Thoros II of Armenia
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Thoros II of Armenia (died 1169) was prince of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, ruling from 1140 to 1169. He was the son of Leo I of Armenia by his unknown second wife, possibly Armenian.
He, his younger brother Roupen, and his father had all been taken into captivity in Constantinople in 1138, where his father died in 1140, and Roupen was murdered in 1141. However, Thoros contrived to escape and return to Cilicia in 1145. There he retook Vahka from the Byzantines, and gradually recovered his patrimony from them. In 1151, he captured Mamistra and Til Hamdoun. This roused the Emperor Manuel, who dispatched an army in 1152 under his cousin the Dux Andronicus to retake Mamistra. The army included a number of the local Armenian barons, rivals of the Rupenides. Thoros routed the besiegers with a night sally: Sempad, the lord of Barbaron was killed in the fighting, and his brother Oshin II, lord of Lampron, Basil, lord of Partzerpert, and Tigran, lord of Prakan were captured. Oshin gave his son Hethum as a surety for half of his ransom; he was well-received at the court of Thoros, and Thoros proposed to have him knighted and married to one of his daughters, which proposal was accepted.
The Byzantines next incited an invasion by Masu'd, the Seljuk sultan of Rüm in 1153. Thoros was able to placate Mas'ud by acknowledging him as his overlord, but Mas'ud attempted to invade Cilicia again in 1154. While besieging Anazarbus, a raiding detachment sent against Antioch was ambushed and destroyed in the Syrian Gates by the Knights Templars. Hearing the news, the demoralized Seljuk army abandoned the siege. A siege of Til Hamdoun by the Seljuks in 1155 was also unsuccessful. With the accession of Kilij Arslan II, a peace prevailed between the two states. Thoros' impetuous half-brother Stephen raided the Seljuk territory around Kokison in 1157 and unsuccessfully attempted to take Maraş; but Thoros returned Kokison to Kilij Arslan and the peace remained untroubled.
Around this time, Thoros became embroiled in a dispute with Raynald of Chatillon over the castle of Bagras, in the borderlands between Armenia and Antioch. Built by the Knights Templars, it had been seized by the Byzantines and subsequently recaptured by the Armenians. The Emperor Manuel had engaged Raynald to recover it for him, but Raynald was defeated in a sharp battle near Alexandretta. Thoros ultimately returned the castle to the Templars, in return for a covenant of perpetual alliance; but the immediate consequence was that Manuel refused to compensate Raynald for his undertaking. Incensed, Raynald joined forces with Thoros, and the two launched a freebooting raid on Byzantine Cyprus, attended with great cruelty.
The wrathful Manuel determined to punish the authors of this outrage, and in 1158, he led a great army into Cilicia and overran the Mediterranean littoral. Thoros fled into the mountain fastness of Dajikikar. Through the mediation of Baldwin III of Jerusalem, he escaped a second captivity by the Byzantines, but was forced to do homage to the Emperor for his domains. A few years later, however, Andronicus Euphorbenus, the Byzantine governor of Tarsus, invited Marshal Stephen to a banquet and then had him murdered, in revenge for his earlier raids on Byzantine territory. Thoros and his half-brother Mleh responded with a general massacre of the Greeks within their dominions, and a new war with the Byzantines was only averted by the diplomatic efforts of Amalric I of Jerusalem.
The last years of Thoros' reign were troubled by an attempt on his life by Mleh. It was discovered by Thoros before it could be carried out; Mleh was deprived of much of his wealth and authority, and left Armenia for Antioch, and subsequently, Aleppo to join the service of Nur ad-Din. Shortly before his death in 1169, Thoros retired to a monastery and left the throne to his minor son Ruben II, under the regency of his nephew Thomas.
He had at least three children: Ruben II, a daughter who married Hethum III of Lampron, and a daughter who married the Emperor of Cyprus.
| Preceded by Leo I |
Prince of Armenian Cilicia 1140–1169 |
Succeeded by Ruben II |
[edit] References
- Smbat Sparapet's Chronicle
- The Barony of Cilician Armenia (Kurkjian's History of Armenia, Ch. 27)
- Boase, T. S. R. (1978). The Cilician Kingdom of Armenia. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. ISBN 0-7073-0145-9.
