Byzantium and the Crimea in the Context of Imperial Interests in the Northern Black Sea Area: New Finds of Emperor’s Molybdoboulla in Taurica

Abstract

The author has discussed the question of Byzantium’s particular interest to the strategically important Crimean region against the background of the seals of Byzantine emperors discovered in Byzantine Taurica. According to the distribution map of these seals, emperors’ correspondence was delivered mostly to the south-western area of the peninsula where the main centre of provincial administration, Cherson, was located. The introduction to the scholarship of two new emperors’ seals previously not known in the territory of the Crimea, of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, from the early years of his reign, when his mother Zoe (914–918) was regent, and Adronikos III Palaiologos (1328–1341), supplies arguments to reconsider some specific episodes in the Crimean history which still require further research: firstly, the events connected to the usurpation of power by droungarios Romanos Lakapenos in the early tenth century, and secondly, with alarm condition in Byzantium’s relations with the Golden Horde khans in the 1330s. The analysis of the finds of molybdoboulla of Byzantine emperors and other rulers of the Black Sea polities known so far has uncovered that the Crimean lands, actually throughout the mediaeval history, continued to be in the zone of Black Sea dynasts’ permanent interest: from the fifth to twelfth century, of Byzantine crown; in the thirteenth century, of the Komnenian dynasty of Trebizond and the rulers of Ikonion Sultanate (Sultanate of Rum); and in the fourteenth century, the Trebizond monarchs were joined by at least one representative of restored Byzantine empire, Adronikos III Palaiologos.

Keywords

• история византии, таврика, византийский херсон, сфрагистика, императорские печати, моливдовулы