A Genealogy of the Grand Komnenoi of Trebizond

Abstract

The empire of Trebizond, founded by a grandson of emperor Andronikos I Komnenos in the chaos following the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the last Byzantine state to fall to the Ottoman Turks (in 1461), occupied a unique position in the later middle ages as a focus for transcontinental commerce and as a state which had close ties with the Georgian and Turkomen polities to its east as well as the Byzantine, French and Italian states to its west. These ties were solidified by a series of astute dynastic marriages that make the Grand Komnenoi, the ruling dynasty of Trebizond for the period of its history as an empire, of particular interest to the genealogist and prosopographer. The present paper corrects the accreted errors of past generations and sets out, for the first time, a scholarly account of the genealogy of the Grand Komnenoi.