But this prosperity was of short duration; the luxury and the extent of the Roman empire brought with them the accompanying cankers of weakness and dissolution. Rebellion at home, and insurrection on the frontiers attended by military insubordination, soon changed the fair features of peace into the distorted aspect of war; plenty gave way to misery and religious zeal lent its hand to increase the evil. Asia Minor could not be expected to escape the calamity—indeed, an undue proportion of wretchedness seems to have been her lot; for the establishment of the first Christian churches in her territory added fuel to the contests between the pagans and Christians; and while the latter destroyed the temples of paganism, regardless of the beauty of the work or the skill of the builder, they met with personal cruelties and suffered worse persecutions at the hands of their idolatrous enemies.
A vain prospect of better days appeared, when Constantine, after fighting under the cross and conquering Maxentius, laid the foundations of Constantinople on the site of Byzantium, the seat of the future Empire of the East. During this period the early history of the church is intimately associated with that of Asia Minor. It is enough to allude to the celebrated council of Nicæa and its creed, and to mention the names of George of Cappadocia, Gregory of Nazianzus, Eusebius, and St. Basil of Cæsarea. The illusion soon vanished: the apostate Julian, carried along by a love of speculation, and fond of the philosophy of the pagans, led the way by his liberalism, to the establishment of those sects which long agitated the Eastern empire, and shed their baneful influence over the Christians of the West. Amidst these calamities, the same hordes of barbarians who had sacked the plains of Italy and Thrace, carried desolation and ruin into the other parts of the empire, and while the nations of the West were falling into the hands of successive northern chieftains, Asia Minor could not escape the ravages which overwhelmed the eastern provinces.
The annals of the Byzantine empire contain a melancholy list of facts of violence, intrigue, oppression, and vice. In Sapor, king of Persia, a powerful and determined enemy came to the aid of these domestic foes, and a warfare was carried on against him with various success; the conquest or defence of Asia Minor was the rich prize for which they fought. But it is most painful to reflect that some of the greatest cruelties and miseries which were suffered during the fifth century were owing to the dissensions of the Christian sects, in which the names of the two patriarchs, Nestorius of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria, were most conspicuous, and the city of Ephesus was the scene of their disgraceful quarrels.
In the reign of Justinian the contests with Persia still continued, and the gold-mines of Trebizond became a subject of dispute between the Greeks and Chosroes I. During his reign the name of Turk first appears in the page of history. Having driven the Avars from their northern wildernesses, they reached the Caucasus, from whence they sent ambassadors to the emperor. Mutual interest dictated the alliance between them and Justinian against the Persians. This did not, however, long avail to protect the Empire of the East against the power of the Great King.
Heraclius ascended the throne A.D. 610, and in the following year Chosroes II invaded the empire; after the conquest of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, his troops marched from the Euphrates to the Thracian Bosporus, devastating the seacoast of Pontus, sacking Ancyra and taking Chalcedon by storm. The heroism of Heraclius, which shone forth during the middle portion of his reign, saved the capital and the empire. Conveying his army by sea to the Gulf of Issus, and carrying the war into the enemy’s country, he compelled the Persians to evacuate Asia Minor and hasten to the defence of Dastagerd and Ctesiphon; and the battle of Nineveh (A.D. 627) reduced the haughty Chosroes to the state of a fugitive.
In the eighth century a new incentive to crime and folly burst upon the Eastern world. The worship of images, which had crept into the practice of the church, now began to be looked upon as idolatry; and the vacillating Greeks were visited by this imputation on the one hand, or by the accusation of impiety on the other, if they renounced the practice. In the year 718 an adventurer from the mountains of Isauria, who had the command of the Anatolian legions, taking the name of Leo III, ascended the throne of Constantinople. The energy with which he adopted the views and directed the measures of the popular party, soon gained for him the name of the Iconoclast. The dispute ceased in 842, on the final establishment of the worship of the images by the Empress Theodora.
Now a fiercer and more lasting enemy had made his appearance; unrelenting efforts were directed against the whole Christian world, from Jerusalem to the Pillars of Hercules and the shores of the Atlantic; and the plains of Asia Minor fell an easy prey to valour and numbers. Mohammedanism had, during the last century, spread rapidly along the southern shore of the Mediterranean; and the worshippers of the Koran had recruited the ranks of the army of the Faithful with hosts of Arabs, Saracens, and Moors. The Caliph Harun al-Rashid twice crossed the plains of Phrygia and Bithynia to invest the heights of Scutari and the Pontic Heraclea, and compelled Nicephorus I to pay him an annual tribute. Theophilus, son of Michael II, avenged these insults and on his fifth expedition penetrated into Syria; but the Caliph Mutazzim again ravaged the plains of Phrygia and directed his efforts against Amorium, the birthplace of Michael. The imperial army was routed and pursued to Dorylæum, which fell into the hands of the conqueror.
It is not necessary here to dwell upon the rise and progress of the Turkish nation, or to show how Toghrul Bey, the grandson of Seljuk, became their leader after the defeat of Mahmud of Ghazni. Alp Arslan, the nephew of Toghrul, completed the conquest of Armenia and Georgia; but having penetrated into Phrygia, his troops were driven back to the Euphrates by the emperor, Romanus Diogenes, a brave soldier, whom the Empress Eudocia had espoused for the safety of the state. The battle of Malaskerd was, however, imprudently fought and lost by the emperor, in August 1071, when the power of the house of Seljuk was established; and the Asiatic provinces of Rome, now lost to Christendom, were soon after overrun by the five sons of Kutulmish, a prince of the house of Seljuk, who established their camp at Kutahiyah. On the death of Alp Arslan by the hand of an assassin, he was succeeded by his son, the celebrated Malik Shah.
On his death, in 1092, his empire, extending from the Black Sea to the confines of Syria, and from the Euphrates to Constantinople, was divided amongst his five sons, the youngest of whom invaded the Roman provinces of Asia Minor, and after several years of treachery and folly on the part of the Greek commanders, the sultan Solyman [Sulaiman] erected his palace and his fortress at Nicæa, the capital of Bithynia, and the seat of the Seljukian Dynasty of Rum was planted within a hundred miles of Constantinople.
The general historian supplies ample details of these interesting events: Jerusalem, the holy city, the object of veneration and of pilgrimage, soon fell into the hands of these Seljukian Turks. The hollow alliance between the emperor and the sultan of Nicæa was burst asunder; a thrill of horror vibrated from Constantinople to the distant shores of Britain at the conduct of the Infidels, and a band of warriors rushed from every part of Christendom to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, and to release the emperor of Byzantium from the iron grasp of his Turkish conqueror.