ABSTRACT

The city of Edessa, with a tradition of Christian worship, was the burial place of St Thomas the Apostle, and the city of Adana was populated by Christian Armenians long before 1137, as chronicled in the memoirs of Usama ibn Munqidh. The Armenian chancery, as a consequence of its political and commercial interactions with Europe, became multilingual. Internal documents were usually written in Armenian, but French, Latin, Arabic and Italian usage became necessary — as in treaties, marriage alliances and issuance of commercial charters. After the crushing defeat of the imperial army of Emperor Romanus Diogenes at Manzikert in 1071, the fundamental issue of survival from the suffocating expansionism of Islam became top priority in Byzantine Constantinople. From Constantinople’s perspective, the success of the First Crusade would generate a new set of difficulties for Alexius.