Manuel III Comnenus was the Emperor of Trebizond from 1390 until 1417. He was the successor of his father, Alexius III . With the arrival of the Central Asian conqueror Timur Lenk into the region, Manuel allied with him and became subject to him; Timur inflicted a severe defeat on the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, which was a considerable benefit to Trebizond, since the expanding Ottomans were a threat to it.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica said of Manuel: "Manuel III. reigned from 1390 to 1417 but the only interest attaching to his name arises from his connection with Timur, whose vassal he became without resistance". [1]

The ambassador Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo was received by Manuel while passing through Trebizond in April 1404 and wrote the following of him:

The Emperor and his son were dressed in imperial robes. They wore on their heads tall hats surmounted by golden cords, on the top of which were cranes' feathers; and the hats were bound with the skins of martens ... This Emperor pays tribute to Timur Beg, and to other Turks, who are his neighbours. He is married to a relation of the Emperor of Constantinople, and his son is married to the daughter of a knight of Constantinople, and has two little daughters.¹

Another source said of Manuel that he, "like his father, took an active interest in buildings of a religious nature. In the year of his succession he presented an ornate cross believed to contain a holy relic (stavrotek), in this case a piece of the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified, to the Sumela Monastery."²

References

1. Clavijo's Embassy, translated by C. R. Markham (1859), quoted in The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453, by Donald M. Nicol (1972).
2. From an article on the website of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism about the Sumela Monastery, retrieved December 28, 2004.