An engrossing synopsys of my research project so far

The maritime emirates were "feudal" Turkic states in the 13th and 14th centuries. They bordered the Aegean Sea on the western edge of Anatolia, having seized this prime land from the fading Byzantine Empire. The arrival of the Turks was necessitated by the Mongol invasions to the East, and upon reaching the coast they came into contact with the Latins and Greeks whose record of alliances and betrayals read like the plot of a particularly nasty soap-opera. These Turkomen were a raiding people by habit, and when they arrived at the sea they took to pirating and marine invasions like they were born for it. The Western powers--when they were not too busy fighting amongst themselves-- tried to organize crusades to flush out the ghazi (the Turk warriors who fought for the glory of Islam and heaps of fine booty.) But it was too late to put any kind of cork in the Turkic advance. The willingness of the Anatolian Greeks to accept Turkish domination and to teach them the ways of the sea was of vital importance to the eventual establishment of the Ottoman Empire, which had virtually no navy to start, but in the end controlled the entire Black Sea and had a vast and prosperous merchant navy.