ON ISAAC DUCAS COMNENUS CYPRIOT «SEPARATIST» STATE (A.D. 1184/85-1191): THE LAST OF THE CYPRIOT REVOLTS AGAINST BYZANTIUM

Athens, 2019. In English. Soft cover, 21 cm, 188 pp. ISBN: 9789600235395.

A detailed monograph on the career of the rebel ex-governor of Byzantine Cyprus, Isaac(ius) Ducas Comnenus, who succeeded in setting up an independent "Territorialstaat" from the last Comnenus and the first Angelus emperors of Constantinople, between A.D. 1184/85 and 1191, ruling despotically with the title basileus, thwarting in collusion with the Normans of Sicily a menacing Constantinopolitan expedition against him (1186/87) and even minting his own coinage there. Following his defeat by a landing force of the knights of the Third Crusade (1191), he was forced to surrender his possessions and territories to the English crusader king Richard I Lionheart.
His seven-year tumultuous regime, which was to earn him countless negative assessments from a variety of divergent contemporary and later primary sources (Greek, Latin and Oriental), was associated with the final period of Byzantine rule -albeit of a separatist nature- in Cyprus, which from A.D. 1191/92 onwards, having been violently severed from the main body of the Byzantine Empire, was to play a significant part in the historical developments within the 'Latinocracy' period in the south-eastern Mediterranean.

CONTENTS:
Generalia et genealogica/prosopographica
Isaac's seizure of power in Cyprus
Dates, calculations and opinions
Isaac's controversial rule on Cyprus and his image in contemporary sources and modern bibliography
Isaac's unstable regime and his collusion with the Normans of Sicily against Byzantium
Isaac's overthrow and Richard's "God-ordained" conquest of Cyprus
The bleak final years
Appendix: bibliography on Isaac's chronology and coins/seals
Greek summary
Bibliography