Alexius I Comnenus

Alexius I Comnenus (1048-1118), Byzantine emperor (1081-1118). Coming to the throne at a time when the Byzantine Empire was threatened by foreign enemies on every side, Alexius began his reign by combining with the Venetians to resist Norman invaders led by Robert Guiscard in Greece. In 1091 he defeated the Pechenegs, a Turkic tribe raiding the empire from the north; in the same year he stabilized the situation in the east by concluding a treaty with the Seljuk Turks. In 1095 Alexius appealed to Pope Urban II for help in recovering Anatolia from the Seljuks, thus helping to inspire the First Crusade. He exacted an oath of allegiance from the Crusade's leaders (among them, Bohemond, the son of his old enemy Robert Guiscard) when they arrived in Constantinople (present-day İstanbul) the following year. With their help, he regained control of western Anatolia, but he failed to prevent them from establishing independent states in Syria and Palestine. A dispute with Bohemond over the lordship of Antioch ended when the Norman acknowledged Alexius as his overlord in 1108. Alexius's biography, the Alexiad, was written by his daughter, Anna Comnena. It is considered a valuable source of historical information.