DID IOANNES I TZIMISKES CAMPAIGN IN THE EAST IN 974?

Author(s): Anthony Kaldellis

Source: Byzantion , 2014, Vol. 84 (2014), pp. 235-240
Published by: Peeters Publishers

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 DID IO ANNES I TZIMISKES CAMPAIGN
IN THE EAST IN 974?

This article will argue that there is no evidence for the belief that t
emperor Ioannes I Tzimiskes (969-976) made an incursion into norther
Mesopotamia in 974, a belief that is now part of accepted history.1 O
understanding of the chronology of Tzimiskes' eastern wars was greatl
improved in 1950, when M. Canard conclusively proved that in 9
Tzimiskes sacked Nisibis and attacked Mayyafariqin; Canard proved th
on the basis of already known Arabic sources (especially Yahya of An
och and Miskawayh) and previously unnoticed letters from the court
Baghdad.2 Returning to the empire, the emperor left behind Meli
domestikos of the scholai of the East, who, the following year (973), w
defeated and captured by forces of the emirate of Aleppo when he attacked
Amida.3 It is also well known from Byzantine and many Arabic sourc
that in 975 Tzimiskes raided deep into Syria, extorting money fr
Damascus before attacking cities on the coast. The question of whether
reached Palestine on this incursion depends on how far we are prepared
believe an alleged letter by Tzimiskes to Ashot III of Armenia quoted b
the twelfth-century Armenian historian Matthew (Matteos) of Edessa.4
is troubling that neither the Greek nor the Arabic sources for this cam
paign say that he reached as far south as the Sea of Galilee and Kaisare
But that is a question for another occasion. At any rate, that there was
incursion in 975 is not in doubt.

1 E.g., W. Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society , Stanford, 1997,
p. 511; the notes in A.-M. Talbot and D. F. Sullivan, The History of Leo the Deacon :
Byzantine Military Expansion in the Tenth Century , Washington, D.C., 2007, pp. 202-205;
and W. Garrood, The Illusion of Continuity: Nikephoros Phokas, John Tzimiskes and the
Eastern Border , in BMGS , 37 (2013), pp. 20-34, here 26-27. 1 thank D. Sullivan for reading
the present article for comments.
2 M. Canard, La date des expéditions mésopotamiennes de Jean Tzimiscès , in Annuaire
de l'institut de philologie et d'histoire orientales et slaves , 10 (1950), pp. 99-108. Previous
studies of the chronology of Tzimiskes' campaigns were fatally compromized by a lack of
this specific information about the 972 incursion; they are conveniently cited by P. E. Walker,
The "Crusade" of John Tzimiskes in the Light of New Arabic Evidence, in Byzantion , 47
(1977), pp. 301-327, here 301 n. 1.
3 For Melias, see PmbZ 25042 (= v. 4, pp. 409-412).
4 See the careful investigation by Walker, The "Crusade" .

Byzantion 84, 235-240. doi: 10.2143/BYZ.84.0.3049182

©2014 by Byzantion. All rights reserved.

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236 ANTHONY KALDELLIS

Canard also took the existence of a 974 incu

"the detailed information in Leon the Deaco
even though he admitted that no Arabic source
should add to this that the Arabic sources fo
wise to record a major incursion, especially i
look more closely at this "detailed informati
Leon the Deacon was a contemporary of the
the reign of Tzimiskes is unbalanced. Most of
the Rus' in Bulgaria (970-971), which he knew
that was used also by Ioannes Skylitzes in the la
offers far less information about the subsequen
often mistaken concerning the eastern expediti
the recent English translation show. He conde
the last book of his History (book 10). In fact
ern campaigns of Tzimiskes. He dates neith
unquestionably the great incursion of 975 th
likely makes mistakes about this one too, say
Manbij (Hierapolis) and Apameia before reac
is mentioned by the Arabic sources as a targe
sive proof against Leon. However, Manbij was
sion route (so most historians believe this i
whereas Apameia was already under Byzantin
to the treaty with Aleppo of 970, so there w
Tzimiskes to "destroy" it.8 Leon has likely h
tion and embellished the emperor's passage by
dramatic "capture". He also is unaware of th
capture of, Baalbek (Heliopolis), or he has con
The remainder of Leon's account of the 975 incursion tallies more or less
with the Arabic sources, though we can say that he was not very well
informed overall, despite being a contemporary.

5 Canard, La date des expéditions , p. 101, p. 107.

6 See, for example, the sources cited for the conquest of Kilikia by W. Garrood, The
Byzantine Conquest of Cilicia and the Hamdanids of Aleppo, 959-965 , in Anatolian Studies ,
58 (2008), pp. 127-140.
7 A. Kaldellis, The Original Source for Tzimiskes' Balkan Campaign (971) and the
Emperor's Classicizing Propaganda , in BMGS> 37 (2013), pp. 1-18.
8 Leon, History 10.4-6, ed. C. B. Hase, Leonis diaconi Historae libri X , Bonn, 1828; for
the translation, see above n. 1; for Manbij and Apameia, see Walker, The "Crusade" ,
p. 315 n. 43; Talbot and Sullivan, The History of Leo the Deacon , pp. 207-208 n. 35; for
the terms of the treaty, including Apameia, see M. Canard, Histoire de la Dynastie des
H'amdanides de Jazîra et de Syrie , Algeria, 1951, p. 833.

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 DID IOANNES I TZIMISKES CAMPAIGN IN THE EAST IN 974? 237

So, is the first eastern incursion mentioned by Leon that of 972 or that of
974? Or has he conflated the two? Leon says that Tzimiskes captured
Amida, then extracted wealth from Mayyafariqin, presumably without cap-
turing it, and found Nisibis deserted because the people had fled. The
emperor then allegedly advanced toward "Ekbatana" (presumably Bagh-
dad) before giving up on that plan and returning to Roman territory.9
Grégoire believed that this could not have been the same campaign as that
described by Yahya for 972, and postdated it to 974, 10 but this is an exces-
sive reaction. While Leon's relative chronology is not always reliable, he
places this campaign directly after the defeat of the Rus', which occured in
971, and directly before the deposition of the patriarch Basileios Skaman-
dros, which, according to the most authoritative argument, occurred in
973. 11 Also, the two historians are not "clearly describing different expedi-
tions," as Grégoire maintained. The 972 incursion, as we know from the
eastern sources, targeted Nisibis and Mayyafariqin: Tzimiskes took the first
after a siege but did not capture the second.12 It is possible to argue that
Leon has given a slightly distorted account of the same 972 campaign. He
generally seems not to have had solid information about events in the east.
Some of his descriptions are rhetorical and generic, as anyone discovers
who tries to convert them into hard data. Also, he did not know about
Melias' attack on Amida in 973, or has added it to his account of the 972
incursion by Tzimiskes. However, that is only a possibility.
Another possibility is that Leon has conflated the two incursions (those
of 972 and 974) into one. At this point, however, we have to ask why we
think that there was a 974 incursion in the first place.
This leads us to Matthew of Edessa, the second source that allegedly has
"detailed information" about the 974 incursion. First, a methodological
problem has to be stated up front that is not identified by historians who use
Matthew to reconstruct these wars but that is well formulated by Tim
Greenwood: "There has been something of a tendency to 'cherry-pick'
Armenian historical texts for information relevant to the specific research
interest and to ignore the remainder of the work."13 This is especially true

9 Leon, History 10.1-2.

10 H. Grégoire, The Amorians and Macedonians, 842-1025 , in J. M. Hussey (ed.), The
Cambridge Medieval History , v. 4.1, Cambridge, 1966, pp. 105-192, here 164.
11 Deposition: Leon, History 10.2; date: J. Darrouzès, Sur la chronologie du patriarche
Antoine III Stoudite , in REB, 46 (1988), pp. 55-60.
12 See Canard, La date des expéditions. Talbot and Sullivan, The History of Leo the
Deacon , pp. 202-205, believe that it is the 974 incursion, but see below.
13 T. Greenwood, Armenian Sources , in M. Whitby (ed.), Byzantines and Crusaders in
Non-Greek Sources, 1025-1204 , Oxford, 2007, pp. 221-252, here 222; cf. p. 234, p. 241 on
how little work has been done on the sources of Matthew for the years in question. See now

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238 ANTHONY KALDELLIS

of Matthew of Edessa's Chronicle , which co

properly evaluate its evidence we have to con
about the reign of Tzimiskes, which comes tow
is the most removed from the author's own time.
First, the account of Nikephoros' murder is embellished with novelistic
elements.14 We are then told that Tzimiskes sent the sons of Romanos II
(the heirs to the throne) to Armenia to protect them from their mother The-
ophano (which did not really happen). Matthew then recounts the defeat of
Melias but embellishes it with incredible occurrences and gives him 50,000
men. He dates this defeat to 972-973 according to the Armenian system but
also aligns it with Nikephoros' murder in 969 (while in reality it took place
in 973). He then says that Melias was imprisoned in Baghdad (in reality
Aleppo) where he writes a (certainly fictional) letter to "the new emperor"
(i.e., Tzimiskes), who vows to avenge him and comes to Armenia "in the
next year," i.e., either 970 or 973-974, depending on which dating system
in the text we choose to follow. In reality, the narrative and dating is inco-
herent throughout: it was Tzimiskes who left Melias in the east in 972.
Then there is a huge gathering of Armenian forces, totalling 80,000 men.
Tzimiskes arrives with a large army of his own and Ashot III gives him
10,000 men. This is all attested nowhere else and is probably fictional, even
though it is often taken at face value by historians. Yet it is reminiscent of
similar encounters between massive Roman and Armenian armies in the
fifth-century Armenian Epic Histories , which no historian of that period
trusts.15 Having received this army, Tzimiskes now marches forth, spares
Edessa because of some monks, and fails to capture Amida because he had
had an affair with the city's ruler, the sister of the Muslim emir, which
sounds like a summary of a separate Tzimiskes-romance. The emperor then
marches all the way to Baghdad and plunders the enemy's territory, march-
ing also toward Jerusalem. It is at this point - with no break in the narrative
- that Matthew quotes the alleged letter from Tzimiskes to Ashot III
recounting his 975 invasion. In other words, not only is the dating of events
generally garbled in the narrative throughout; not only are there many fic-
titious elements; but also no distinction is made between anything that we

C. MacEvitt, The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa: Apocalypse, the First Crusade, and the
Armenian Diaspora , in DOP , 61 (2007), pp. 157-181.
14 I am using the translation by A. E. Dostourian, Armenia and the Crusades, 10th to
12th Centuries: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, Lanham, 1993, pp. 21-34.
15 N. G. Garsoïan, The Epic Histories Attributed to P'awstos Buzand (Buzandaran
Patmut'iwnk Cambridge, MA, 1989. Matthew's information about Tzimiskes and Ashot III
is taken at face value by R. Grousset, Histoire de V Arménie des origines à 1071 , Paris, 1947,
pp. 495-496; Walker, The îf Crusade ", p. 313; and Treadgold, A History , p. 511.

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 DID IOANNES I TZIMISKES CAMPAIGN IN THE EAST IN 974? 239

might call the 974 incursion as opposed to the 975 incursion, which, more-
over, is greatly embellished in Matthew's "letter" anyway. Tzimiskes then
returns home, where he feels guilt over the murder of Nikephoros. He
recalls Basileios II and Konstantinos VIII from Armenian exile, places his
crown on Basileios, abdicates, and joins a monastery to live out the rest of
his life in poverty. Obviously, none of this happened either.
In sum, Matthew knows of only one eastern incursion by Tzimiskes, not
the three that modern historians have postulated. His tale runs as follows:
Melias is captured around the time when Nikephoros is killed and Tzimi-
skes ("the new emperor") comes out to avenge him, resulting in the 975
incursion. All events of the reign are compressed into two chronicle-years,
though Matthew says at the end that Tzimiskes ruled for seven years.
How has the 974 incursion been constituted, then? Historians after
Canard have separated out the attack on Amida and the alleged march on
Baghdad from the otherwise garbled narrative in Matthew and from Leon's
account of the 972 incursion, and segregated them into a separate incursion
which they place in 974 largely in order to retain the dramatic psychology
of Matthew's account, namely that Tzimiskes marched east in order to
avenge Melias. Obviously, they suppose, this must have happened in the
heat of the moment, i.e., 974, and not a year later, in 975. Setting aside the
psychology of this quasi-legendary narrative, we can see that this is an arbi-
trary and unnecessary move: it cherry-picks two events out of the otherwise
continuous accounts of other years in two authors (972 and 975) and makes
a separate war out of them which it places in a different year (974). More-
over, the two authors from whom it picks them are unreliable when it comes
to those events, and Matthew's chronology is especially confused. His nar-
rative does not feature anything that we might justly isolate and call the 974
incursion, and neither does Leon's. At least one of the two events (the
march on Baghdad) is likely a hyperbole or outright fiction, while the other
(the attack on Amida) is likely the result of confusion or bad information
about the events of 973. In his recent article, Garrood still accepts the 974
incursion even though he doubts the historicity of many of the particular
source-reports that he assembles from Leon and Matthew in order to consti-
tute it, and he cites a passage of Yahya too, even though Yahya explicitly
dates the events he mentions in that passage to September-October of 972
(Tzismikes in the east) and June- July of 973 (the defeat of Melias).16

16 Garrood, The Illusion of Continuity , pp. 26-27 ; citing I. Kratchovsky and

A. Vasiliev (ed. and tr.), Histoire de Yahya , in PO, 18.5 (1924) and 23.3 (1932), here v. 23,
p. 353.

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240 ANTHONY KALDELLIS

Scholars may disagree about the extent to w

on as a source. In my view, the sheer extent of
account of Tzimiskes means that he cannot
attested elsewhere, i.e., he cannot be trusted a
the 974 incursion have also not explained is wha
or three events from it and bundle them into
974.
In sum, there is no evidence that Tzimiskes invaded Muslim lands in
974. This has two consequences for the reign of that emperor that I will
state briefly here. First, it means that we have almost no information about
Tzimiskes' actions between the incursions of 972 and 975, i.e., almost a full
three years. What was the emperor doing during that time? Possibly he was
busy with the organization of his new (eastern) Bulgarian territories,
acquired in 971. Second, the elimination of one eastern incursion from the
emperor's reign reduces the extent to which he was interested in the east.
While he had been active in the conquest of Kilikia in the 950s and early
960s, as emperor he was not interested in further conquest on that front. His
incursions of 972 and 975 were more like those of Basileios II in 995 and
999, quick policing actions to gain plunder, spread terror, and show the
Fatimids who was in charge in northern Syria.

Anthony Kaldellis
The Ohio State University
kaldellis. l@osu.edu

Summary

This article argues that there is no evidence for an eastern campaign by the
emperor Ioannes Tzimiskes in the year 974, though belief in one is entrenched in
historical scholarship. That alleged campaign has been put together from elements
excised from the accounts in Greek and eastern sources of other campaigns (972
and 975). As a result, the priorities of Tzimiskes' regime must be reconsidered.

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