Chiến tranh
1225–1231 war
The Nicaean–Seljuk war of 1225–1231 was a border war fought between the Empire of Nicaea and the Sultanate of Rum, where the Nicaean Emperor John III Vatatzes orchestrated a series of successful military campaigns pushing the Seljuks back along the Black Sea and the Sakarya–Dorylaion frontier, resulting in the stabilization of the frontier and securing vital farmlands for Nicaea.
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The Nicaean–Seljuk war of 1225–1231 was a border war fought between the Empire of Nicaea and the Sultanate of Rum, where the Nicaean Emperor John III Vatatzes orchestrated a series of successful military campaigns pushing the Seljuks back along the Black Sea and the Sakarya–Dorylaion frontier, resulting in the stabilization of the frontier and securing vital farmlands for Nicaea.
Following their victory over the Seljuks at the Battle of Antioch on the Meander, the Byzantine Nicaean Empire's foreign policy reoriented toward the west and their ongoing struggle against the Latin Empire, which had occupied Constantinople since 1204. In the early 1220s, the Sultan Kayqubad I had been preoccupied with conflicts against other rivals of Rum, conquering the city of Alanya from the Cilician Armenians and conducting a successful expedition to Crimea in 1221. From 1222–1223, Kayqubad dispatched an army under Melik against the other Anatolian Byzantine successor state, the Empire of Trebizond, besieging the city. However, the endeavour ended in failure for the Seljuks, with Melik being captured by the Trapezuntines, though he was released in exchange for a peace settlement between Trebizond and Rum.
According to al-Hamawi's account, in 1225 Kayqubad I defeated John III Vatatzes in a battle, after which he besieged and captured some fortresses from the Nicaeans. Kayqubad may have timed his offensive to coincide with the transfer of a Nicaean army under the command of Protostrator John Ises and Megas Hetaireiarches John Kammytzes into the Haemus, in order to attack Latin-held Adrianople, which would have deprived the Nicaeans of troops on their eastern frontier. Around that time, Kayqubad also captured an otherwise unknown Byzantine nobleman named Alexios (possibly the Trapezuntine official Alexios Paktiares, suggesting forays into Trebizond's territories simultaneous with the attacks against Nicaea). However, John appears to have restored the situation soon after his initial defeat, as a fragment preserved by Nicodemus the Hagiorite reported that the emperor conducted successful warfare in the fourth year of his reign (i.e. late 1225–1226). Additionally, John III is reported to have dispatched gifts to al-Kamil in 1226, the overlord of al-Ashraf and Kayqubad's Ayyubid rival in Syria, perhaps in an attempt to apply pressure against the Seljuks' southeastern frontier.
In 1227 or 1228, Kayqubad conducted another offensive in which he invested a major Nicaean fortress. Although the sultan captured the fortress after an 8-day siege, John III arrived with a relief army shortly thereafter and confronted him. The two armies engaged in a pitched battle, and this time the forces of Rum were defeated with heavy losses, while large numbers of their fighters were captured by the Nicaeans. In 1229, Kayqubad renewed his offensive against, only to be defeated by John III again. The two sides concluded a peace two years later in 1231, likely influenced by the previous year's developments in the east: Kayqubad I, who was also waging war against Trebizond, won a decisive victory over the Khwarezmian Shah Jalal ad-Din at the Battle of Yassıçemen in 1230. However, the threat of further incursions by Turkomans and Mongols likely compelled him to conclude peace with the Nicaeans in the west. The Nicaeans may have gifted Kayqubad a donation to seal this peace in order to help the Seljuks upkeep their defences in the east against the Mongols, who were a mutual threat to both Nicaea and Rum.
The letter of Germanus II, which describes a battle at Thera (likely located in the valley of the Kaistros River), may shed additional light on one of John III's victorious battles against the Seljuks. According to Germanus, Vatatzes advanced with an army of 18,055 men, and met and defeated a Seljuk army of 63,000 on the battlefield. Supposedly, John III engaged a Seljuk nobleman in single combat from horseback. The emperor won the duel, striking the Seljuk warrior down before beheading him. When John then displayed the severed head of the warrior impaled on a pike, the Seljuk army collapsed into a rout. The emperor is said to have defeated the Seljuks in another battle during a subsequent campaign, following which the Nicaeans besieged and reconquered the fortresses of Tripolis and Laodikeia.
Following the catastrophic Seljuk defeat at the Battle of Köse Dağ by the invading Mongol Empire, and the subsequent deterioration of the state of Rum, the new Sultan Kaykhusraw II reached out to Emperor John III Vatatzes in order to renew the 1230 treaty his father had signed a decade prior. The two rulers met at Tripolis in late 1243 or early 1244, greeted one another in friendly terms, and renewed the treaty, in order to better counter the shared Mongol threat in the east. George Akropolites remarked in his encomium of the emperor:
Yet the Persian, who used to tear up a Roman treaty [when it suited his purposes], is [now] frightened into friendly observance [of such an agreement], and he both returns and "coughs up" the royal monies he earlier extorted from us when he held power. Moreover, he brings his children to you, and, seeing [the resulting] settlements of his own kin [inside your empire], in a novel twist-[despite] being wounded of spirit-he applauds you, the plunderer [of his domains], calling you deliverer and proclaiming you his savior. He even holds out your singularly strong hand as a threat to the arrogant Tartar expedition, relying upon the terror you evoke as his protector.
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