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DOI : 10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-06458-9.p.0193
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A BSTRACT – The article compares Turkic Elites in Constantinople and Trebizond during
late Byzantine period. The Byzantine Balkan society was more open towards the noble
Turkic immigrants comparing to the Byzantine Pontos. On the contrary, the Pontic
Asian settlers were rarely found in the higher strata of society, they or their descendants
mostly joined the middle class bureaucracy and clergy.
TURKIC ELITES
IN CONSTANTINOPLE
AND TREBIZOND IN 1261-1453
Some Comparative Notes
Late Byzantine sources clearly shows the physical presence of the Turks
in the Byzantine world who settled there as subjects of the Byzantine
emperors – the Laskarid, Palaiologan, and Grand Komnenian rulers.
These naturalized Turks may be defined as a specific category of the
Byzantine population, that is, Byzantine Turks. Byzantine Turks adopted
Christianity and, as a rule, married local Greeks, Slavs, etc. However,
the west Byzantine and Pontic paradigms of Turkic presence exhibit
some important differences in the regard of the place and role of the
aristocratic stratum of Byzantine Turks. In the present paper, I will try
to outline these differences. Chronologically I shall limit myself here to
the Late Byzantine period that is from 1204 to 1461.
METHOD
Status Percentage
Aristocracy and pronoiars 34 percent
Clerics, monks and intellectuals 7 percent
Merchants 2 percent
Small-holders and paroikoi 51 percent
Others 6 percent
As has been noted the Asian immigrants were much more numerous
in the Pontos, constituting about 5.8 percent of the entire population.
However, their distribution in the social structure of Byzantine Pontic
society was quite different.
TWO PARADIGMS
Rustam Shukurov
Moscow State University, Russia