Roman, Byzantine, and Seljuq rule

Administration and settlement patterns

During the later Roman period (4th to early 7th century ce), Anatolia was divided into 24 provinces. These provinces were in turn grouped into dioceses under vicarii (deputies), those of Asia Minor belonging chiefly to the dioceses of Pontica and Asiana and partly to that of Oriens. The whole formed part of the praetorian prefecture of the East, with its headquarters at Constantinople; this massive administrative circumscription comprised all the Middle Eastern districts of the empire—including Egypt and parts of North Africa—and the European provinces of Thrace, Haemimontus, and Rhodope (modern Turkey and parts of southeastern Bulgaria and northeastern Greece).

The most densely settled regions were the narrow coastal plains in the north and south and the much broader plains of the Aegean region, dissected by the western foothills of the Anatolian Plateau. Urban settlements were concentrated in these coastal plains, although there were other groups of cities in certain inland regions with more sheltered climatic conditions than were afforded by the central plateau and eastern mountains. Land use throughout the medieval period and into modern times was predominantly pastoral on the plateau, while the cultivation of cereals, vegetables, vines, and olives dominated the fertile coastal regions. All cities depended on their agricultural hinterlands for economic survival; those with good harbour facilities or other access to the coast were also centres of long-distance as well as local trade and exchange. Politically and militarily, Anatolia was at peace throughout the Roman period, except for the existence of brigandage in less accessible regions such as Isauria and the brief civil wars of the later 5th century, which involved both Isauria and parts of western Anatolia.

War and social dislocation

In the 7th century this favourable situation changed. War with Sāsānian Persia brought hostile military occupation and invasion; even after the imperial victory in 626 under Heraclius (ruled 610–641), the devastation of much of Anatolia during the following century and a half of Muslim raids and invasions drastically changed the economic, social, and administrative character of the peninsula.

The loss of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine and later the North African coastal provinces meant that Anatolia became the heartland of the much-reduced state, with its southern and eastern regions forming a frontier zone. Constant raiding transformed the traditional pattern of urban-rural social and economic relationships: most cities acted as shelters for the local population and were reduced to small fortresses housing imperial and ecclesiastical officials and soldiers. Endemic plague, which struck the eastern Mediterranean basin frequently throughout the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries, further damaged the older pattern of urban settlement. Economic activity became increasingly rural. Provincial elites focused their attention on Constantinople as the capital and seat of the imperial court and administration, thus investing less wealth locally, while the state concentrated its fiscal apparatus on the village rather than the city, accelerating the process of ruralization. The traditional provincial administration, while it persisted until the 9th century, began to be replaced by a militarized system: the armies of the eastern regions (lost to the Arabs in 637–640) and the army formerly based in Thrace came to be settled permanently in Anatolia, where they were recruited locally. The new circumscriptions, consisting of a number of the older provinces together, came to be known as themes (Greek: themata), originally a term denoting simply an army corps billeted in a particular region. Each theme was governed by a strategos (general), but the fiscal and civil administrative officials continued to be appointed from Constantinople. The original five large themes were soon subdivided to form smaller units, while many new themes were added along the frontier during the period of reconquests by the Byzantines in the late 9th and 10th centuries. Some of the soldiers were recruited on a mercenary or full-time basis and paid directly by the state, while from the late 7th century many were recruited on the basis of their own lands, part of the income from which was used to support them on active service. Although these troops initially represented the main professional field armies of the empire, they rapidly came to resemble a peasant militia.

In spite of this evolution, the so-called “theme system” appears to have functioned relatively well at a purely defensive level; the theme system and the natural geographic boundaries formed by the Taurus and Southeastern Taurus ranges combined to prevent any permanent Muslim conquest or assimilation of Anatolian regions under the authority of the Caliphate. The system was jeopardized during the 10th century, however, as an increasingly powerful provincial magnate elite began to encroach on the soldiers’ smallholdings, thereby depriving the state of an important source of military manpower. In the context of an imperial program of military expansion and offensive campaigns on both the eastern and western frontiers, these changes led to civil conflicts that were stimulated by rivalry both among certain magnate clans and their leaders and between the leaders and the state. But the system lasted, with some modifications, until the mid-11th century and the period of the first Seljuq conquests; the themes gradually lost their military character, a process connected with a greatly increased reliance on professional and mercenary soldiers at the expense of the older peasant militia.