From either Ürgup or Ihlara, you can see mountain peaks from far off. In May 1990, they were snow-capped. Hasan Dagi is probably the more visible from Ihlara, but I chose to refer to Mt. Argaeus (Erciyas Dugi) to the east since it is the tallest in the region and I had a contemporary name for it, as I did not for Hasan Dagi.
Any work with Manzikert or Byzantium, in my opinion, demands some research into Byzantine military history. The Byzantines were among the best military administrators, paymasters, and spymasters of the medieval world. I began with Ian Heath's Byzantine Armies, 886-1118 in the Osprey Series, and matters grew substantially more complex from there. While at Dumbarton Oaks, I was delighted to meet (and, in the immemorial fashion of armchair strategoi, to deploy pens, pencils, and pieces of paper to represent the various forces at Manzikert) Fr. George Dennis, S.J., translator of Three Byzantine Military Treatises (Dumbarton Oaks Press, 1985), including “On Guerrilla Warfare” attributed to Nicephorus Phocas, and The Strategikon of Maurice (University of Pennsylvania, 1984). Also useful were two unpublished doctoral dissertations: “Aspects of Byzantine Military Administration: The Elite Corps, the Opsikion, and the Imperial Tagmata from the Sixth to the Ninth Century,” J. F. Haldon, Ph.D., University of Birmingham, 1975; and J. S. Howard-Johnston's “Studies in the Organization of the Byzantine Army in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” Oxford University, June 4, 1971.
You may regard all of these references as shards, as carefully pieced together as I could, into a mosaic that is definitely not the pattern of history, but that I hope you will find as much pleasure in reading as I found in assembling.
Susan Shwartz
December 1995
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Shards of Empire Page 49