Alternate History The Reborn Empire: Another Trebizond Timeline
Interesting.
I had another proposition - Venetian in 1474 try to create coalition of Persia,Poland,Hungary,Tatars and Venetia to attack Ottomans together,but for some reason it failed.
I read that it was becouse italian diplomat working for Poland was Venetia enemy,but it could be not true.
But,you could made this coalition working in your TL.
Eparkhos
Well-known member
I don't think that there'll be an actual coalition per se, but rather the Venetians, AQ, Hungarians and Poles all individually kicking the Ottomans while they're down.
Thanks, I hope I don't disappoint.
So, I posted the first section in the middle of the night while heavily sleep-deprived, without any backlog and while busy with a new job, a return to school on the horizon, and then a return to competitve sports, all of which eat up a lot of my time. In short, I didn't plan this well, and after all the time I've spent doing outlining and research, I want to make sure that I do this timeline well. As such, I'm going to take a slow pace, post what I have and then go from there. I've gotten a little rusty, writing-wise, but I can only hope that the timeline goes well.
Appendix A - the OTL History of the Revolt of the Nine Sipahis
Eparkhos
Well-known member
As the center of this timeline will be an Empire of Trebizond revived by the 1472 revolt, which is an extremely obscure event (I have scrounged together this information from two articles and a passing reference on the Wikipedia page for the Metropolitan of Trebizond), I will provide a brief recount of OTL events:
The Ottoman conquest of the former Trapezuntine Empire had been a patchwork affair, with the only real concern being the rich trading port of Trebizond itself and a few coastal mines, and as such a number of former Trapezuntine landowners had been allowed to keep their land and their arms in exchange for fealty, taxes and campaigning against the Turkmen tribes of the region, which were an unholy terror and threat to both the Ottomans and the Ponts. Dotted throughout all of this were a handful of minor fortified cities and estates, most notably the silver-producing fortress-city of Tzantza-Torul, which were completely independent and paid no tribute to either the Ottomans or the local Turkmen tribes, and the numerous Laz clans which were nominal vassals of tribal councils in a half-dozen strongholds but in practice answered to no-one. Bear in mind that most of the Turkmen tribes were also subject to the Aq Qoyunlu Horde, whose summer capital was on the high-steppe (grasslands above the treeline) near nearby Erzincan. The point I’m trying to get across is that everything was super chaotic, which is why the narrative I’m giving is more of a rough guestimate based on parsing out conflicting sources than gospel truth.
In the late spring / early summer of 1472, revolt broke out across Ottoman Pontus. Nine of the ex-Trapezuntine landowning families, known collectively as the Nine Sipahis, revolted and likely executed the few Ottoman officials in the interior valleys, proclaimed a certain Alexios Komnenos--more on him later--as the true emperor and marched on Trebizond.
Why they did this isn’t attested, but what I suspect is that they revolted at the behest of Uzun Hasan, the leader of the Aq Qoyunlu. In 1463, Hasan had led the Aq Qoyunlu in an attack on Trebizond that had taken and sacked the city, but had been forced to retreat when a large Ottoman army arrived to chase them off. Now that Uzun Hasan was marching westward on a campaign intended to destroy the Ottomans, or at the very least reduce them to tributaries, I suspect that he saw a revolt in Pontus as an excellent way of diverting Ottoman attention and resources from his main campaign. It should also be noted that one of Uzun Hasan’s wives, and supposedly his favorite, was Despina Khatun or Theodora Megalokomnene, a niece of the last Emperor of Trebizond and a woman of great intelligence and determination who supposedly wished to reestablish Trebizond as a client of her husband’s empire, which lends support to my theory.
Anyway, the Nine Sipahis come down out of the mountains and lay siege to Trebizond. They are (supposedly) led by Alexios Komnenos--again, more on him later--but the real leader of the revolt is a member of the Tzanichidis family referred to only by the honorific ‘sebastos’ in contemporary records, which I suspect to be a bastardization of the given name Sebastianos, which is the name that will be used for him from here-on. Sebastianos Tzanichidis was likely middle-aged, having appeared on tax roles since the 1450s, and was evidently a rather influential and charismatic man. However, he was not operating with the full support of his family behind him, as his brother Konstantinos Tzanichidis, the ruler of Tzantza-Torul, survived the post-revolt purge and held power until 1480, which suggests that he did become involved. The conclusions which can be drawn from this are…varied, and I have spent a great deal of time puzzling over this, but suffice to say that the Revolt of the Nine Sipahis had limited support from the surviving Pontic nobility, most of whom likely adopted a ‘wait-and-see’ approach. However, the revolt was back wholeheartedly by the common people of Matzouka (Degirmendere Valley), who formed their militias and came down out of the highlands in great numbers to assist the siege. At the height of the revolt, the rebels succeeded in driving the Turkish garrison of Trebizond out of the unwalled city and quite possibly out of the walled lower town, but I can’t establish that for sure.
Then things fell apart. Due to unknown reasons--though I suspect they did so at the behest of the Ottomans, as they escaped the later purge--two of the nine sipahis broke off and abandoned the siege, significantly lowering strength and morale. The remaining force tried to maintain the siege, but by the middle of summer Uzun Hasan had begun to retreat and the Ottomans felt safe enough to dispatch a fleet led by the Kapudan Pasha to retake Trebizond. The Ottomans landed on the plains east of the city and attacked the rebel army from the rear, driving it up towards the walls, and either a secondary landing or a sally from the garrison then appeared from the west and closed the trap, resulting in a slaughter. Some of the nobles survived and were stripped of their lands and enslaved, but most of the rebels were ultimately killed. Any hope of a Trapezuntine restoration was thus crushed, and the remnants were then ground up and disposed of after Uzun Hasan was defeated at Otlukbeli the following year.
The final twist is that Alexios Komnenos did not exist, or at the very least was not Alexios Komnenos. The penultimate Trapezuntine emperor, Alexios V, had been a mere nine years old and reigned for a month before being deposed by his uncle, held prisoner briefly and then captured with the rest of his family in 1461 and executed with them two years later, at which point the Megalokomnenoi appear to have gone extinct in the male line. What I suspect, but cannot prove, is that the ‘Alexios Komnenos’ that participated in the revolt of 1472 was an impostor, likely also a minor so that there was no risk of him getting out of Tzanichidis/the Aq Qoyunlu’s hands. My evidence for this is Alexios V’s earlier death under distant circumstances, which would have meant the general population could have been led to believe that he was the old emperor, and that Uzun Hasan had previously tried to raise a figurehead Komnenos during his invasion of 1463, which had caused the execution of the male Komnenoi in the first place.
With these circumstances--a noble revolt to install an imposter child-emperor at the behest of a foreign empire--established, let us go on into allohistory.
The Ottoman conquest of the former Trapezuntine Empire had been a patchwork affair, with the only real concern being the rich trading port of Trebizond itself and a few coastal mines, and as such a number of former Trapezuntine landowners had been allowed to keep their land and their arms in exchange for fealty, taxes and campaigning against the Turkmen tribes of the region, which were an unholy terror and threat to both the Ottomans and the Ponts. Dotted throughout all of this were a handful of minor fortified cities and estates, most notably the silver-producing fortress-city of Tzantza-Torul, which were completely independent and paid no tribute to either the Ottomans or the local Turkmen tribes, and the numerous Laz clans which were nominal vassals of tribal councils in a half-dozen strongholds but in practice answered to no-one. Bear in mind that most of the Turkmen tribes were also subject to the Aq Qoyunlu Horde, whose summer capital was on the high-steppe (grasslands above the treeline) near nearby Erzincan. The point I’m trying to get across is that everything was super chaotic, which is why the narrative I’m giving is more of a rough guestimate based on parsing out conflicting sources than gospel truth.
In the late spring / early summer of 1472, revolt broke out across Ottoman Pontus. Nine of the ex-Trapezuntine landowning families, known collectively as the Nine Sipahis, revolted and likely executed the few Ottoman officials in the interior valleys, proclaimed a certain Alexios Komnenos--more on him later--as the true emperor and marched on Trebizond.
Why they did this isn’t attested, but what I suspect is that they revolted at the behest of Uzun Hasan, the leader of the Aq Qoyunlu. In 1463, Hasan had led the Aq Qoyunlu in an attack on Trebizond that had taken and sacked the city, but had been forced to retreat when a large Ottoman army arrived to chase them off. Now that Uzun Hasan was marching westward on a campaign intended to destroy the Ottomans, or at the very least reduce them to tributaries, I suspect that he saw a revolt in Pontus as an excellent way of diverting Ottoman attention and resources from his main campaign. It should also be noted that one of Uzun Hasan’s wives, and supposedly his favorite, was Despina Khatun or Theodora Megalokomnene, a niece of the last Emperor of Trebizond and a woman of great intelligence and determination who supposedly wished to reestablish Trebizond as a client of her husband’s empire, which lends support to my theory.
Anyway, the Nine Sipahis come down out of the mountains and lay siege to Trebizond. They are (supposedly) led by Alexios Komnenos--again, more on him later--but the real leader of the revolt is a member of the Tzanichidis family referred to only by the honorific ‘sebastos’ in contemporary records, which I suspect to be a bastardization of the given name Sebastianos, which is the name that will be used for him from here-on. Sebastianos Tzanichidis was likely middle-aged, having appeared on tax roles since the 1450s, and was evidently a rather influential and charismatic man. However, he was not operating with the full support of his family behind him, as his brother Konstantinos Tzanichidis, the ruler of Tzantza-Torul, survived the post-revolt purge and held power until 1480, which suggests that he did become involved. The conclusions which can be drawn from this are…varied, and I have spent a great deal of time puzzling over this, but suffice to say that the Revolt of the Nine Sipahis had limited support from the surviving Pontic nobility, most of whom likely adopted a ‘wait-and-see’ approach. However, the revolt was back wholeheartedly by the common people of Matzouka (Degirmendere Valley), who formed their militias and came down out of the highlands in great numbers to assist the siege. At the height of the revolt, the rebels succeeded in driving the Turkish garrison of Trebizond out of the unwalled city and quite possibly out of the walled lower town, but I can’t establish that for sure.
Then things fell apart. Due to unknown reasons--though I suspect they did so at the behest of the Ottomans, as they escaped the later purge--two of the nine sipahis broke off and abandoned the siege, significantly lowering strength and morale. The remaining force tried to maintain the siege, but by the middle of summer Uzun Hasan had begun to retreat and the Ottomans felt safe enough to dispatch a fleet led by the Kapudan Pasha to retake Trebizond. The Ottomans landed on the plains east of the city and attacked the rebel army from the rear, driving it up towards the walls, and either a secondary landing or a sally from the garrison then appeared from the west and closed the trap, resulting in a slaughter. Some of the nobles survived and were stripped of their lands and enslaved, but most of the rebels were ultimately killed. Any hope of a Trapezuntine restoration was thus crushed, and the remnants were then ground up and disposed of after Uzun Hasan was defeated at Otlukbeli the following year.
The final twist is that Alexios Komnenos did not exist, or at the very least was not Alexios Komnenos. The penultimate Trapezuntine emperor, Alexios V, had been a mere nine years old and reigned for a month before being deposed by his uncle, held prisoner briefly and then captured with the rest of his family in 1461 and executed with them two years later, at which point the Megalokomnenoi appear to have gone extinct in the male line. What I suspect, but cannot prove, is that the ‘Alexios Komnenos’ that participated in the revolt of 1472 was an impostor, likely also a minor so that there was no risk of him getting out of Tzanichidis/the Aq Qoyunlu’s hands. My evidence for this is Alexios V’s earlier death under distant circumstances, which would have meant the general population could have been led to believe that he was the old emperor, and that Uzun Hasan had previously tried to raise a figurehead Komnenos during his invasion of 1463, which had caused the execution of the male Komnenoi in the first place.
With these circumstances--a noble revolt to install an imposter child-emperor at the behest of a foreign empire--established, let us go on into allohistory.
Eparkhos
Well-known member
On further reflection, I don't like the tone of what I've written so far. I think I'm going to do a mini-TL to get back in the habit before I come back to (what I hope will be) a large, long-term project, so I don't wind up rewriting everything I've posted so far. Apologies.
Eparkhos
Very interesting idea and I wasn't aware of the power of the Aq Qoyunlu, which makes for some interesting options. Not sure how successful a Trebizondian revival can be with Greek and Christian power so badly mauled in recent centuries but looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
One question is that there is another big power in the region at this point, namely the Mamluks so I would expect they would be drawn into the chaos at some stage although probably not directly threatening the Trebizond region.
Also would venice seriously think it, a primarily maritime power, could control the European portions of the Ottoman empire? If would face massive resistance from both Muslims and Orthodox Christians in those regions and also competition from Hungary and possibly Poland as well as attempts to restore Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek states.
If you do use some of the above again I think there is a small typos in the main chapter.
I suspect you mean he was heading eastwards, especially as you have him fighting the Aq Qoyunlu a bit later?
Anyway looking forward to the TL when your ready. Given what you said when you ended the previous one I feared you wouldn't be writing more TLs here.
Very interesting idea and I wasn't aware of the power of the Aq Qoyunlu, which makes for some interesting options. Not sure how successful a Trebizondian revival can be with Greek and Christian power so badly mauled in recent centuries but looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
One question is that there is another big power in the region at this point, namely the Mamluks so I would expect they would be drawn into the chaos at some stage although probably not directly threatening the Trebizond region.
Also would venice seriously think it, a primarily maritime power, could control the European portions of the Ottoman empire? If would face massive resistance from both Muslims and Orthodox Christians in those regions and also competition from Hungary and possibly Poland as well as attempts to restore Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek states.
If you do use some of the above again I think there is a small typos in the main chapter.
I suspect you mean he was heading eastwards, especially as you have him fighting the Aq Qoyunlu a bit later?
Anyway looking forward to the TL when your ready. Given what you said when you ended the previous one I feared you wouldn't be writing more TLs here.
Eparkhos
Well-known member
@stevep
So earlier today, I went ahead and did a rewrite of Chapter I, so that I can start from a better position whenever I post next. I'm going to post the rewrite below, then copy it into the first post and put the original version in a spoiler. Thoughts?
Thanks, glad to have you on board. I have some...plans about the direction of Trapezuntine power, but there's the base materials in the Caucasus to make a second-tier or regional power, I think.
There was some fighting between the Mamluks and the AQ OTL, the result being the AQ kicking the Mamluks' ass. I will note that Alaiye and Dulkadir will be more Cairo-oriented, so to speak, so conflict is pretty much inevitable and will result in bad news for the Egyptians.
That part was OTL actually, let it never be said that the Venetians were humble. You're right about the fighting over spheres of influence, though, but I'll save that for later. And yeah, the bit with Gedik Ahmed Pasha was a typo.
So earlier today, I went ahead and did a rewrite of Chapter I, so that I can start from a better position whenever I post next. I'm going to post the rewrite below, then copy it into the first post and put the original version in a spoiler. Thoughts?
Well some more details here and a lot of chaos developing in the European part of the empire. I don't know who (if anyone) will win the civil war but expect the Ottoman empire as a whole will lose. Presuming the Aq Qoyunlu are about and stable for a while - which sounds like it will be the case from your comments about bad times ahead for the Mamluks - then their probably lost their Asian lands for good. Which means limited numbers of Muslims to recruit from as well as no access to its wealth and trade links. - The Ottomans here aren't going to end up monopolizing the silk/spice routes as they did after their 1517 conquest of Syria and Egypt. Of course a mainly Turkman nomadic over-lordship could be less than good for the farmers in the region.
In comparison the Balkan region is going to have a lot of chaos between the civil war, probable intervention by numerous external powers and also probably some internal unrest as assorted groups seek to regain their independence. I assume its not impossible you might see another attempt at a crusade by the west or at least the Papacy although how much interest that would stir up or actual success on the battlefield I don't know.
Think there is a small typo.
Suspect this should be walk?
Anyway looking good and wondering how develop.
One other power in the region which might become involved is the Golden Horde, although by this time its way past its best and checking it suffered a crucial defeat by Muscovy in 1480 which is probably still going to occur.
Thinking about it would a more successful and longer lasting Aq Qoyunlu butterfly the rise of the Safavid dynasty and the conversion of Iran to Shia Islam?
In comparison the Balkan region is going to have a lot of chaos between the civil war, probable intervention by numerous external powers and also probably some internal unrest as assorted groups seek to regain their independence. I assume its not impossible you might see another attempt at a crusade by the west or at least the Papacy although how much interest that would stir up or actual success on the battlefield I don't know.
Think there is a small typo.
Suspect this should be walk?
Anyway looking good and wondering how develop.
One other power in the region which might become involved is the Golden Horde, although by this time its way past its best and checking it suffered a crucial defeat by Muscovy in 1480 which is probably still going to occur.
Thinking about it would a more successful and longer lasting Aq Qoyunlu butterfly the rise of the Safavid dynasty and the conversion of Iran to Shia Islam?
History Learner
Well-known member
Love your work bro, keep it up.
Shortly after 1473 in OTL,Venetia try to made alliance of Poland,Venetia,Hungary and Tatars to attack Ottomans - but Poland refused.
I read,that it was thanks to some italian in polish services who was from city fighting Venetia.
Now,it could happen,if Anatolia fell and cyvil war continue.
I see holy war - against Persia and what is left of Ottomans.
All the better for christians,they could retake entire Europe now.
Hope your feeling better soon.
Sounds like a bad time for the Levant and Egypt. Given this prolonged period of conflict are the Aq Qoyunlu able to block or at least restrict the flow of slaves from the Caucasus region that the Mamluks were recruited from.
For al-Sahih I see a lot of conflict ahead as ATP suggests. However a lot would depend on the army. It could be won over by the ideas of glory and loot from the expansion he's arguing for or quickly become a possibly fatal problem for him.
If he is a religious fire-brand then that could be bad for any Christians in the areas under his control as this caliph could be a lot less tolerant than the early ones basically had to be. Especially given his father seems to have targeted Christians and Jews for heavy taxes.
Steve