The Retreat of Alexios I Komnenos from Philomelium in 1098
The Retreat of Alexios I Komnenos from Philomelium in 1098

Summary/Abstract: This paper is dedicated to the Byzantine retreat from Anatolia in 1098. The background of the event is generally well known – after the arrival of First–Crusade deserters to Philomelium, Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos cancelled his military campaign and returned to Constantinople. Alexios’s retreat turned out to be one of his greatest diplomatic mistakes that determined Byzantium’s relations with the crusader states in the Mediterranean for several decades. In this study, I aim to reexamine the whole event from the Byzantine point of view. I focus on the reason of Alexios’s presence at Philomelium in the context of Byzantine strategy in 1097–8 and I answer the question why his return became one of the turning points of his relations with the crusaders. Concerning the Alexiad of Anna Komnene, I try to determine the identity of the arch–satrap Ismael who was supposed to threaten the Byzantines in Anatolia.

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