Asia Minor Slavs

The Asia Minor Slavs were the historical South Slav communities relocated by the Byzantine Empire from the Balkans to Asia Minor (Anatolia). After Maurice's Balkan campaigns (582–602) and during the subduing of the Slavs in the Balkans in the 7th and the 8th centuries, large communities were forcefully relocated to Anatolia as military units to fight the Umayyad Caliphate.

History
Main article: Slavic invasion of the Balkans

7th century

The earliest evidence for a relocation of Slavs from the Balkans may be a seal dated to 650.[1] In 658 and 688/9 the Byzantines invited groups of Slavic settlers to Bithynia.[2] Constans II settled captured Slavs in Asia Minor, and 5,000 of these joined Abdulreman ibn Khalid in 664-665.[3]

There was a town in Bithynia known as Gordoservon, mentioned in 680–81, whose name probably derived from the Serbs resettled there from the areas "around river Vardar" by Byzantine Emperor Constans II (r. 641–668), in the mid-7th century[4] (in ca. 649[5] or 667[6]).

Justinian II (685-695) also settled as many as 30,000 Slavs from Thrace in Asia Minor, in an attempt to boost military strength. Most of them however, with their leader Neboulos, deserted to the Arabs at the Battle of Sebastopolis in 692.[7]

8th century

Bulgar aggression in northern Greece prompted the Byzantine state to relocate a large number of Slavs in 758 under Constantine V, and again in 783 out of fear that they would side with the Bulgars during an invasion.[2]

The Bulgar expansion caused massive Slav migrations, and in 762 more than 200,000 people fled to Byzantine territory and were relocated to Asia Minor.[8]

The most prominent among the Asia Minor Slavs was Thomas the Slav, a military commander who raised most of the empire in an unsuccessful revolt against Michael II the Amorian in the early 820s. Although the 10th-century chronicler Genesios calls him "Thomas from Lake Gouzourou, of Armenian race", most modern scholars support his Slavic descent and believe his birthplace to have been near Gaziura in the Pontus.[9]

By the middle of the 9th century, the Asia Minor Slavs were integrated within the Bulgarian nationality.[10]

10th century

The Slavs of the Opsician Theme (Sklabesianoi) are still attested as a separate group in the 10th century, serving as marines in the Byzantine navy.[11]

12th century

The Serbs rose up against the Byzantines in 1127–29, probably with Hungarian support; After the Byzantine victory, part of the Serb population was deported to Asia Minor.[12]

See also

References
  1. Arnold Joseph Toynbee (15 March 1973). Constantine Porphyrogenitus and his world. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-215253-4. A further settlement of 208,000 Slavs was planted in Bithynia (part, by then, of thema Opsikion), on the River ... The earliest piece of evidence for a deportation of Slavs from the Balkan Peninsula to Asia Minor may be a seal inscribed ... This seal is dated 'the eighth indiction', and this might be either the year 649/50 or the year 694/5. Since it is on record that 5,000 Slavs deserted from the East Romans to the Arabs as early as 664/5,1 Charanis dates the seal 650, and this dates the first deportation of Slavs from the Balkan Peninsula to Asia Minor in the reign of Constans II ...
  2. A. P. Vlasto (1970). The Entry of the Slavs Into Christendom: An Introduction to the Medieval History of the Slavs. CUP Archive. pp. 9–. ISBN 978-0-521-07459-9.
  3. Stratos (1975), p. 234
  4. Ivan Ninić (1989). Migrations in Balkan history. Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute for Balkan Studies. p. 61. ISBN 978-86-7179-006-2.
  5. Serbian Studies. North American Society for Serbian Studies. 1995. Retrieved 19 November 2013.
  6. Kostelski, Z. (1952). The Yugoslavs: the history of the Yugoslavs and their states to the creation of Yugoslavia. Philosophical Library. Retrieved 19 November 2013.
  7. Warren Treadgold (1998). Byzantium and Its Army, 284-1081. Stanford University Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-8047-3163-8.
  8. Sima M. Cirkovic (15 April 2008). The Serbs. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 16–. ISBN 978-1-4051-4291-5.
  9. Lemerle 1965, pp. 264, 270, 284.
  10. Katerina Venedikova. The Bulgarians in Asia Minor from Antiquity to present days. ISBN 9548638126
  11. Ahrweiler 1966, p. 402.
  12. Živković 2008, pp. 269.

Sources
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