Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, episode 249, Life in Byzantine Anatolia.

As you know, almost all of Anatolia was lost to Byzantium on the eve of the first crusade.

The civil wars that had preceded Alexius' communist rise to power had seen one general after another,

hand territory to the Turks. Alexius' great achievement was to use the first crusade to drive the

Seljuks back to Iconium and in the gap that opened up to retake the west coast of Anatolia.

Alexius' son John, and his son Manuel, both spent their reigns reinforcing the reconquest,

capturing more towns and fortresses and building a new defensive network to protect what they'd taken.

As usual, it's very difficult to find a map that can accurately reflect real political control.

I've posted one with this week's episode which sits on the Wikipedia page for this era.

It grossly overestimates Roman control over the northern and western plateau.

Perhaps those creating it have taken literally the claims of Byzantine propaganda

about cities and regions which the emperor's triumphantly marched through on certain campaigns.

The reality is that as soon as the army left the plateau, the area was wide open to Turkic incursions.

If you've never looked closely at a map of Anatolia, then none of this will make much sense to you.

I strongly recommend you look at the base map that I've been using throughout the course of the

podcast. Go to thehistoryuponthium.com, click on the maps page and have a look at it.

You'll see about 10 versions of it across the page I've updated it each century.

It's nicely shaded to show the coastal lowlands in green and the plateau in yellow.

That's the simplest way to discern Roman from Turkic territory during this period.

The lowlands were more agriculturally productive, but simply by square footage you'll see that the

Turks control far more of the peninsula. What the Comni-Noy had achieved was to draw a line between

the coastal lowlands and the plateau. In the lowlands Byzantine authority was accepted, on the plateau,

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