Due to the wide-ranging grasslands, the area was used as a mustering place (e.g. possibly by emperor
Romanos IV Diogenes)[4] and one of the metata (imperial stock-raising farm) was situated nearby between Polybotus,
Dokimion and
Synnada, though it was moved to Europe after the
invasion of the Turkmen in the eleventh century.[5] The city was sacked in 838 by retreating Arab troops under caliph
Al-Mu'tasim according to the
vita of John of Polybotus.[6]
The Turks first occupied Polybotus some time after the
battle of Manzikert, but it was reconquered in the aftermath of the
First Crusade by emperor
Alexios I Komnenos and his general
John Doukas as is recounted in the Alexiad.[7] The town became part of a contested area between the
Byzantine Empire and the
Sultanate of Rum, with neither being able to exert durable control in the early twelfth century until it finally was lost to the Seljuks later that century.[8]
Ecclesiastical history
The earliest Greek Notitia Episcopatuum of the 7th century places the see among the suffragans of
Synnada. After Amorium became a metropolitan see in the 9th century, Polybotus became a suffragan of
Amorium until its disappearance as a residential see.[9]
^See the "Basilii Notitia" in
Heinrich Gelzer (1890). Georgii Cyprii descriptio orbis romani. Leipzig. p. 26.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link)
^Annuario Pontificio 2013. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 2013. p. 954.
ISBN978-88-209-9070-1.
Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "
Polybotus". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.