Alexios I Komnenos
Alexios I found the empire in pieces in 1081 and left it functioning thirty-seven years later. He came to the throne at about twenty-four by revolt, with the Seljuks holding almost all of Anatolia after Manzikert, the Normans invading from Italy, the Pechenegs crossing the Danube, the treasury empty and the coinage debased to a fraction of its nominal gold. He was a soldier who preferred stratagem to battle and was frank about it. The Normans under Robert Guiscard beat him at Dyrrhachium in 1081 and he removed them by financing a revolt in Italy against them; the Pechenegs he destroyed at Levounion in 1091 in alliance with the Cumans, whom he had also hired. The currency was reformed in 1092 with a new gold coin and a rational relationship between denominations. He paid for the state by tying land grants to military service, which strengthened the aristocracy and worked. The appeal he sent west for mercenaries produced something he had not asked for: the First Crusade, tens of thousands of armed pilgrims arriving at his capital with their own leaders, whom he fed, shipped across the Bosphorus and required to swear to restore any recovered imperial territory. They took Nicaea and handed it over and kept Antioch. His daughter Anna Komnene wrote the Alexiad about him, which is the best narrative source in Byzantine literature and is entirely partisan. His reign is the standard case for the argument that Byzantium's decline was not continuous. The state he inherited was arguably finished, and the one he handed on fought successfully for another century under his son and grandson.
- Lived: 1048 CE – 1118 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader, diplomat
