ABSTRACT
The two centuries between the mid-tenth and late-twelth centuries were periods of great political landslides and flooding, as it were, in the entire region. As the Arabs lost ground, Byzantium moved slowly to the east and south into al-Sham, while the Ghuzz and Turkic tribes began appearing in the region. Even more baffling and almost unstudied was the larger question of the Armenian condition in and as a part of the medieval Islamic world, in and outside the traditionally recognized Armenian homeland. The arrival of the Turkic tribes and the Crusaders served as decisive factors in social–cultural change, and the Armenians made alliances with them as well. Armenian expansion and political activity in the region culminated in a great number of principalities, territorial lordships, kingdoms, and vizierial powers. Cilicia was in the southwest, the Georgian–Armenian Zak'arids were in the east, and Erzinjan/Erznka was in the north of Cilicia.
