Note 22 — Chapter IX · ERZERUM

Seized in the year 502 by the Sasanian king of Persia at the inception of his war with Rome, this remote stronghold was shortly afterwards recovered by the Emperor Anastasius and restored to its former fame.22 The fortifications were enlarged and increased by Justinian;23 but at the close of the sixth century it again fell into Persian hands.24 I do not know that we are able to follow its fortunes during the campaigns of Heraclius, who is said to have assembled there a council of Armenian bishops (A.D. 629?).25 In the year 647 Theodosiopolis became the prize of the Arabs; and more than a century elapsed before it was regained by the Cæsars under Constantine the Fifth (755).26 That monarch razed the walls, reduced the inhabitants to slavery, and transported a great number of Armenians of the Paulician sect to Constantinople and to Thrace.27 Shortly after this event it appears to have been rebuilt by the Mussulmans; and it played an important part during the wars of Leo (886–911) and his son Constantine Porphyrogenitus (911–959) with the Arabs in the neighbouring province of Pasin.28 But the waves of Mussulman conquest were closing in upon the Eastern Empire. About the commencement of the thirteenth century we find the place in the possession of a prince who bears the Turkish name of Toghrul Ben Kilijarslan. From his hands it passed into the dominions of the Sultan of Iconium.29 The Seljuk Sultan was known as the lord of Erzerum, just as his Ottoman successors bore the title of lords of Kars.30 The rule of the Seljuks was followed by that of their Tartar conquerors. In the first half of the fifteenth century Erzerum was in the keeping of the Turkomans, from whom it was wrested by the Ottomans under Mohammed II.31