The Battle of Manzikert, 1071. Power Falls from West to East. Islamic Victory Sparks Crusades Decades Later.

The defeat at Manzikert broke the spine of Byzantine military power. Anatolia, the empire’s great reservoir of soldiers, the rugged peasants who had once filled its ranks with unshakable resolve, was lost. From that moment on, the Seljuk Turks ruled Anatolia. The empire’s heartland, the source of its warriors, its grain, and its lifeblood, was now under the crescent banner. The empire shrank, a shadow of its former self. Byzantium clung to the lands immediately surrounding Constantinople, an ...