emperor Byzantine Emperor Byzantine general
A descendant of the Apokapai family, an Armeno-Georgian noble clan, he was the son of the patrician Michael Apokapes or Abu K’ab, who had once served as a tent-guard for the influential Georgian Bagratid prince David of Tao (r 966–1000) and then commanded the city of Edessa (modern-day Şanlıurfa, Turkey) under the Byzantine Emperor Michael IV the Paphlagonian (r 1034–1041).
In 1054, as patrikios and strategos, Basil Apokapes rallied the people of Manzikert and repulsed an attack by the Seljuks under Toğrül. After the defeat of Romanos IV by Andronikos Doukas in 1071, he seems to have been under the command of Philaretos Brachamios, a Byzantine general of Armenian heritage, who had established himself in Cilicia, and served him as a governor of Edessa from 1077 until his death in 1083.
