When Byzantium put end to the Armenian kingdoms of the Northeast, it invited the dispossessed kings and their men to resettle the Byzantine borderlands depopulated by centuries of Arab wars.
Some ended up in the mountains of Cilicia. The Turkish victory of 1071 cut them loose from Byzantine ties; the Crusade of 1098 saved them from being swallowed up by the Turks.
Several Armenian baronies came into existence around this time. One of them, the Rubenians of the castles of Anazarba and Sis (mod. Kozan), exploited the Crusader connection to their greatest advantage.
The Rubenian Leo II (1186-1219) became an ally of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and supplied troops for Richard the Lionheart in the battle of Acre. He was rewarded by being named King of Armenia by the Pope, who sent an envoy to present the crown.
The kingdom flourished in the 13th century, a period of greatly expanded east-west trade. The Venetians and Genoese were granted trading concessions. Marco Polo, who visited Ayas (mod. Yumurtalık), reported a thriving city that served as a Mediterranean terminus for the silk and spice caravans of Asia.
The kingdom flourished in the 13th century, a period of greatly expanded east-west trade. The Venetians and Genoese were granted trading concessions. Marco Polo, who visited Ayas (mod. Yumurtalık), reported a thriving city that served as a Mediterranean terminus for the silk and spice caravans of Asia.
Some 40 spectacular castles between Anamur and Maraş are the memorials of that brief episode of medieval vitality in Cilicia.
After the fall of the Crusader states in Antioch and Jerusalem, Cilicia was doomed. It lasted another century in shifting subjection to the Mongols, the Turks, the Egyptians and Lusignan kings of Cyprus. Its 40 castles changed hands with astonishing celerity and inconsequence among various feudal cousins.
ın 1375, the Egyptians took Sis and put an end to the last Christian kingdom in the Middle Eastern mainland. The great sea castle of Corycus (Kızkalesi near Silifke) remained the possession of the Latin kings of Cyprus until 1448.
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