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Article: The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos: 1143-1180.
- Article from:
- Canadian Journal of History
- Article date:
- August 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Canadian Journal of History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Paul Magdalino. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993. xxvii, 557 pp. $89.95 U.S.
The beginning of the "decline" of the East Roman or Byzantine empire has been, by a rather boring and inaccurate textbook consensus, assigned to the end of the eleventh century, with the series of unimpressive imperial office-holders who followed the bully-boy conqueror Basil II Bulgaroctonos, and especially after the disastrous battle of Manzikert (1071 A.D.) when most of Anatolia, a main Byzantine recruiting base and its Asiatic heartland, was lost to the Seljuq Turks. At this point the eastern empire supposedly ceased to be a world power; like its successor, the Ottoman ...