The East Roman Empire must redraw its borders at the Bosporus after the disastrous Battle of Manzikert.

The Empire, its eastern boundary now synonymous with the Ionian coast of Classical Greece, has lost almost the whole of Asia Minor to the Seljuq Sultanate.

Alp Arslan's victories have changed the balance in near Asia completely in favor of the Seljuq Turks and Sunni Muslims.

The victory at Manzikert in 1071 signals the beginning of Turkish ascendancy in Anatolia, although the Eastern Roman Empire will continue for nearly four more centuries, and the Crusades will contest the issue for some time.

Most historians, including Edward Gibbon, date the defeat at Manzikert as the beginning of the end of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Certainly the entry of Turkic farmers following their horsemen ends the themes in Anatolia that had furnished the Empire with men and treasure.

Many in the East Roman Empire do not see this Seljuq victory as a total disaster, and when the Turks begin occupying the countryside in Anatolia, they begin to garrison the imperial cities as well, not as foreign conquerors but as mercenaries requested by various Greek factions—one Emperor, in 1078, even gives the defense of the city of Nicaea to the invading Turks.

The decline of the embattled Empire is not yet irretrievable.

The shrinking of its boundaries has reduced the empire from its status as a dominating world power to that of a small Greek state fighting for survival.

That survival now depends on the new political, commercial, and ecclesiastical forces in the West, for it can no longer draw on its former military and economic resources in Anatolia.

With the rise of Alexios I Komnenos to power in 1081, imperial stability is restored by an ensured succession in the Komnenos family, who will rule for more than one hundred years, from 1081 to 1185.