The year is 1081

Commission the alchemists to start working on mixtures of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter until we get a version of gunpowder figured out.

Get some sort of ecumenical council with the Pope to restore the unity of Christendom.

Convert to islam, annex seljuk territory, give turks the control of entire military and navy
Continue justinoglu's restoration

>implying manzikert was a disaster.

The army was still alive till the Normans invaded and fucked up the army

>implying mercenaries are bad

>Implying that professional troops, loyal to the Emperor (e.g. paymaster) are worse than 'national armies' that are mainly milita, are loyal to their local officers (and thus revolt), and are shit on the offensive.

The Komnenian army was objectively shit-tier compared to the military a century before it

Even if you do get gunpowder working I don't think it'd help you very much. The evolution of the firearm and artillery took place over centuries where vast advancements in metallurgy and rifle design were made. You'd most likely end up with crude, inaccurate firearms that would take too long to reload to be of any use, and artillery that might not be resillient enough to withstand a proper blast, not to mention the lack of accuracy.

Ask West for help, explicitly demand that treacherous Normans not be involved, not be a treacherous Greek that fails to help the Latins, begin making official reconciliation with the Latin church, and take a contingent of the imperial army along with the Crusaders.

Also, be smart enough to figure out a peasant army isn't a real army, and turn that charlatan Peter the Hermit away. Or have him killed. Whatever works.

this.
No other option

There's always the option of going out in a blaze of glory

Ally Poland, build galleys

Ask my friend Enrico Dandolo for help

All things considered, Alexios made the right moves to restore the empire in Anatolia, with the Turks driven out of most of Anatolia by 1180 and the Empire in control over much of the Holy Land.

The problem that came later wasn't so much the Komnenos dynasty's so much as it was the Crusaders renegging on their deal to return all captured territories to the empire, and instead placed themselves in charge.

future rulers such as John II and Manuel I did make steps to quash this, taking back the crusader kingdoms of Antioch and Edessa.

the Empire was still on the rise until shit hit the fan in the 4th Crusade, which even the Catholic Church itself excommunicated the soldiers responsible and refused to support the Latin Empire that was set up in Constantinople, allowing it to be retaken by the Byzantines a few decades later, but by then the damage was already irreversible.

*gets deposed and blinded by a salty general*

Most importantly Turks were driven out of Trebizond and Western Anatolia which were the economic heartland of the Empire. Eastern Anatolia was a backwater that was not that important.

>convert to Islam
He'd die in a second.

Sail West and colonize the new world before anyone else does. Keep the news a secret so nobody else in Europe gets the idea to do the same.

Exterminate all Serbs and then cede all territory to the Seljuks and sail west.

>exterminate
>not inseminate
You think that Christians would've taken a hint from the Muslims and allowed Christian men to take heathens and savages as concubines to spread their faith & culture.

>>The year is 1081
>>Turks have conquered almost all Anatolia

But they hadn't. This was the impression Anna Komnena wanted to impress, but mostly as a way to distance the failure of her father's policies in the 1080's that eventually led to the Sultanate of Rum establishing itself beginning in the 1090's. In doing so she tried to shift the blame away from her dynasty.

The Byzantines still controlled far more than just Trebizond at this time. They still had commanders in Amaseia, Kaisereia, Marash, Melitene, Cilicia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, and Edessa, and Alexios even bothered to elect a new governor of Mesopotamia. Never mind the fact that Alexios took Constantinople with an army raised in Asia Minor and paid for by his family's extensive holdings in Asia Minor. And when the Normans and Pechenegs invaded soon after it was from Asia Minor that he raised several Imperial armies to fight them back.

At the time, the Turks in Asia Minor were little more than countryside nomads who, like the Bedouin in Egypt and Syria, would raid and maybe capture a town to pillage very rarely. It was the Normans who were the bigger threat, and Alexios acted accordingly. His only mistake really was that he failed to incorporate the Turks the way he did the Pechenegs into his fragile court, thus like what happened with the Normans and later the Crusader Latins he allowed them to establish their own states with their own claims to princely - even imperial - power.

But by not reclaiming the entirety of Anatolia they set themselves up to fail in the long run. Instead of striking at the central Anatolian plateau and removing their most consistently threatening neighbour, they went straight for the money by wasting time and manpower trying to grab lands in Syria and even Mesopotamia, which was ludicrous since the loss of eastern Anatolia made these territories so detached and vulnerable that they were impossible to keep in the long run. And indeed as it turned out they lost all influence and power in the Levant within a couple of decades, then struggled to hold back waves of enemies on all fronts - especially the Normans in the west and Turks in the east - because they didn't have the foresight to focus on one at a time. I agree that John was taking the empire in the right direction, but don't pretend Manuel wasn't a bumbling indecisive failure of an emperor. Almost every project he devoted himself to ended in failure, and don't forget how quickly both the empire and his dynasty collapsed after his death.

Fugg with Turks
Create a syncrenic christo-muslim faith

That's literally what happened. Apart from the faith bit.

The Turks only numbered in their tens of thousands when they invaded Anatolia, which had a native/Greek population of millions. In a century or two they'd been completely absorbed by the much larger native population.

>Instead of striking at the central Anatolian plateau and removing their most consistently threatening neighbour
But Sicily was the other way

>they went straight for the money by wasting time and manpower trying to grab lands in Syria and even Mesopotamia, which was ludicrous since the loss of eastern Anatolia made these territories so detached and vulnerable that they were impossible to keep in the long run
Other way around. The reason they went for Syria and Mesopotamia was because these lands were far less vulnerable and accessible than inner Anatolia. Trying to take Eastern Anatolia instead would have been the fool's errand here as it would have been absurdly costly in men and resources and far more vulnerable and volatile because of regional resistance to distant rule from Constantinople.

>And indeed as it turned out they lost all influence and power in the Levant within a couple of decades, then struggled to hold back waves of enemies on all fronts - especially the Normans in the west and Turks in the east - because they didn't have the foresight to focus on one at a time
Also other way around. They lost their power in the Levant because of their enemies, which they attempted to foolishly focus on one at a time and back them into a corner where their only reaction was violence. The Byzantines were doing well when they were constantly playing various parties off against each other and always left the door open for a diplomatic peace and alliance in the event that someone else demanded their attention.

>I agree that John was taking the empire in the right direction, but don't pretend Manuel wasn't a bumbling indecisive failure of an emperor. Almost every project he devoted himself to ended in failure, and don't forget how quickly both the empire and his dynasty collapsed after his death
The irony here is that Manuel was trying to pursue the very policies you're saying the Byzantines should have done in the first place, to disastrous results.

Turks had large portions of Anatolia under Arp Arslan.

They did not. Anatolia was not a province of the Great Seljuks, but instead a frontier where political rebels and dissidents would flee to escape the more powerful factions within the Sultanate. The Turks in Asia Minor were not governors and agents of Alp Arslan but rather independent warlords looking to carve out a petty state away from his attention. Alexios even attempted to get Alp Arslan to turn his attention to Asia Minor by offering Anna's hand in marriage in return for him crushing various Turkic garrisons and warlords that had begun to revolt from Byzantine employ.

So just cop the Abbasid game plan and fast track the establishment of the Ottoman Empire by a few centuries?

yeah but it'd be the legitimate, unarguably roman empire
what might follow after this
>pope declares eastern church officially apostate
>a grand crusade targets both greeks and turks
>their combined forces beat them back
>eventually rome falls, emperor converts sistine chapel into a mosque and leads the first prayer
>with the reconquest of both britain and iberia colonisation is for roman citizens (greeks) only
>tfw greek america, australia, africa

Do everything as normal until 1095
Make preparations so when the People's Crusade comes, they don't cause trouble
Fuck Alp Arslan's wife and children as soon as they are captured
Follow Crusaders in the march to Antioch
In 1099, go back and attack the Danishmend before they take Melitene back
Mop up the rest of the Seljuk presence in Anatolia, since nobody will follow Alp Arslan now that he's a cuck
Begin internal reforms

I'd say more like give up on reuniting the Orthodox and Catholic Churches and create an Orthodox-Shi'a union, becoming the Caliph-Emperor of a united Byzantium, Egypt, and Syria and taking advantage of the chaos of the Seljuk breakup to undermine the Abbasids and Almoravids.

Wait for the Mongols and then vassalize myself to them.

>Egypt
>Turks
Fatimids held Egypt tho

>tfw Greek Australia
I mean Melbourne is already the 2nd largest Greek city in the world

The reunion already happened in 1445 at the council of Florence. But failed because the Turks took over Constantinople and elected a puppet anti catholic patriarch who revoked the council.

Invite them to become Christian and share authority to create a stronger state. Byzantines would have strongly benefited from having Turks as their military and then been able to expand their land inwards Europe and Africa and taken back old Roman glory.

Abbasids weren't even a major power by the early 10th century much less 11th century. Iranian Intermezzo period had all those Persian kingdoms and states cucking them of their military power and entirely dependent on them.

>1081
>turk menace

But the actual moment of truth was 1356.
This map isn't that great either, since Serbia was a few chunks, and there was some independent Thessaloniki state.
Basically the Ottomans come in at the one point in human history when the Balkans was as divided as possible.

Now, imagine you are a despot of one of those states, for example the north-east chunk of Bulgaria.
Do you support the effort to fight back an Ottoman landing in Europe, or do you go to war with Genoa over trading in the Crimea?

oh please.
If the reunion already happened, and the only thing that broke was some vassal ecumenical patriarch, why did the rest of Orthodoxy not cling to communion with Rome, instead going from mild indifference(the rest of the Pentarchy) to throwing unionist propagandists in the dungeon(the lands of Rus)?
No, even catholic sources mention that the people who signed repeatedly mentioned that they are their personal opinions, and they need the union ratified in the Synod when they get back home

There was no hope after the Byzantines collapsed after the late 1200's.

Ottomans consistently btfo any attempt for European control of the balkans in Nicopolis and Varna.

move the capital to venice

I wasn't suggesting a political undermining but a diplomatic and spiritual one. Without a powerful patron a resurgent non-Sunni caliph would be able to throw a lot of weight around.

You're correct and that user probably has the wrong idea, but you could mine walls much more quickly than methods that would have existed then, so there's that.

You got me excited for a moment thought this thread was going to be about 1081 BCE.

That said I do feel bad for the Byzantines.

not if I blind them first

Convert or pay tax for the seljuks
Really no other way

That doesnt work at the moment
Try again in 1444

wouldnt many of the in the Turk controlled Anatolia be not yet converted Greeks and Armenians?

Do exactly what Alexios did?
He basically played his reign to perfection.
His successors fucked up the restoration not him, so yeah I'd copy Alexios. Oh except I'd have more daddy-daughter time with Anna, she was clearly feeling neglected to the extent she wrote a book about him so he would pay attention to her