Dimitri Korobeinikov. Byzantium and the Turks in the Thirteenth Century

Few scholars have studied Byzantine-Turkish relations in the thirteenth century, with the exception of P. I. Zhavoronkov and Rustam Shukurov (historians focused on the Empire of Trebizond), because the sources are fairly modest after Niketas Choniates’s chronicle stops. And, while historians can reference George Akropolites’s story, it is primarily concerned with the Byzantine reconquest of Asia Minor from the Latin Empire. However, with Byzantium and the Turks in the Thirteenth Century, Dimitri Korobeinikov has undertaken the challenge to look at Byzantine-Turkish relations in the thirteenth century as a whole. He has ardently filtered through all of the information provided by the sources in Persian, as well as utilized the well-known chronicle of Ibn Bibi. These sources are certainly patchy, but together they form a useful complementary corpus. He merits praise for not limiting his study to the years between 1204 and 1261, the key dates for the Latin Empire. The relationship between Theodore I Laskaris and the sultans of Ikonion much depended on ties knotted at the court in Constantinople between the Seljukid princes and members of the Komnenos-Angelos family

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