Cilicia

A territory in southeastern Anatolia (mod. Turkey), which in the eleventh century was disputed among Armenians, Byzantines, and Franks, and later came to constitute an Armenian kingdom (also known as Lesser Armenia) under the Rupenid (1198-1226) and Het‘umid (1226-1373) dynasties.

Geography

Cilicia is roughly divisible into two parts: the wide coastal plain to the east, and the Taurus Mountains (mod. Toros Daglari) to the north and west. The plain held the principal cities, such as Adana, Anazarba, Ayas (mod. Yumurtalik), Mamistra (mod. Misis), and Tarsos (mod. Tarsus), while the rivers Saros (mod. Seyhan) and Pyramus (mod. Ceyhan) provided irrigation and maritime access. It is difficult to assess the size of the cities; Ayas was certainly a large and thriving port in the thirteenth century, but other cities may have held relatively small populations. The bulk of the population was rural and lived in the mountain valleys. The most important route between Cilicia and Anatolia and between the Middle East and Asia Minor was through the pass known as the Cilician Gates, north of Tarsos. To the southeast Cilicia is separated from Syria by the Amanus (mod. Nur Daglari), a lower and less rugged range. The coastal plain was agriculturally productive, cotton being a particularly important export, whereas the mountain ranges provided timber for much of the eastern Mediterranean, particularly Egypt.

Cilicia among Byzantines, Armenians, and Franks (1071-1198)

Incorporated into the Roman Empire in the first century b. c., Cilicia fell to Muslim armies in 646 and was considered part of the Syrian frontier with Byzantium. The revival of Byzantine military power in the ninth and tenth centuries led to the region’s reincorporation into the empire by Nikephoras II Phokas in 965. Muslim inhabitants were driven out, and Christian Armenian troops and immigrants were encouraged to settle. Further Armenian settlement followed Byzantine annexation of the Armenian kingdoms around Lake Van in eastern Anatolia. Following the defeat of the imperial army by Turkish Saljuq forces at Mantzikert in 1071, Cilicia became part of the short-lived principality of Philaretos, an Armenian warlord who had served in the Byzantine army.

With the coming of the First Crusade (1096-1099), the crusaders Baldwin of Boulogne (brother of Godfrey of Bouillon) and Tancred (nephew of Bohemund of Taranto) both sought to establish principalities in the area in 1097, but their conquests did not endure once they left the region. Between 1097 and 1132, the Cilician plain passed from Byzantine to Frankish control and back again several times. The Byzantines, however, retained control of the western part of Cilicia, notably Seleucia (mod. Silifke) and Korykos (mod. Kor-gos), while the Taurus Mountains were largely under the control of Armenian lords, notably Oshin (ancestor of the Het‘umid dynasty) and Constantine (ancestor of the Rupe-nid dynasty).

By the 1130s, the Rupenids had gained control of the eastern highland valleys of the Taurus Mountains and sought to dominate the plains. Prince T‘oros I’s conquest of Anazarba by 1111 gave the Rupenids a stronghold on the plain as well as greater prestige among Armenians. In 1132, his brother Prince Leon I (d. 1137) conquered Tarsos, Mamistra, and Adana, but this expansion of Rupenid power did not last. Byzantine ambitions to regain the area gained release in the spring of 1137. Emperor John Komnenos quickly seized the three towns before moving on to Antioch. Leon and his family escaped capture, retreating into the Taurus Mountains. Having received homage from Raymond of Antioch, John returned to Cilicia in the fall and captured the remaining Armenian strongholds. Leon and two of his sons, T‘oros II and Rupen, were captured and taken back to Constantinople. Several years later T‘oros escaped, and while Byzantine forces were distracted fighting the Turkish leader Nur al-Din in northern Syria in 1152, T‘oros and his supporters recaptured most of eastern Cilicia, including Tarsos, Adana, and Mamistra. T‘oros also attacked Byzantine Cyprus with the new prince of Antioch, Reynald of Chatillon. In response, Emperor Manuel Komnenos, son of John, invaded Cilicia in 1158, and once again T‘oros and his closest supporters fled to the mountains.

T‘oros II died in 1168 and his young son and successor, Rupen II, was soon killed by his uncle Mleh, long exiled by his brother. With the support of Nur al-Din, Mleh attacked the Byzantine-held cities of the coast as well as castles under the control of other Armenian leaders, but following Nur al-Din’s death in May 1174, Mleh was killed by disgruntled Armenian nobles, and his position taken by his nephew Rupen III. The defeat of the Byzantine army at Myri-okephalion in 1176 by the Saljuq sulanate of Rum meant that the Armenians no longer needed to fear a Byzantine reconquest of Cilicia. But Bohemund III of Antioch worried that the Armenians, unchecked by the Byzantines, would overpower Antioch, and apprehended Rupen after inviting him to a banquet. Bohemund’s subsequent invasion of Cilicia was fought off by Rupen’s brother Leon (d. 1219), and Rupen was released in return for Mamistra, Adana, and two strategically placed castles. Rupen, however, soon reconquered what he had lost.

Rupen retired to a monastery in 1187 and handed power over to Prince Leon, who expanded Armenian power to its greatest extent. He captured the western city of Seleucia from the Saljuqs of Rum and raided as far as Caesarea in Cappadocia (mod. Kayseri). Unlike their Frankish allies to the south, the Armenians of Cilicia were little threatened by Sal-adin and were thus one of the strongest Christian forces in the Near East. Armenian forces joined with those of the Third Crusade (1189-1192) in besieging Acre, but Leon’s seizure of the ruined castle of Baghras (mod. Bagras Kalesi) became a source of tension between the Armenians and the Franks. The castle protected the Syrian Gates, the easiest passage over the Amanus Mountains, and whoever controlled it effectively dominated Antioch and eastern Cilicia. It had been held by the Templars before Saladin seized it, and the military order demanded it back. This quarrel fed into political struggles between Cilicia and Antioch. Leon attempted to seize the city of Antioch (mod. Antakya) itself, having captured Bohemund III by a ruse, but the citizens declared a commune and swore allegiance to Bohemund’s eldest son, Raymond. The hostilities were temporarily resolved by the marriage of Leon’s niece and heir, Alice, to Raymond, a move that caused boundless problems later.

The Kingdom of Cilicia (1198-1375)

Prince Leon II negotiated with Pope Celestine III and the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI, to receive recognition as king from the Western powers. After he agreed to the nominal union of the Armenian Orthodox Church with the Latin Church, he was crowned king as Leon I in Tarsos (6 January 1198) in a ceremony presided over by Gregory VI, the Armenian patriarch of Cilicia, and witnessed by Latin, Greek, and Syrian Orthodox archbishops.

The death of Raymond of Antioch in 1197 involved Leon I in a lengthy war of succession. Leon supported the claims of Raymond’s son, his own great-nephew Raymond-Rupen. The commune of Antioch and the Templars, still seeking the return of Baghras, supported the claims of Raymond’s brother Bohemund (IV) of Tripoli. For a time Raymond-Rupen ruled the principality, but in 1220 he and his mother, Alice, were forced to flee to Cilicia. To counter the animosity of the Templars and to gain Latin support, Leon granted castles to the Hospitallers (notably Seleucia on the western borders) and the Teutonic Order (which received the castle of Amoudain).

The death of Leon II/I in 1219 also led to a contested succession. He had disinherited his great-nephew Raymond-Rupen in favor of his daughter Isabel (Arm. Zabel), who was then married to Philip of Antioch, son of Bohemund of Tripoli. The Armenian nobility, however, disliked Philip’s Frankish ways, and he was imprisoned and poisoned. Isabel, grieving for her husband and unwilling to remarry, sought the protection of the Hospitallers. The order, rather than hand her over to the regent Constantine of Lampron, simply sold him the fortress of Seleucia along with the queen. Isabel was then forcibly married to Constantine’s own son Het‘um I (d. 1269). This marriage united the two leading Armenian dynasties of Cilicia.

In the thirteenth century Cilicia faced the threat of conquest by the Saljuqs of Rum. A Saljuq invasion in 1233 forced Het‘um I to pay tribute, but another invasion in 1245 proved far less a threat. The Armenians found a new ally in the Mon-

Dedicatory page from a thirteenth-century Armenian Gospel book, illuminated in Sis, capital of Cilicia. (The Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource)

Gols, who invaded the Middle East and the Caucasus in 1239. Het‘um I sent his brother Smpad the Constable as an ambassador to the Mongol capital, Qaraqorum, and he returned with an alliance that protected the kingdom against Saljuq attacks. The kingdom became a tributary to the Mongols, and at times Mongol garrisons were stationed in Cilicia. Under Mongol protection, the Armenians were able to conquer several northern Syrian towns from the Ayyubids, such as Behesni (mod. Besni) and Marash (mod. Kahraman-marafl), which once had belonged to the county of Edessa.

The defeat of the Mongols by the Mamluks of Egypt in 1260 at ‘Ayn Jalut heralded the decline of Armenian power. When the Mamluks invaded Cilicia in 1266, Het‘um’s sons were killed or captured, and the cities plundered. Devastated by this blow, the king retired to a monastery in 1269 after redeeming his son Leon II (d. 1289) from captivity. King Leon II was forced to cede the castles in the Amanus Mountains, leaving the cities of the Cilician plain open to Mamluk raids. At this time the Mamluks had little intention of conquering Cilicia. They sought to punish the Armenians for their alliance with the Mongols, and perhaps to gain a convenient base to conquer the sultanate of Rum. Leon II still hoped that a Mongol alliance would save his kingdom; Antioch had already fallen to the Mamluks, and there was little hope of help from Byzantium or Western kingdoms.

The Armenians participated in a Mongol invasion of Syria in 1280-1281, sacking Aleppo, but no permanent conquests were made, and the Mamluks responded with an attack that looted Cilician cities. Leon II sent an embassy to Egypt to negotiate a peace agreement, which was signed on 6 June 1285, obliging him to pay 500,000 dirhams in tribute yearly to the Mamluks. In 1292 the Mamluk sultan, KhaKl, sacked the Armenian patriarchal residence at Hromgla and imprisoned the patriarch, Stephen IV. This was followed in 1293 by a threatened invasion of Cilicia, and Het‘um II was forced to cede Marash, Behesni, and other eastern cities as well as to double the annual tribute. Het‘um finally relinquished power to his nephew Leon III, probably in 1306, after previous abdications in favor of his brother T‘oros. The Mongol emir Bilarghu, however, executed both kings, along with about forty Armenian nobles, on his own initiative in 1307. The Mongol khan had Bilarghu executed for his temerity and accepted Het‘um’s brother Oshin as king. Oshin’s reign was relatively peaceful (aside from rumors that he was poisoned); he was succeeded in 1320 by his young son Leon IV.

Renewed Mamluk pressure exacerbated tensions within the kingdom. Leon IV sought aid from the West and feared subversion by his relatives, many of whom he had executed. He was assassinated in 1342, and the crown was offered to Guy of Lusignan, son of Oshin’s sister Isabel by her marriage to Aimery of Cyprus. Guy (renamed Constantine II) was killed in 1344, perhaps because of his pro-Latin policies, and the throne was seized by Constantine III, whose shaky claim to the throne was through his wife, Maria, sister-in-law of Leon IV and daughter by a second marriage of Queen Joanna, widow of King Oshin. Constantine III was the last Armenian king to attempt to fight rather than accept Mamluk domination. He allied himself with Peter I of Cyprus, hoping to ensure Peter’s commitment to defending Cilicia by ceding Korykos to him. For a brief time, it seemed he might succeed. In alliance with the Hospitallers of Rhodes, Peter and Constantine III captured Attaleia (mod. Antalya) in August 1360.

This, however, was the last gasp of a leadership pressed to the edge. When Constantine III died in 1363, indecision and wariness among the Armenian nobility left the throne unoccupied for two years, until his cousin Constantine IV married his widow and claimed the throne. Following the death of Peter of Cyprus in 1369, Constantine IV sought rapprochement with Egypt, ceding Tarsos and Adana, but he, in turn, was assassinated, perhaps as a result of his new policy of appeasement (1373). Leon V of Lusignan, illegitimate nephew of Guy-Constantine II, was offered the throne in 1374. The Mamluks overran the last Armenian stronghold of Sis (mod. Kozan) in 1375, and Leon V was taken captive. In 1402, Cilicia fell to the Mongols, and was later incorporated into the Ottoman Empire.

Religion and Society

Armenians, the dominant group in Cilicia, had grown powerful only in the period of Byzantine reconquest in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Armenian communities were ruled not by the traditional dynasties of historical Armenia but by new military elites. Armenian society thus developed new social hierarchies and structures, drawn in part from neighboring Byzantine, Frankish, and Islamic communities. Particularly influential was Frankish aristocratic culture, centered on military prowess, a hierarchy of knighthood, and chivalric ideals. Armenians also adopted from the Franks of Antioch their law code, as well as matters of dress and conduct.

Cilicia contained a number of different religious communities. It is possible that some Muslim communities survived under Armenian rule. Certainly in the thirteenth century, Mongol garrisons introduced Muslims into Cilicia; one Mongol emir sought to build a mosque for his troops. The Frankish and Byzantine occupations brought in Greek Orthodox and Latin hierarchies, which survived under Armenian rule. The dominant hierarchy and religious community was that of the Armenian Orthodox Church, which held an anomalous position. In 1151 Patriarch Gregory III transferred the seat of the Cilician patriarchate to Hromgla (mod. Rumkale). The territory around the castle soon fell to the Turkish emir Nur al-Din, yet the patriarchate continued to exercise authority over Armenian churches throughout the Levant. It was only in 1292 that the Mamluks sacked Hromgla and forced the patriarchate to move. Thus, while the patriarchs dominated Cilicia ecclesiastically, they remained in residence in Muslim-ruled Syria.

The church also had to deal with political and religious pressures to Latinize. The establishment of Cilicia as an Armenian kingdom recognized by Western monarchs was dependent on the nominal union of the Armenian and Latin churches. Some influential Armenian clerics were enthusiastic for the union, such as Nerses of Lampron. The many intermarriages between the Armenian and Frankish aristocracies fostered familiarity with Latin customs but also provoked fears that Armenian identity would be lost within the Latin Church. Frankish influence could also be seen in Armenian art, where Western images, such as the depiction of Jesus as the Lamb of God, appeared in Gospel manuscripts.

-Christopher MacEvitt

Bibliography

The Cilician Kingdom of Armenia, ed. T. S. R. Boase (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1978).

Der Nersessian, Sirapie, “The Kingdom of Cilician Armenia,” in A History of the Crusades, ed. Kenneth M. Setton, 2d ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969),

2:630-659.

Edwards, Robert W., Fortifications of Armenian Cilicia (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1987).

Mutafian, Claude, La Cilicie au carrefour des empires, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1988).

-, Le royaume armenien de Cilicie, Xlle-XIVe siecle

(Paris: CNRS, 1993).

Stewart, Angus, The Armenian Kingdom and the Mamluks: War and Diplomacy during the Reigns of Hetum II (1289-1307) (Leiden: Brill, 2001).