1. Article
2. Many of the invading tribes, as a result of a variety of factors, came to be fixed on the north, west, and south in the strongholds of the high mountainous perimeters of the Anatolian plateau. Their presence in these regions is imperfectly attested by a wide variety of sources, so that there can be no doubt about their presence and significance there. For the purposes of this paper, however, I shall concentrate on the nomads in western Asia Minor, where their activities are best documented. In addition, the sources, as we shall see, indicate that their concentration in this region was relatively dense. Finally, it was these groups which consummated the Turkish conquest of western Anatolia and successively gave rise to the world of the beyliks and the Ottoman state. The peculiar geographical configuration within which the Turkmens settled played a vital role in the history of events from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. The broadest general extent of this crucial area reaches from the two vital urban centers of Asia Minor in this area, Ankara (elev. 851 m.) and Konya (elev. 1027 m.) in the east, to the Marmara, Aegean, and Mediterranean seas in the west. This area, of roughly 225,000-250,000 sq. km., consists of three definite regions.

The easternmost part constitutes the western edge of the great Anatolian plateau whose elevation varies in the vicinity of 1000 m. The section immediately to the north, west, and south is made up of mountain ranges which attain altitudes of up to 2000 m. in the north, about 2500 m. near Bursa, and over 3000 m. in the southwest. The third region that concerns us here, comprising the most western, northern, and southwestern area, is that of the fertile, low-lying riverine lands. This maritime region consists of the rich alluvial plains of the Sangarius, Macestus (Susurlu), and Granicus (Kocaba§) rivers in the north, the Caicus (Bakir), Hermes (Gediz), Cayster (Kiit^uk Menderes), and Maeander in the west, and the Indus (Dalaman), Xanthus (Koca), Cestrus (Aksu), and Eurymedon (Koprii) in the southwest.
By the time of the early years of his reign, Alexius I Comnenus was faced with the fact that Byzantine control had disappeared almost completely from Asia Minor, and that western Asia Minor had been occupied by various nomadic groups under their own chieftains. By chance, Anna Comnena gives an incomplete count of these chieftains and their domains. Tzachas and his brother Yalvac controlled Smyrna, Clazomenai, Phocaea, Samos, Mitylene, and Chios. Tangripermes and Merak possessed Ephesus and the neighboring towns. Elchanes ruled Apollonias and Cyzicus, whereas Anna relates that Scaliarius and other chieftains had also carved out domains for themselves in these western parts. Thus the conquests, the temporary settlements, and the emergence of a number of independent Turkmen emirs in western Anatolia during the eleventh century are similar to those which occurred in this area during the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. When in 1097 the Crusades inflicted a succession of defeats on these Turks at Nicaea, Dorylaeum, Pisidian Antioch, and Icoiiium, Alexius sent military forces to reoccupy Smyrna, Ephesus, Sardes, Philadelphia, Laodiceia, Lampe, and Polybotus, so that in the year 1098 Alexius was able to go as far east as Philomelium. The Emperor, taking advantage of the Crusader victories, had been able to push the Turkmens back to a line running through Dorylaeum, Santabaris, Amorium, Cedrea, Polybotus, Philomelium, and southward to Attaleia. But this repulse of the nomads eastward had intensified their numbers in the mountainous zone between the plateau and the maritime districts.

The combination of high mountains and dense Turkmen settlements henceforth provided Konya and Ankara (which soon returned to Turkish hands) with admirable security, and indeed even Philomelium could not be held by Alexius. Consequently, by the end of the reign of Alexius I, the rough boundary between Turk and Greek, Muslim and Christian, sedentary and nomad was fixed in this large mountainous area between the plateau and the coast which stretched from the Sangarius River in the north to Attaleia in the south.
The Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Syriac sources conclude that this long mountainous zone was inhabited by significant numbers of Turks, that they were by and large nomadic, and that they gradually conquered Western Anatolia. They are variously referred to as Turkomanoi,19 vou&6es, iroinvh-cu,20 •iroAu$p£tiuoves,21 and oxriviTas22 by the Greek authors. The Latin chroniclers and observers called them Bedewini or silvestres TurciP and the Arab and Syriac authors describe them as Turkmens of the Udj ( Bar Hebraeus, The Chronograph}’ of Gregory AbH’l Faraj the Son of Aaron, the Hebrew Physician Commonly Known as Bar Hebraeus, being the First Part of his Political History of the World, trans. E. A. W. Budge, I (London, 1932), 360). The Turks, whom the armies of Manuel attacked at Panasium and Lacerium, were tent dwellers,29 and those around Charax are described as herdsmen.30 In some cases, even the names of the tribal leaders are recorded. It is thus clear that one is dealing here with a nomadic invasion. The nomads have not yet settled in towns or taken up sedentary life as full-time agriculturists. Their livelihood comes from their flocks and from booty taken in Byzantine territory. They were, at least superficially, Muslims who were further motivated by the spirit of the Holy War against the Greek Christians. When the Arab traveler al-Harawi passed through these border regions in the second half of the twelfth century, he noted the existence of a shrine on the ByzantineTurkish borders (near Afyon-Karahisar) which was reported to be the tomb of the Muslim martyr Abu Muhammad al-Battal, and at Amorium the tombs of those who fell there in the celebrated siege of the city in 838. These constitute fascinating testimony to the fact that the ghazi-jihad tradition was closely intertwined into the nomadic society of Phrygia (A1 Harawi, trans. J. Sourdel-Thomine, Guide des lieux de phletinage (Damascus, 1957), 131. *7 Cinnamus, 59-60).

Not only was there evidence of a nomadic invasion but also of an epic society in its heroic age, and it is from this milieu that the Turkish epics were shaped: the Battalname, the Danishmendname, and the Dustumame.

Finally, one more example from another riverine region at the time of the final nomadic push of the late thirteenth-fourteenth century will suffice to demonstrate the effect on the local society. Pachymeres writes of the Maeander districts: “Whence the Maeander was emptied not only of people in most of the extensive lands, but also of the very monks. For the land about the Maeander was another Palestine. It was very good not only for the increase of flocks and herds of animals, and for nourishing men, but excellent for assembling earthdwelling, heavenly citizen-monks…. And thus after a little the Maeander regions became desolate as the inhabitants withdrew deeper because of the attacks of the foreigners.”58 The Maeander valley had, of course, been a primary corridor of struggle between the Turkmens and Greeks throughout the twelfth century, but the foundation of the Nicaean state had halted the Turkmen push until the late thirteenth century
As late as 1333, when the conquest of western Asia Minor was largely over and some of the Turkmen chieftains had become sedentary princes, many of their followers remained nomads, and Ibn Battuta, the Arab traveler, was struck by this fact during his voyage in Anatolia. He, as well as al-Umari, still referred to them as Turkmens,64 and he had ample opportunity to see them and to note their disruptiveness during his travels in western Asia Minor. When he left from the lake districts of Egridir and Burdur via the road to Karagag (Acipayan, 45 km. south and southeast of Denizli), he had to pass through a plain inhabited by Turkmens. The prince of Ladik (Denizli) sent troops of cavalry to lead him and his party safely to Ladik and to protect them from the Turkmen bandits who infested the roads in that region (Ibn Battuta, eds. Defremery and Sanguinetti, II, 270-71).