2015/01/01 by Κωνσταντίνος Μουστάκας · 4 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Byzantine Studies and History #Eurasian Exchange Networks #Balkans: History, Politics, Society #Byzantine architecture #Interpretation (philosophy) #Mythology #Legitimacy #History #Classics #Ancient history #Literature #Art #Philosophy #Law #Linguistics #Politics #Political science
paper · doi:10.1179/0307013114z.00000000054
published in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 39(1), 85-97 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2015/01/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
The story that gave the Osmanlis a distant Comnenian origin emerges in sixteenth-century Italian and Greek histories, inspired by the twelfth-century accounts of the renegade prince John Komnenos, as related by Niketas Choniates Its invention and propagation might have served the legitimacy of Ottoman rule, in which case, it was addressed to gulams and converts rather than to the Christian subjects of the sultans. It can also be interpreted as fitting the ideals and the imaginations of highly positioned converts in the Ottoman service, who previously belonged to the Byzantine and Balkan aristocracies.