Byzantines and Seljuks struggle for the Aegean

In 1071, the Seljuk sultan Alparslan defeated the Byzantine army on the plain of Malazgirt (or Manzikirt as it is known in Western sources) in eastern Anatolia about 40 kilometers northwest of Lake Van and captured the Byzantine emperor, Romanus IV Diogenes. Sparing the emperor’s life, Alparslan concluded a treaty with him but Michael Dukas, the newly-declared emperor in Constantinople, refused to recognize the treaty and the upshot was that numerous Turkish tribes and raiders flooded into the Anatolian heartland spreading rapidly from east to west. Caka, a Turkish bey (prince), captured Smyrna (Izmir) and established his short-lived Aegean maritime empire in the last quarter of the 11th century. After his death however and with the appearance of the armies of the First Crusade in Anatolia towards the end of the 11th century, izmir returned to Byzantine control. This then was the beginning of the Byzantine-Turkish struggle for control of the Menderes basin, a struggle that was to continue for nearly two centuries.
In 1148, the armies of the Second Crusade under the command of King Louis VII of France advanced up the Maeander river but no sooner had they passed Laodicea (Denizli) than they were defeated by the forces of Sultan Mesud of te Anatolian Seljuks in the vicinity of Honaz. In 1176 Sultan Kilicarslan II overcame Byzantine forces and succeeded in penetrating the Maeander valley. But while he managed to take the cities of Tralles and Antiocheia as well as a number of castles, the Byzantine emperor, Manual I Comnenus, recovered them. In 1187 Kiligarslan II again staged a number of raids into the plain of the Lesser Maeander (Cilbianus) with the result that the Byzantine emperor Isaac Angelos was forced to pay an annual tribute.
Around the end of 12th century, Sultan Giyaseddin Keyhiisrev I again succeeded in taking a number of cities in the valley but owing to a struggle over possession of the throne, the Seljuks were unable to maintain their hold upon them. In 1243, the Anatolian Seljuks (the Seljuks of Rum, as they are called in Western sources), whose capital was Konya (ancient Iconium) were defeated by the llkhanid Mongols at Kosedag and became subject to them. As a result they lost whatever political influence they may still have had and the military expeditions that they had once staged in the Aegean littoral were now replaced with the migrations and conquests of Turkoman tribes. As a result of the weakening of imperial Seljuk control in the 13th century, three independent Turkish principaties appeared on the western coast of Anatolia.