Region · as at first light, 1 January 1200

The Balkans and Byzantium

On the morning of 1 January 1200 the Atlas records 9 realms and principalities in The Balkans and Byzantium, with 69 lords and officers, 189 towns, ports and sites, 0 church lands and religious houses and 1 provinces, peoples and free lands.

The realms

  1. The Byzantine Empire (the Empire of the Romans)Alexios III Angelos, who signs and styles himself AlexiosEmpire

    On the morning of 1 January 1200 Alexios III has ruled for nearly five years from the Blachernae palace in Constantinople.

  2. Kaloyan's Bulgaria (the realm of the Bulgarians and Vlachs)KaloyanTsardom

    On 1 January 1200 Kaloyan has ruled Bulgaria alone for about two years.

  3. Ivanko's breakaway domain in the RhodopesIvanko, called Alexios after his marriageBreakaway domain, in revolt

    Ivanko murdered Tsar Ivan Asen I at Tarnovo in 1196, held the city for a short time, and fled to Constantinople when Peter drove him out.

  4. Grand principality of Serbia (Raška)Stefan NemanjicGrand principality

    The inland Serbian state of the Nemanjic house, centred on Ras in the valley of the Raska, with the Ibar, the West Morava, the upper Lim and the northern Kosovo field.

  5. Zeta (Dioclea): Vukan's shareVukan NemanjicAppanage under its own king

    Vukan, the eldest Nemanjic son, holds the old kingdom of Dioclea (Duklja, now called Zeta) with the coastal towns (Kotor, Budva, Bar, Ulcinj), Skadar and Drivast, together with Travunia (Trebinje and Konavle) and two inland districts, Toplica and Hvosno.

  6. Principality of HumDivided: the boy AndrijaPrincipality, divided

    Hum is the land of the lower Neretva and the coast from the Neretva mouth to the gates of Ragusa, with Ston as its seat and Popovo, Dubrava, Nevesinje and the Neretva valley inland.

  7. Arbanon: the archons of KrujaGjinArchontate

    Arbanon is the mountain land of the Albanians (Arbanitai) round the fortress of Kruja, between Dyrrachion and Lake Ohrid and between the Shkumbin and Mat valleys.

  8. Chrysos's domain of Prosek and StrumicaDobromir ChrysosBreakaway domain at peace with the emperor

    A Vlach captain who had served Alexios III with his own band, Chrysos was imprisoned on suspicion, released in 1196 and sent to command Strumica, and by the end of that year had turned it into a lordship of his own, raiding the land between the Strymon (Struma

  9. County of Kefalonia and ZakynthosMatthewLatin county

    Kefalonia, Zakynthos and Ithaca were taken from the empire in 1185 by the Sicilian fleet under the admiral Margaritus of Brindisi during William II's invasion, and unlike Dyrrachion and Corfu (recovered by 1191) they were never won back (Miller: 'permanently s

Self-governing peoples and other lands

Records of this region that belong to no single realm page.

Primary sources for The Balkans and Byzantium

  • Chronicle of Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines (about 1227 to 1241, at the Cistercian abbey of Trois-Fontaines in Champagne). The widest net of any Latin chronicle for 1200, compiled from dozens of sources, many now lost.
  • The Conquest of Constantinople (Villehardouin), Geoffrey of Villehardouin (about 1207 to 1213). Opens with the preaching of Fulk of Neuilly and the tournament at Ecry (28 November 1199) where Theobald III of Champagne and Louis of Blois took the cross, then the taking of the cross by Baldwin of Flanders, Hugh of Saint-Pol, Geoffrey of Perche and others through early 1200, the assemblies at Soissons and Compiegne in 1200, and the six envoys sent to Venice in the winter of 1200 to 1201.
  • Charters of the kingdom of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia, volume 2, 1101 to 1200 (documents of 1101 to 1200, edited 1904). The Croatian and Dalmatian charters to 1200: the acts of Duke Andrew as lord of Croatia and Dalmatia (1197 to 1204), the Hungarian kings' grants, the Templars and the bishops of Zagreb, Split, Zadar and Trogir, the communal statutes of the coastal towns, and the papal letters of 1200 to Emeric about Ban Kulin of Bosnia and heresy.
  • Documents on the older commercial and political history of the Republic of Venice, part 1, 814 to 1205 (documents of 814 to 1205, edited 1856). Venice's treaties and privileges in full text.
  • History of the bishops of Salona and Split, by Thomas the Archdeacon, Thomas of Split (about 1266). Written two generations later by a Split churchman born about 1200.
  • History of the doges of Venice (about 1229, with a continuation). The earliest surviving Venetian narrative close to the events.
  • The Deeds of the Hungarians, by the Anonymous Notary of King Béla, Anonymus (P. magister) (about 1200 to 1210, the date disputed). Not a record of events but a picture of the kingdom's nobility and geography as a courtier of about 1200 wished to see it: the clans and their lands, the castles and counties, the Vlachs, Cumans and other peoples of the Carpathian basin, all projected back onto the conquest.
  • The Registers of Pope Innocent III for 1199 to 1201, Innocent III and the papal chancery (22 February 1199 to 21 February 1201). The pope's outgoing letters for the year, in his chancery's own copy, touching nearly every realm in the atlas.
  • Documents on the Early Commercial and Political History of Venice, including the Partitio Romaniae of 1204 (documents 814 to 1299, edited by G. L. F. Tafel and G. M. Thomas, 3 vols (Vienna, 1856 to 1857)). Volume 1 (814 to 1205) prints Venice's treaties with Byzantium, the chrysobull of 1198 to Venice with its list of imperial provinces, the Venetian treaty with the crusaders of April 1201, and the Partitio terrarum imperii Romaniae of late 1204, which divides the Empire by its fiscal districts and so records the provincial structure (themes, episkepseis, estates) that was in place in 1200.
  • Greek Acts and Documents of the Middle Ages, Sacred and Secular (documents of the 9th to 15th centuries, edited by F. Miklosich and J. Muller, 6 vols (Vienna, 1860 to 1890)). Volume 3 (Acta et diplomata res Graecas Italasque illustrantia, 1865) prints the imperial chrysobulls to Venice, including Alexios III's of November 1198 with its list of the provinces and towns of the Empire where Venetians traded, the best single picture of the imperial provinces as they stood on 1 January 1200, together with the Pisan and Genoese privileges.
  • History of Niketas Choniates, Niketas Choniates (about 1185 to 1217, in stages, with a final revision in exile at Nicaea after 1204). The central narrative for the Byzantine Empire under Alexios III Angelos: the Bulgarian and Vlach war under Kaloyan, the breakaway of Ivanko in the Rhodopes and his capture by treachery in 1200, Dobromir Chrysos at Prosek and Strumica and the emperor's campaign and settlement with him, the Cuman raids into Thrace, John Komnenos the Fat's one-day revolt at Constantinople on 31 July 1200, the loosening of imperial control in the provinces and the rise of Leo Sgouros, and the court's fiscal abuses.
  • The Capture of Constantinople, Gunther of Pairis (about 1205 to 1210). Written at the Cistercian abbey of Pairis in Alsace from the account of its abbot Martin, who preached the crusade at Basel in 1200 (Gunther gives the sermon) and led a contingent from the Upper Rhine.
  • The Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea, Anonymous (the priest of Dioclea; Rudger, archbishop of Bar, by Zivkovic's attribution) (disputed: the 12th century on the older view, about 1295 to 1301 on the current one). The chronicle ends before 1200 and gives no event of that year.
  • The Conquest of Constantinople, Robert de Clari, knight of Picardy (about 1205 to 1216). A rank-and-file crusader's account that begins with the preaching of the crusade and the taking of the cross in 1199 to 1200 by the counts of Flanders, Blois and Champagne and by the Picard lords, among them Peter of Amiens, Robert's own lord, then the negotiations with Venice.
  • The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, Benjamin of Tudela (about 1173). A generation before 1200 but the only survey of its kind: the Jewish communities and their heads from Navarre through Provence, Italy, Constantinople and the Aegean, Antioch, Tyre, Jerusalem, Damascus, Mosul and Baghdad to the Persian Gulf, with notes on rulers, trades, the exilarch at Baghdad, the Assassins of Syria and Persia, and hearsay on India, Ceylon and China.
  • The Lives of St Simeon (Stefan Nemanja) by Sava and by Stefan the First-Crowned, Sava of Serbia (Rastko Nemanjic) and Stefan the First-Crowned (Sava's Life 1208, as the preface to the Studenica typikon (a short Life stands in the Hilandar typikon of 1199); Stefan's Life 1216). The two sons' lives of Stefan Nemanja are the Serbian witness to the situation of 1200: Nemanja's abdication at Ras in 1196 in favour of Stefan, his monastic years at Studenica and on Mount Athos, the founding of Hilandar (1198) and his death there on 13 February 1199, and, in Stefan's version written after the event, the war with the elder brother Vukan of Zeta, who seized the throne with Hungarian help in 1202.
  • The Palace Revolution of John Komnenos (31 July 1200), Nicholas Mesarites (1200 or soon after). An eyewitness narrative of the one-day coup of John Komnenos the Fat at Constantinople on 31 July 1200: the crowning of the usurper in Hagia Sophia, the mob's plunder of the Great Palace, the stand of the palace clergy and the guard at the church of the Virgin of the Pharos, where Mesarites was skeuophylax, and the recovery of the palace by Alexios III's men that night.
  • The Registers of Pope Innocent III (pontifical years 1 to 3, 1198 to 1201), Innocent III (Lotario dei Conti di Segni) and the papal chancery (1198 onwards, year by year). The register for the second and third pontifical years (February 1199 to February 1201) holds the letters that set the eastern stage for 1200: the exchange with Kaloyan of Bulgaria opened in December 1199 and continued through 1200 over union with Rome and a crown, letters to Vukan of Zeta and to Stefan of Serbia, letters to Alexios III and the patriarch John Kamateros pressing for church union and help for the crusade, the preaching commissions and the legation of Peter Capuano, the Antioch succession quarrel between Bohemond and Leo of Armenia, letters to Aimery of Cyprus and Jerusalem, and the French interdict over Ingeborg.
  • The Surviving Works of Michael Choniates, Metropolitan of Athens, Michael Choniates (Akominatos) (about 1182 to 1217). Michael was metropolitan of Athens from 1182 to 1204, and his letters and speeches are the only inside view of a Greek provincial city about 1200: the poverty of Attica, piracy in the Saronic Gulf, the exactions of tax officials and governors, his memorandum (hypomnestikon) to Alexios III asking relief for Athens, and the rise of Leo Sgouros of Nauplia, whom he describes seizing Argos and Corinth and attacking Athens in 1203.

The whole sources library

How these entries are made

Every entry describes one morning, 1 January 1200, and keeps later events in a dated "what the year holds" list with the conditions each depended on. Each entry names its sources, rates its confidence and says where the sources disagree. Published 4 November 2026. Corrections are welcome.