Siege of Trebizond (1222–1223) 1222
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
About the battle
The siege of Trebizond in 1222–1223 was an unsuccessful siege of Trebizond, the capital of the namesake empire, by the Sultanate of Rum under a certain Melik. According to the late 14th-century Synopsis of Saint Eugenios of John Lazaropoulos, the city was close to being captured but was saved by an unusually severe storm. The Seljuq assaults were repulsed, and their army was annihilated on its retreat through the attacks of the Matzoukaites, fierce mountain tribes under Trebizond's rule, and Melik was captured.
Historians of Trebizond have traditionally seen the failure of this siege as leading to the termination of Trebizond's vassal status to the Sultanate of Iconium, which had been in place since 1214. However, more recent scholarship that considers the context of Seljuk Turkish history suggests that this battle should be seen as one episode in a struggle between Trebizond and Iconium over control of Sinope, the northern coast of Anatolia, and access to the Black Sea and its hinterlands that lasted for most of the 13th century.
The details of the siege and the events leading up to it are preserved in four sources: the Chronicle of Michael Panaretos, the Encomium of St Eugenius of Trebizond by Constantine Loukites, the chronicle of Ali ibn al-Athir, and most extensively, the…
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of Trebizond (1222–1223) (revision 1370745995), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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