The Bulgarian Elite between War and Peace in the Balkans

Abstract

Leo the Deacon, a contemporary of the Rus’-Byzantine war for Bulgaria of 970–971, described the triumph of John I Tzimiskes (969–976) in Bulgaria as unexpected: the laying of the crown of the Bulgarian tsars–for centuries the staunchest enemies of Byzantium in the Balkans–on the altar of Hagia Sophia heralded a new chapter in the Empire’s history. Byzantium’s penetration into the Balkans at least seemingly found a foothold in the military organization and reform reported in the Taktikon Escorial. The old frontier strip in the Balkans was reorganized, leading to an increase in the number of strategides and the creation of tagmatic command centers headed by doukai / katepano in Thessalonike and Adrianople. At the same time, the territories taken from Bulgaria, primarily in its northwestern part, were restructured according to the same principle: strategoi and garrisons were stationed in the captured Bulgarian cities and fortresses. The Danube frontier was established, and a tagmatic center headed by the katepano of Mesopotamia (for the West) was formed in the Danube delta. A surviving seal allows us to assume that a military center of the same rank existed in the western Balkans, in the Ras fortress (katepano of Ras). Byzantium’s work on the military organization of the newly-conquered territories is also attested by the seals.