Asia Minor Slavs

The Asia Minor Slavs were the historical South Slavic communities that were relocated, usually forcibly, from the Balkan peninsula to Asia Minor by the Byzantine Empire from the mid-600s onwards. Slavic population transfers cannot be viewed in separation from the resettlement of similar communities, hostile to Byzantine power, like the Paulicians, this time from Anatolia to the Balkans or the periodic reinforcement of the newly established Byzantine themata in Europe with Greek speakers from Italy, Asia Minor and the Aegean islands.^[1]^[2]^[3]

These population transfers were designed to further the re-Byzantinisation of the Empire's Balkan holdings following the Slavic migrations by strengthening the Greek and diluting the Slavic element, while eliminating potentially hostile populations along its Anatolian border with the Arabs.^[4] Most Asia Minor Slavs were transferred to the historical region of Bithynia, which accounted for most of the early Byzantine theme of Opsikion, which was divided in the 750s into Opsician proper, Optimates and the Bucellarian Theme.^[5]

History

600s

Constans II (r. 641–668) was the first Byzantine Emperor to launch a large-scale campaign of pacification against the Sklavinias in Macedonia, resulting in the resettlement of many captive Slavs to the region of Bithynia in northwestern Asia Minor.^[6]^[7]^[8] However, sources are inconclusive about the exact year of the campaign, with both 649 and 658–659 posited as possible. A lead seal found in Bithynia and dated to 650 points towards the former, or to at least several waves of resettlement.^[9] Whatever the exact year, a Slavic division of 5,000 men in Anatolia is recorded to have deserted to the Arabs under Abdulreman ibn Khalid in 664–665.^[10]

In this connection, Serbian authors, link the town of Gordoservon in Bithynia, which was mentioned in 680–81 and whose name possibly derives from the name "Serb", to Serbs resettled there from the areas "around the Vardar" by Constans II in the mid-7th century^[11] (in c. 649^[12] or 667^[13]).

The next large-scale Byzantine campaign did not come until Emperor Justinian II (r. 685–695), who marched across Western Thrace and Macedonia to Thessaloniki in 688–689 in order to "subjugate the Bulgars and the Sklavinias".^[14] The Bulgars in question were most likely those of Kuber, who had rebelled against the Avar Khaganate in the late 670s and settled with a mixed population of some 70,000 Bulgars, Avars, Slavs and Byzantine Christians (cf. Sermesianoi) first in the plains around Thessaloniki and then in Pelagonia.^[15]

Justinian relocated 30,000 captured Slavs (or, alternatively, 30,000 men of military age) from the coastal plains of Thrace and Macedonia to the theme of Opsikion in Bitynia in an attempt to boost Byzantine military strength in Anatolia.^[16] However, most of the Slavs, led by their leader Neboulos, deserted yet again to the Umayyad Caliphate at the Battle of Sebastopolis in 692, eventually settling in Syria.^[17]

700s

The establishment of the Bulgar State gave a strategic dimension to the Byzantine transfers of Slavs to Asia Minor throughout the 700s. Large numbers of Slavs were relocated, again to Bithynia, by Emperor Constantine V in 758 and Emperor Constantine VI in 783 out of fear that they would side with the Bulgars during an invasion.^[18]

However, the largest transfer of Slavs to Anatolia did not come by force but as a result of the migration of some 208,000 refugees from the Bulgarian frontier districts in 762, a figure that has been regarded as both truthful and exaggerated by modern scholars.^[19]^[20]^[21] In 756, Emperor Constantine V built a series of fortifications along the border with Bulgaria, settling Syrian and Armenian schismatics in the border districts.^[22]

This led to a series of nine consecutive wars between the Byzantines and the Bulgars, causing upheaval and internal strife among the Bulgar nobility, which was split into a "pro-war" and a "pro-peace" faction, with five Bulgarian khans violently deposed within less than a decade (Telets, Sabin, Umor, Toktu and Pagan). The migration of 762 happened under the "pro-war" Khan Telets. Fine posits that the refugees were probably a mixed group of people, including Bulgars, and may have also been motivated by auxiliary factors, such as famine.^[23]

800s

With the reestablishment of Byzantine rule in Thessaly, Epirus, Peloponnese and Chalkidiki and Bulgarian expansion across much of the former Diocese of Thrace and the northern part of the Diocese of Macedonia, combined with the complete Slavicisation of the Turkic-speaking Bulgars, Slavic population transfers were discontinued: Slavs under Byzantine rule were gradually hellenised,^[24]^[25] while those under Bulgarian one adopted a Bulgarian identity.^[26]^[27]

However, the large Slavic community in Asia Minor, especially in Bithynia, persisted. The most prominent among the Asia Minor Slavs was Thomas the Slav, a military commander who raised most of the empire in an unsuccessful revolt against Michael II the Amorian in the early 820s. Although the 10th-century chronicler Genesios calls him "Thomas from Lake Gouzourou, of Armenian race", most modern scholars support his Slavic descent and believe his birthplace to have been near Gaziura in the Pontus.^[28]

In 851, Saint Methodius of Thessaloniki became a monk at the Polychron Monastery in Bithynia, on the slope of the Asia Minor Olympus (today's Uludağ, near Bursa, Turkey), later becoming its abbot.^[29] In 855, he was joined there by his brother, Cyril.^[29] Several historians have posited that the Polychron Monastery was where the two brothers created the first Slavic alphabet, the Glagolitic,^[30] and started working on the Old Church Slavonic language based on the tongue of Eastern South Slavs living in the area.^[31]^[32]^[33]

900s

The Slavs of the Opsician Theme (Sklabesianoi) are still attested as a separate group in the 10th century, serving as marines in the Byzantine navy.^[34]

1000s and 1100s

After the unsuccessful Bulgarian uprising against Byzantine rule of 1072, a large number of Bulgarians were deported to Asia Minor, eventually settling in the Taurus Mountains and lending their name to a number of toponyms in the area, including the Bulgar Dagh mountain.^[35] In a similar manner, the Hungarian-supported Serbian uprising against the Byzantines in 1127–29 led to the forceful resettlement of part of the insurgent Serbian population to Asia Minor.^[36]

References

↑ Vasiliev 1952, p. 44 "One of the familiar methods of Byzantine internal policy was to transport various nationalities from one place to another; for example, the Slavs were moved to Asia Minor and Armenians to the Balkan peninsula".
↑ Hupchik 2002, p. 37.
↑ Fine 1991, p. 5–6 "The medieval period was one of great demographic change... also from large-scale forcible transplanting of populations which was a regular policy of the Byzantine Empire. Large numbers of captured Slavs were transferred to Anatolia and to regions further east. And large numbers of eastern peoples (Syrians, Armenians, etc.) were transferred as settlers along imperial borders with the Slavs, both to defend these frontiers against the Slavs and to break up their own dangerously large concentrations in eastern regions of the Byzantine Empire".
↑ Graebner 1975, p. 59 "Imperial planning was designed to further Byzantinization. A policy of population transfer was designed to further the same program by dispersion. Resettlement gave the added effect of placing Byzantine population in a higher ratio to the Slavic in areas where the Slavs themselves were numerous".
↑ Treadgold 1998, pp. 28–29, 71, 99, 210
↑ Ostrogorsky 1968, p. 117.
↑ Fine 1991, p. 66.
↑ Vlasto 1970, p. 9.
↑ Arnold Joseph Toynbee (15 March 1973). Constantine Porphyrogenitus and his world. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-215253-4. A further settlement of 208,000 Slavs was planted in Bithynia (part, by then, of thema Opsikion), on the River ... The earliest piece of evidence for a deportation of Slavs from the Balkan Peninsula to Asia Minor may be a seal inscribed ... This seal is dated 'the eighth indiction', and this might be either the year 649/50 or the year 694/5. Since it is on record that 5,000 Slavs deserted from the East Romans to the Arabs as early as 664/5,1 Charanis dates the seal 650, and this dates the first deportation of Slavs from the Balkan Peninsula to Asia Minor in the reign of Constans II ...
↑ Stratos (1975), p. 234
↑ Ivan Ninić (1989). Migrations in Balkan history. Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute for Balkan Studies. p. 61. ISBN 978-86-7179-006-2.
↑ Serbian Studies. North American Society for Serbian Studies. 1995. Retrieved 19 November 2013.
↑ Kostelski, Z. (1952). The Yugoslavs: the history of the Yugoslavs and their states to the creation of Yugoslavia. Philosophical Library. Retrieved 19 November 2013.
↑ Ostrogorsky 1968, p. 130.
↑ Fine 1991, p. 72.
↑ Ostrogorsky 1968, p. 130 "Justinian made the conquered Slavs migrate to Asia Minor and settled them as stratiotai in the theme Opsikion".
↑ Warren Treadgold (1998). Byzantium and Its Army, 284-1081. Stanford University Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-8047-3163-8.
↑ Vlasto 1970, p. 9 "The Slavs of northern Greece were, for strategic and economic reasons, of more immediate concern: Any spread of Bulgarian power had to be countered".
↑ Ostrogorsky 1968, p. 168 "Nicephorus 69, puts the number of Slav settlers at 208,000. This cannot simply be discarded as exaggeration, as P. Charanis wishes to do".
↑ Curta 2019, p. 84 "As a consequence of Telec's usurpation, a large number of Slavs (Theophanes puts the number to 208,000, an evident exaggeration) is said to have fled to the empire".
↑ Sima M. Cirkovic (15 April 2008). The Serbs. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 16–. ISBN 978-1-4051-4291-5.
↑ Fine 1991, p. 76.
↑ Fine 1991, p. 76–77 "The two hundred eight thousand could have been a mixed group casually labeled "Slav" by the Byzantine writer; it is also possible that the emigration was motivated by some other factor, such as a famine".
↑ Dvornik 1956, p. 118.
↑ Hupchik 2002, p. 37 "Nikephoros transferred Greek-speaking populations from other regions of the empire to the Peloponnese and central Greece, forcibly settling them in Slav-inhabited areas... Aided by the church, the newly arrived Greek-speaking colonists inexorably absorbed and dominated the neighboring resident Slavs. In less than a century after Nikephoros's efforts, Greece once again predominantly was Greek".
↑ Hupchik 2002, p. 44 "Separate ethnic identities slowly merged into a common Bulgarian one, and regional or tribal loyalties perceptibly shifted to the state, personified by its now-Christian ruler. A state of Bulgaria, as opposed to a Bulgar state, was born".
↑ Fine 1991, p. 127 "Thus there was a Bulgarian state but as yet there were many people in it who did not have a sense of being Bulgarian. The Slavonic mission was to be a major means of making these Slavs in Macedonia-and other Slavs within the Bulgarian state as well—-into Bulgarians".
↑ Lemerle 1965, pp. 264, 270, 284.
1 2 Vlasto 1970, p. 34.
↑ Vlasto 1970, p. 38 "It is rather more likely that Constantine, in association with Methodios and others (for one adept was not enough) had been elaborating an alphabet since 855".
↑ Vlasto 1970, p. 37 "It is at least possible, indeed probable, that when Constantine joined his brother in his monastery about 855 they discussed missions to Slavs, in particular Balkan Slavs, and the prerequisites for their successful prosecution... But there was material nearer to hand. There was a large Slav population in Bithynia, still unassimilated in the ninth century, which was in need of enlightment".
↑ Fol, Aleksandar (1983). Кратка история на България [Concise History of Bulgaria]. Sofia: Nauka i Izkustvo. p. 58.
↑ Ivanchev, Aleksandar (2023). "Глаголица и кирилица – начин на употреба (Част III)" [Glagolitic and Cyrillic Script—Method of Utilisation (Part III)]. Inspiro (70). Ankos. Archived from the original on November 26, 2023.
↑ Ahrweiler 1966, p. 402.
↑ Venedikova, Katerina (1998). Българите в Мала Азия от древността до наши дни [The Bulgarians in Asia Minor from Antiquity to Present-Day]. Stara Zagora: Idea. pp. 82–96. ISBN 9548638126.
↑ Živković 2008, pp. 269.

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