Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium Episode 193.

Mansa Kurt.

We have arrived.

We have reached one of the major milestones in Byzantine history.

The Battle of Mansa Kurt is one of those few events which people outside of our community

have heard of.

As time passed, the battle came to be seen as ever more important.

The moment when Byzantium began to fall, the moment when the Turks arrived in Turkey,

two wider thoughts, the moment when an Islamic society defeated a Christian one and began

to imperil the pilgrimage route to the Holy Land.

Or even wider still, the beginning of the end for a European civilization that had lived

in Asia for a millennium.

The battle has come to be seen as many different things across time.

For us with our Byzantine-centric narrative perspective, it's less instantly decisive

and cataclysmic, but to use our analogy of the boulder, which the Romans have been pushing

up the hill, this is the moment when the boulder tips over the edge again.

With every passing year, after Mansa Kurt, the avalanche picks up pace until it reaches

the very bottom.

The obvious comparison point from the podcast's perspective is with Heraclius' campaigns

against the Sassanids and Arabs.

In preparing for this extra long show, my mind has been turned back towards episode 46,

The Last War.

...