406. Norman Conquest: The First Crusade (Part 6)

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me. William Derymple and we have our old friend Peter Fran back again uh talking about his his very very first book and I think what was originally his PhD, uh The First Crusade, The Call from the East, which takes us even further from the familiar world of the Bay of Tapestry to the furthest frontier that the Normans reached, which is the eastern Mediterranean, uh and ultimately uh short lived Norman principality in

Antioch a very, very, very long way from uh from London and Hastings and uh and Ruhr. And can I just say for those of you who enjoyed undoubtedly the pasting that we got in the last episode, I I wouldn't call it I wouldn't call it being duffed up. I like to think of it as, you know, when you go to a spa And somebody thrashes you with twigs. For your own good. That's how I that's how I think about it, having Peter Frankapan. So mean to me and Mum. Please please have a word with your daughter. Leave her out of it. She's enjoying this far far too much. Okay. So let us start, Peter Francoun, with Manzikert. Now uh t tell us where Uh how and why Manzikert is important. And why it's not all you don't think it's all it's cracked up to be in many ways. I don't think any well, look, uh Malazkurt uh today is in sort of e eastern Turkey. uh it's usually called but in in in England Mantica. It's a battle in ten seventy one. It it is a big deal insofar as uh there is a big set to between uh the Byzantine of the Roman Emperor Romanus the Fourth uh D Diogenes in ten seventy one where he fights uh a massive Turkish force under the command of

Al Barcelan, one of the great Seljuk leaders, and is captured in battle. Uh this is in 1071. History doesn't remember you generously if you get captured on the battlefield and you're a ruling emperor. There's no question about that. So it's significant. But no, in terms of its kind of later legacy, and you can listen to us on our legacy podcast talk about this. Um, Manzika has assumed uh great significance in uh in history, not just in in Europe, but in in Turkey too. I mean, it's celebrated every year uh in Turkey with literally hundreds of thousands, million millions of people take to the streets to celebrate, seen often as the birth of the Turkish state. Um so it's it's significant for that reason. Um, sharpened up. Okay, you you go do you go to Dover. Yeah. You keep going. Cross the channel and go east. Eventually you get past Italy, past Venice, you get to Constantinople, modernist temple, you keep going, heading towards China, and after about after about a thousand miles you get to the central plains of Anatolia and a place called Malazgirt.

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