Manuel III (Trebizond)

Representation of Manuel III. in 1903

Manuel III Komnenus (* 1364 ; † March 5, 1417 ) was Emperor and Grand Comnene of Trebizond from 1390 to 1417 .

Life

Manuel was the younger of two sons of the Trapezuntian emperor Alexios III. and his wife Theodora Kantakuzena .

After the death of his older brother Basil in 1377, Alexios became heir apparent. In the same year he married Gulkhan-Eudokia, a daughter of the Georgian King David IX. who had previously been married to his half-brother Andronikos, who also died at an early age.

When his father died in 1390, he ascended the throne of Trebizond. In 1395 he married Anna Philanthropene , a noblewoman from the esteemed Eastern Roman Dukas family .

His reign was strongly influenced by the incursion of the Mongols under Timur Lenk at the turn of the century , who turned to the west after the conquest of Central Asia . Manuel entered into an alliance with them and became a vassal of Timur Lenk. However, he managed to evade an invitation to participate in Trapezuntian troops in his campaign against the Ottomans . The devastating defeat that Timur Lenk inflicted on the Ottomans under Sultan Bayezid I in the Battle of Ankara in 1402 turned out to be beneficial for Trebizond, as the pressure of the expanding Ottomans on the state was noticeably reduced. However, a dangerous situation arose when Timur Lenk left Asia Minor in 1403 . Part of his army withdrew from Anatolia on a separate route that would have led them directly via Kerasunt , an important city of the Trebizond Empire. To make life easier for the population, the Mongols did not reach Kerasunt, which is well protected by mountains, and had to be content with the devastation of Oinaion (today Ünye ), where they probably put an end to the rule of Melissenus . After Timur Lenk's departure, his interests in Armenia , Georgia and Trebizond were initially taken care of by his son Chalil. However, after the death of his father in 1405, he hurriedly went to Samarkand to succeed him there. This ended the Mongolian sovereignty over the Empire of Trebizond and the surrounding small Turkmen states.

The final years of Manuel's reign were overshadowed by disputes with his son and successor Alexios IV . These were caught in the person of a young page whom Manuel had taken into his service. The expressions of favor that he gave this aroused the anger of the heir to the throne and the Trapezuntian nobility, who clashed with the low origin of the young man and incited the population against him. Alexios, who was speculating on taking over the throne, took advantage of the unrest to openly rise up against Manuel, from whom he demanded the page's banishment. The supporters of Alexios and the discontented nobles who had joined the uprising finally besieged Manuel in the citadel of Trebizond. The trapped emperor ultimately had to give in and the page was banished from Trebizond. The revolt was thus deprived of the breeding ground. The rebels dispersed and Alexios, still hoping for the throne, was forced to reconcile with Manuel. Ironically, because of the agreements made at the reconciliation, he had to take the page into his own service.

Manuel died in 1417. His son Alexios IV succeeded him on the throne.

Ruy González de Clavijo , the Castilian ambassador at the court of Timur Lenk, was received by Manuel on the occasion of his transit in April 1404 and described this encounter as follows:

The emperor and his son were wrapped in the imperial robes. On their heads they wore long, narrow hats wrapped in marten fur and trimmed with golden cords with crane feathers at the ends . The emperor is obliged to pay tribute to Timur Lenk and to other Turkmen ruling the neighborhood. He is married to a relative of the emperor of Byzantium . His son is married to the daughter of a knight from Constantinople , with whom he has two young daughters .

Like his father Alexios III. Manuel also had a keen interest in spiritual matters. In the year of his accession to the throne, he donated an artfully decorated reliquary in the shape of a cross to the Sumela monastery , inside of which there was said to have been a splinter of the cross of Jesus.

predecessor	Office	successor
Alexios III	Emperor of Trebizond 1390 - 1417	Alexios IV