Mleh

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Mleh or Melias (Մլեհ, Meleh , Malih in Frankish sources; † May 15, 1175 in Sis ) from the Rubenid family was prince of Lesser Armenia from 1170 to 1175 .

Life

Descent and youth

Mleh was the third of five sons of Prince Leo I (1129 / 30–1137; † 1140):

When Emperor John recaptured Cilicia in 1137 , the brothers Mleh, Stephan and Konstantin fled to their cousin Joscelin II of Edessa . While John moved to John against Antioch and Til Hamdun , Vahka , the family seat , fell after heroic defense. Levon I and his eldest sons Reuben and Thorus were captured in the mountains and brought to Constantinople . There Ruben was blinded and then executed, Lewon died in 1141 while Thoros made friends. He was able to escape in 1143 or 1145, allegedly with the help of a Greek princess ( Vahram von Edessa ) and initially also went to the court of Joscelin von Edessa. Thoros made friends with the Franconian Simon von Raban , a vassal of Joscelin von Edessa, and married his daughter. He also gathered compatriots around him and, together with his brothers Mleh and Stephane, initially recaptured Vahtka. According to other sources, he landed in Cilicia and took twelve men, whom the Jacobite patriarch Athanasius had given him, to the fortress of Amouda south of Anazarba .

In 1151 Thoros made an incursion into Cilicia and slew the Byzantine governor at the gates of Mamista . This ended seven years of peace under Byzantine rule. Manuel I sent his relative Andronikos with an army to Cilicia. Andronikos besieged Mamista, but the Armenians under Thoros made a nightly sortie and routed the army. Sempad von Barbaron was killed, Oschin II captured by Lampron, Andronikos returned to Constantinople without having achieved anything.

Political and military career

In 1164 Thoros and Mleh allied with Bohemond III. and the Byzantine governor Konstantin Koloman against Nur ad-Din and together they horrified the besieged Harenc . On August 10, 1164, Bohemond attacked the army of Nur ed-Din near Artah and was ambushed. While Thoros and Mleh, who had repeatedly warned of the ambush, escaped, Bohemond III, Raimund of Tripoli , Konstantin Koloman and Hugo VIII of Lusignan were captured and brought in chains to Aleppo . Thoros generally had good relations with Antioch and supported Bohemond against his mother Konstanze , among others . He also paid a visit to Amalrich's court in Jerusalem .

The peace with Byzantium did not last long. In 1165 Stephan, who stood out for his constant raids on Danish-Manidic and Byzantine territory, which is why Thoros had already imprisoned him for a short time, was invited to the fortress of Hamus by the Byzantine governor Andronikos Euphorbenos , captured and crucified on a plane tree , according to another source while alive Boiled body. Thereupon Thoros started a massacre of his Greek subjects, which was only ended by the intervention of Hethum of Lambron.

For reasons unknown, Mleh fell out with Thoros. According to the historian Smbat Sparapet , he tried to murder his brother with some comrades on the hunt between Mamista and Adana . Thoros had been warned, however, had Mleh seized, confronted the barons, confiscated his fortune and banished him - an astonishingly mild sentence for an attempted assassination, which suggests that more political differences between the brothers were the reason for this action were. Mleh went to Antioch, where he allegedly joined the Knights Templar , but then placed himself in the service of Nur ad-Din of Aleppo and perhaps converted to Islam . Only ed-Din gave him the district of Kyrrhos .

When Thoros abdicated in 1169 , his eldest son Ruben II was still a toddler. The barons appointed Thoros' relative Thomas , a Franconian on his father's side, as regent. Apparently little support was to be expected from the family of Thoros' Frankish wife. After a year, Mleh, who was well aware that a minor ruler would hardly be able to withstand the expansionist desires of the Byzantines and the princes of Antioch , began to intervene in the affairs of Cilicia with Nur ad-Din's troops. Mleh took Mamista , Adana and Tarsos , which he could hardly do without local infantry. So he must have kept a power base in the country. He also attacked the Templars in the controversial fortress of Baghras , so he was able to bring the Amanos at least partially under his control. Bohemond of Antioch called upon King Amaury of Jerusalem for help, who repeatedly invited Mleh to negotiate, which Mleh, probably rightly fearing a trap, did not take advantage of. Eventually Amaury invaded the coastal plain, burned the crops in the fields and attacked some castles, but to no avail. At the news that troops had attacked Nur ed-Dins Kerak (Petra), he hurried back south. When he reached Petra with his force, however, Nur ad-Din had already withdrawn.

Eventually it was agreed to divide the kingdom between Ruben II and Mleh. But soon Mleh was the undisputed ruler. The regent Thomas fled to Antioch, where he was assassinated. The Archbishop of Tarsus and Catholicos Narses Schnorhali took care of the young Ruben, whom Mleh had left defenseless, and gave him refuge in his official residence Rumkale ( Hromkla near Gaziantep ). However, the boy died soon afterwards. In order to secure his rule, Mleh took more decisive action against his opponents. He also captured rebellious clerics - according to the Armenian Orthodox historian Smbat Sparapet , whom he was an abomination for his apostasy, he even ripped the teeth of bishops - appropriated hidden gold and silver wherever he could, seduced honorable women and was generally vicious. He also confiscated the entire property of the Templars in Cilicia.

Oschin von Lambron's (Namrun) son Hethum had been married to a daughter of Thoros (the marriage was later annulled) and was at peace with the Rubenids during his lifetime . After Thorus' death, Oshin fell away from the Rubenids. Mleh besieged Lambron and devastated the surrounding land, but could not take the fortress itself. This ended the brief peace between the rival dynasties.

In 1171 Mleh captured Constantine Koloman in Tarsus and conquered the rest of Byzantine Cilicia. He delivered the governor in exchange for Maraş (Germanikeia) to Nur ad-Din, Koloman was only released on payment of a large ransom. In the same year Stephan von Champagne , Count of Sancerre, who had come to the Holy Land to marry the Princess Sibylle of Jerusalem but broke off the marriage negotiations, was attacked and completely robbed by Mleh's men on his way to Constantinople. Protection rackets and highway robberies have always been an important source of income for the gentlemen of the mountains.

In 1173 Manuel I finally recognized Mleh as the independent ruler of Cilicia. Mleh also entered into alliances with Kiliç Arslan II of Rum and as-Salih Ismail of Aleppo to secure his rule. In September 1173 he joined a campaign of Nur-ad-Din against Kiliç Arslan II , who had attacked Sebastia , one of the last Danishmanid bases. The armies met near Qal'at ar-Rûm north of the Euphrates , but Nur-ad-Din and Kiliç Arslan came to a peaceful agreement. Sebastia was turned over to Nur-ad-Din and occupied by 'Abd-al-Masih, the governor of Mosul .

When Nur-ad-Din died in Damascus on May 15, 1174 , Mleh lost his most important ally. Nur-ad-Din's 11-year-old son as-Salih Ismail was only nominally ruler. Exactly one year later, on May 15, 1175, Mleh was killed in the capital Sis by hired murderers. The barons put his nephew Ruben III. (1175–1186), a son of Stephane and his Hethumid wife Retha (Rita) as ruler, who had previously lived with his maternal uncle in the fortress of Paguran . Ruben rewarded the barons richly, but had Jahan and the eunuch Abul Gharib, who had committed to murdering his uncle after a reward had been offered, drowned in the Ceyhan .

Mleh was buried in the Khachkar monastery that he founded . His marriage to a daughter Vasil the Elder, Herr von Gargar from the Souren-Pahlavouni family and Maria von Lampron had remained childless, his illegitimate son Georg was blinded in 1175 and murdered in 1209 on the orders of his cousin Lewon I.

literature

  • Emily A. Babcock / AC Krey (eds.): A history of the Deeds done beyond the sea, by William, Archbishop of Tire . New York, 1943.
  • MW Baldwin (Ed.): A history of the crusades Vol. 1: The first hundred years . Philadelphia Press, 1969.
  • Steven Runciman: The History of the Crusades . Munich, 1978.
  • TSR Boase: The History of the Kingdom . In: TSR Boase (Ed.): The Cilician Kingdom of Antiochia . Edinburgh / London, 1978, 1-33.

Web links

predecessor Office successor
Ruben II. Prince of Lesser Armenia
1170–1175 		Ruben III.
personal data
SURNAME Mleh
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prince of Lesser Armenia
DATE OF BIRTH 12th Century
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1175
Place of death Sis