, who had been abandoned by their Byzantine
allies, turned to Bohemond III of Antioch. Bohemond
was fearful of Ruben’s influence and seized him at a
banquet in Antioch. Levon II carried on the siege
of Lambrõn (unsuccessfully), and eventually Bohemond
released Ruben for a sizable ransom, which included the
fortresses of the Amanus. On his release Ruben
recaptured the Amanus and retired to the monastery of
Drazark in 1187.
His brother, Baron Levon II, at
once showed himself to be an able leader and succeeded in
driving the bothersome Turkish nomads from his domains.[13] Because
of political intrigues in Constantinople and Iconium as
well as the resounding defeat of the Crusaders of Hattin
(1188), Levon was in a position to enlarge and
consolidate his barony. He not only secured all of
the forts from the Calycadnus (Göksu) to the Anti-Taurus
Mountains, but he occupied La Roche de Roissol, La Roche
Guillaume, and Bagras, three Templar sites near the plain
of Antioch. Levon even led raids as far north as
Caesarea and briefly occupied (until 1216) the Byzantine
fort of Loulon. Perhaps Levon’s greatest
accomplishments were internal. By tricking the
Het`umid barons into attending a festival in Tarsus,
Levon’s troops were able to capture Lambrõn (1201).[14] Levon
cemented an allliance with the Het`umids by marrying his
niece to Õsin of Lambrõn and by giving the fortress of
Lambrõn to his own mother, Rit`a, who was Het`umid by
birth. The political chaos in the Crusader Levant
induced Levon to grant commercial privileges to the
Venetians and Genoese, who were eager to enlarge the safe
port at Ayas. Transportation duties on the caravans
from Erzurum and Trabzon, as well as Cilician timber,
goat hides, and wheat, brought substantial revenues to
the Rubenids.
In 1190 the unfortunate drowning
of Frederick Barbarossa in the Calycadnus (near Silifke)
temporarily dashed Levon’s hope of formal
recognition from European princes and a crown of his own.
Levon periodically assisted the Crusaders, and he even
silenced the annoying Bohemond III of Antioch. The
latter was captured by Levon at Bagras (repeating the
ruse that Bohemond had earlier performed on Ruben III)
and was soon released (ca. 1193/94) when he promised to
recognize Levon’s acquisitions on the east flank of
the Nur Daglari and to wed his son, Raymond, to Alice,
Levon’s niece. After agreeing (at least
nominally) to certain papal demands regarding changes in
the Armenian liturgy,[15] Levon finally
received recognition of his royal status and independence
from the Europeans. On 6 January 1198/99[16] in the presence
of the Greek metropolitan of Tarsus, the Syrian Jacobite
patriarch, the Armenian kat`olikos, and the papal legate,
Conrad of Mainz, Levon was crowned king of Armenia.
However, Levon’s kingly title did not insure the
success of his policies. His attempt to install
Raymond-Ruben (the issue of his niece Alice) on the
throne of Antioch had at first mixed results and
eventually led to the Armenian abandonment of Bagras and
severely strained relations with his European allies.[17] While
Levon remained hostile toward the Templars, he granted
certain forts in Cilicia to the Hospitalers and Teutonic
Knights.[18] Before
his death in May 1219 he had succeeded not only in
unifying the Armenians of Cilicia, but in creating the
most powerful Christian state in the northern Levant and
eastern Anatolia.
Since Levon left no direct male
heirs, his daughter Zapel became heiress to his estates
and title.[19] Zapel’s
first marriage to Philip, the son of Bohemond IV of
Antioch, ended in disaster. It seemed that Philip
openly favored his Latin barons for court appointments
and refused to accept the teachings of the Armenian
Church. After only a brief period as king of
Armenia, Philip was arrested, imprisoned, and eventually
forced to drink poison. In June 1226 Zapel married
Het`um, the son of Constantine of Paperõn.
Most of the reign of Het`um I was
marked by relative peace and prosperity. Two Seljuk
invasions, in 1233 and 1245, did little damage, but the
Turks did manage to extract some tribute from the
Armenian crown.[20] The
coastal sites west of Silifke, which had been briefly
occupied by Armenians during the period of Levon’s
reign, were captured by the Seljuks. The stunning
defeath of the Seljuks in 1243 at the hands of the
Mongols moved Het`um to seek some sort of rapprochement
with these new protagonists. In 1247 he dispatched
his brother the Constable Smbat on an embassy to the
Mongols. Three years later Smbat returned with a
treaty that guaranteed the protection of all Armenian
settlements in Anatolia as well as the promise of Mongol
help in recapturing the Armenian possessions in Seljuk
hands. In 1253 Het`um traveled to the court of the
Great Khan at Karakorum.[21] The
Armenian king formally acknowledged Mongol supremacy in
the region; in return the Khan promised that all Armenian
monasteries in the Mongol dominions would be freed from
taxation. Het`um also committed large contingents
of Armenian troops to fight in the Mongolian campaigns.
King Het`um returned home through Greater Armenia and
received proper recognition from the clergy and naxarars.
In 1254 he married his daughter to Bohemond VI and
succeeded in briefly extending Armenian influence over
Antioch. With Mongolian help the Armenians regained
the district of Maras and even captured Behesni on the
Euphrates frontier. Het`um also rode into Aleppo
and Damascus in company with the triumphant Mongolian
forces. In a series of pitched battles on the
western frontier of Cilicia Het`um repulsed the
Karamanids and killed their leader Karaman. But the
savor of success was short-lived, for the battle of `Ain
Jãlut (1260) ended Mongolian invincibility and opened
Cilicia to Mamluk penetration. Het`um, convinced of
the soundness of the Christian-Mongol alliance, was slow
to realize the Egyptian threat.[22] In 1266,
after he refused to placate Baybars by surrendering a
border town, the Mamluks invaded his kingdom with full
force. The few cities of Cilicia, including the
capital at Sis, were plundered and burnt. In 1269
Het`um retired and relinquished his throne to King Levon
II.
[1] Grigor Aknerc`I, 352-72; Canard, “Le
royaume,” 217ff.
Hadjin Turkey Home
Copyright H.M.
Keshishian 2006.
Last revised: June 10, 2006.
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