Medieval Warfare on the Grid: The Case of Manzikert

The need for mediaeval states to collect and distribute resources to maintain armies affected all aspects of political organisation and at critical times, when armies failed, could prove disastrous to society as a whole. Despite this, military studies seldom progress past existing texts to bear out the pragmatic consequences of military behaviour, even though military activity in terms of resource allocation and consumption is decisive in shaping pre-modern societies.

The objective of this project is to design a GRID-based framework to address these challenges focussing on the logistical context of the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Manzikert is a key historic event in Byzantine history. The defeat of the Byzantine army by the Seljuk Turks, and the following civil war, resulted in the collapse of Byzantine power in central Anatolia. An event so traumatic that it became known as 'The dreadful day'. Given the key position this event takes within the collapse of Byzantine power, the lack of consensus between historians on the numbers of men involved at, or even the route taken by the Byzantine Army to, Manzikert is profound. The absence of new historical data to resolve these issues demands a dramatically different approach to the problem. This project proposes the implementation of a detailed modelling project which has the ability to break the current cycle of academic claim and counter-claim.

The issues surrounding the study of military logistics have been considered at a series of Birmingham/Princeton Military Logistics group workshops. These concluded that the processes of military logistical processes are amenable to computer-based modelling but that the complexities of the subject demand the use of agent-based modelling and large scale distributed simulation. GRID technologies, often used for contemporary logistics problems, occupy a strategic position for such research, permitting the resolution of complex problems through distributed simultaneous computing environments. The general applicability of such technologies support development of methodologies for multiple simulations to explore the nature of military dispositions and implications of choice in respect of the logistical context of Manzikert. They also generate re-useable resources and tools that can be applied to similar studies investigating warfare or logistics in other regions or periods.

The project benefits from an extensive digital environmental and historic database collated at Birmingham for the route of the battle and Anatolia more generally. Created as part of the work of the Birmingham/Princeton logistics group, this data can be used to create a GRID-enabled environmental model which can be populated by objects representing army groups and units or even soldiers, commanders or even pack animals. Individual models can be coded with behavioural and cognitive rules and be reused multiply. The composition of forces can be regulated and the ability of a range of forces to move successfully across a number of modelled routes between Constantinople and Manzikert can be assessed. The likelihood of the forces successfully reaching the battlefield and the condition of the army, in nutritional terms, following the march, can then be assessed and compared to evidence or assertions within primary and secondary sources on the composition of forces, the routes followed and the condition of the combatants prior to battle. In doing so the project will provide a fundamental re-assessment of the campaign and the critical logistical decisions leading up to the disastrous battle.

The project has clear research questions, using digital, methods and tools that are novel to historical studies. It will provide an exemplar demonstrating the value of large-scale simulation for historic research and the GRID as an instrument that enables academics to build common, distributed synthetic environments in supprt of historical studies more widely.