David Komnenos

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David Komnenos (c. 1184 - 1214), joint ruler of Trebizond, was the second son of Manuel Komnenos (born 1145) and of Rusudan, daughter of George III of Georgia. He was a grandson of the Emperor Andronikos I. Andronikos was dethroned and killed in 1185; his son Manuel was blinded and may well have died; at any rate he disappears from the historical record. He left two children, the Caesars Alexios and David. Their mother Rusundan fled either to Georgia or to the southern coast of the Black Sea.

The month before Constantinople fell in 1204, Alexios occupied Trebizond with the aid of a Georgian contingent provided by his aunt, Queen Tamar of Georgia.

The Komnenos family was popular on the Black Sea coast, from which it had come originally, and where it had left roots. In 1182 his grandfather Andronikos had a stronghold at Oinaion between Trebizond and Sinope. Those three places all declared for Alexios, and while he remained cautiously in the neighbourhood of Trebizond, his brother David, aided by the Georgians and local mercenaries, made himself master of Pontus and Paphlagonia, including Kastamonu, said to be the ancestral castle of the Komnenoi.

David conquered as far west as Herakleia Pontike well on the way to Constantinople, but in 1206 he provoked Theodore I Laskaris by sending his young general Synadenos to occupy Nicomedia in the Nicaean Empire. Synadenos was no match for the abler Laskaris, who led his troops through a difficult pass, setting an example to his soldiers by wielding an axe against the trees that obstructed his path of victory. Synadenos was taken prisoner. David was forced to accept Herakleia as the westward limit of the Trapezuntine Empire, and Laskaris threatened to make him recede still further eastward. David, hard pressed by his Nicaean adversary, invoked the aid of the Latins; Laskaris occupied the frontier district of Plousias, famous for its archers and its warlike spirit, and would have taken Herakleia also, had not the Latins under Thierri de Loos again seized Nicomedia.

But the Latins soon retired, to face another Bulgarian invasion of Thrace, rewarded by David for their temporary aid by shiploads of corn and hams. David asked the Latin Emperor of Constantinople to include him as his subject in his treaties and correspondence with Laskaris, and to treat his land as Latin territory. David preferred a nominal Latin suzerainty to annexation by the Nicene emperor. Having thus secured his position, he crossed the Sangarios with a body of about 300 Frankish auxiliaries, ravaged the villages subject to Laskaris, and took hostages from Plousias. David withdrew, but the Franks, incautiously advancing into the hilly country, were suddenly surprised by Andronikos Gidos, a general of Laskaris, in the Rough Passes of Nicomedia, and scarcely a man of them was left to tell the tale.

In 1214 the new Seljuk Sultan, Kay Ka'us I captured Sinope and killed David. The loss of Sinope pushed the western frontier of Trebizond, which had been at Herakleia a few years earlier, and then at Cape Kerembi, back to the Iris and Thermodon rivers.