Alexios I Komnenos
Alexios I Komnenos (c. 1057–1118) was Byzantine emperor from 1081 to 1118 and architect of the Komnenian restoration. A nephew of Isaac I, he seized the throne from Nikephoros III in 1081.
Defeated at first by Robert Guiscard's Normans, he allied with Emperor Henry IV and checked the invasion by 1085. He crushed the Pechenegs at Levounion in 1091 with Cuman help.
In 1095 his envoys appealed to Pope Urban II against the Seljuks, helping trigger the First Crusade and recover much of western Anatolia. He died in 1118, succeeded by his son John II; his daughter Anna Komnene wrote the Alexiad.