Timeline Saturday 26 August 1071

Events on Saturday 26 August 1071 2

• 1071 Battle of Manzikert -- Anatolia lost At Manzikert (1071), the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan defeats and captures Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes. The battle opens Anatolia -- the heartland of Byzantine military recruitment and agricultural wealth -- to Seljuk settlement. Within a decade most of Asia Minor is lost. The defeat triggers the political crisis that eventually leads Alexios I Komnenos to request Crusader assistance from the Pope.
• 1071 Battle of Manzikert -- the catastrophe The Battle of Manzikert (26 August 1071) in eastern Anatolia is the most consequential Byzantine military defeat since Yarmouk (636). Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes leads an army to retake the fortress of Manzikert from the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan. The Byzantine army is betrayed mid-battle by Andronikos Doukas, who withdraws his reserve; Romanos is captured. Alp Arslan treats his prisoner generously and releases him for a ransom -- but Romanos returns to find himself deposed and blinded by his political enemies. The real disaster is not the battle but its aftermath: with no frontier army, Anatolia is open to Seljuk settlement.