Anna comnena and the crusades map
The crusades map of europe
Anna Comnena's Alexiad [Byzantine History, 1070s-1118].
Anna (Komnenos) Komnene (1083 - 1153)
"Of the writings which contribute eye-witness testimony to but a portion of the history of the Crusade, the Alexiad, by Anna Comnena, is one of the most important.
The writer was the daughter of Alexius, and, though she was barely fourteen years of age when the Crusaders came to Constantinople, it may be assumed that the presence of so many rude strangers in the imperial city made a most vivid impression on her mind.
Both Anna and her husband, Nicephorus Briennius, had been highly educated, and when the palace intrigue in which they were both concerned proved unsuccessful and she was shut up in a convent by her brother's order, she undertook to complete the history which her husband had begun.
Forty years after the first Crusaders had passed through Antioch she began her task.
Anna comnena and the crusades map
In the meantime there had been various bands of Crusaders from the West. Bohemund had taken Antioch in defiance of the Emperor and had even made war upon him. The r