1 - The Byzantine Empire

Summary

Byzantine Bilad al-sham

Control of cities and regions that had historically constituted the Roman imperium validated claims made by Byzantium's ruling elite of presiding over the ‘New Rome’. Antioch held a particular resonance within Byzantine circles, due to its status as a former capital of the eastern Roman Empire. Antioch, and the rest of northern Syria, had fallen from imperial dominion during the Arab-Islamic conquests of the first/seventh century, before returning to Constantinople's possession in 358/969.

A picturesque description of the Byzantine province of northern Syria at the start of the period covered can be found in the correspondence of Ibn Butlan (d. 456/1064), an Arab Nestorian Christian physician who relocated from Baghdad to Antioch in 440/1048–9:

We found the region between Aleppo and Antioch to be flourishing, with no evidence of destroyed houses or ruined farmsteads. Instead, the earth was sown with wheat and barley, which grows beneath the olive trees. The villages run continuously, with blooming gardens and waters flowing everywhere, so that the traveller can traverse the area in a relaxed, safe and peaceful manner.

At the time this letter was written, Byzantium's position as a principal player in the political world of bilad al-sham was fairly secure. The two fundamental bulwarks of the Byzantine eastern frontier zone, Antioch and Edessa, were firmly under the control of Constantinople. Moreover, successive emperors enjoyed a dominant diplomatic relationship with the Mirdasid dynasty of Aleppo, best demonstrated by the receipt of annual tributary payments from 421/1030 onwards. Barely three and a half decades later Byzantine influence in northern Syria had collapsed. Antioch was removed from their control in 477/1084 and Edessa in 479/1086.

Modern historians have typically viewed the rapid decline of Byzantine influence in northern Syria as one consequence of a wider period of crisis that engulfed the empire during the fifth/eleventh century. The death of the Emperor Basil II (d. 416/1025) provoked a series of internecine civil wars between bureaucratic figureheads in Constantinople and the provincial military magnates of Anatolia.