The Contribution of Archery to the Turkish Conquest of Anatolia

ONE of the most important asks for Byzantine historians is the explanation of the Byzantine loss of Anatolia to the Seljuk Turks in the second half of the eleventh century. In 1050 the peninsula seemed to be the firm keystone of the Byzantine Empire; the Byzantines had been defending it successfully against the Arabs since the seventh century. By the accession of Alexius Comnenus to the emperorship in 1081 the Seljuks had overrun most of Anatolia. The apparent ease and rapidity of this Seljuk victory has surprised scholars and stimulated considerable research. Many internal political, economic, and social factors have been found responsible for the collapse of Byzantine military resistance: factional quarrels of the Byzantine civil bureaucracy and military leadership, civil wars for the imperial throne, excessive reliance upon costly and disloyal foreign mercenary troops, gradual absorption of the vital native peasant-soldier land holdings by the landed aristocracy, and official intolerance and active persecution of non-orthodox (especially Armenian) subjects.' An addiLional factor of considerable importance has not been investigated: the decisive advantage often given to the Turks by their skillful use of the bow and arrow. The Seljuks preferred the bow to other weapons; Byzantine sources attribute nuimerous Turkish victories to the the dexterity of the Seljuks with the bow.2 Numerous difficulties confront he historian endeavoring to study any aspect of Byzantine-Seljuk warfare. No official Byzantine battle reports are extant. Most Byzantine and Armenian historians were relatively uninformed about the military situation on the distLant eastern and southern frontiers; often they were simply not interested in military affairs. Most of them did not personally observe the warfare between Byzantine and Turk, let alone participate in it. Their descriptions of the fighting are frequently vague. Astonished by the sudden collapse of the Empire's defenses, these historians ought to find a contemporary scapegoat.