by the Gabras family to form a breakaway state in Trebizond, and recaptured the ancestral home of the Comnenus family at Kastamonu. Despite this, Turkish resistance was strong and John did not capture the Seljuk capital at Iconium, nor were all of his conquests held – the city of Gangra, captured by John in the 1130s, was lost again as the emperor had left it with a garrison of just 2,000 men. John spent considerable time and effort on a series of campaigns in Syria, which emphasised his dominance over the local Crusader kingdoms, especially Edessa and Antioch, but resulted in no long-term territorial gains for the Byzantine Empire. The emperor did strengthen the Byzantine army by recruiting new divisions and establishing new castles, fortifications and training camps in Byzantine territory. However, the scale of resources poured into his campaigns in Syria was far greater than in Anatolia, suggesting that John viewed prestige as more important than long-term conquest. In 1143, a fatal hunting accident to the emperor John robbed the Byzantines of the opportunity to achieve further progress. John II died in 1143, leaving the Byzantine Empire a strong army, significant reserves of cash, and improved prestige. However, the new emperor, Manuel Comnenus, directed much of his attention to Hungary, Italy, Serbia and the Crusader states rather than Anatolia. While Manuel was largely successful in defeating attacks on the empire and holding the Balkans, his policy in Italy was a failure and the lavish expenditure of his rule has been criticised, most notably by the Byzantine historian Choniates. During this period, the Seljuk Turks were able to subdue their enemies, the Danishmends, under Kilij Arslan II. This resulted in a powerful centralised Turkish state based at Iconium, leaving the Byzantines arguably in a worse position than they had been under John II. For the time being, Manuel's policy was not without merit as the emperor established peaceful co-existence with the Sultan and initiated measures such as allowing Turkmen to pay for pasture on Byzantine land, which were clearly meant to deter raiding. The establishment of the theme of Neokastra on the northern part of the Aegean coast near Pergamon was also praised by Choniates. However, when Kilij Arslan refused to hand over the city of Sebastea, which he was bound to do under an earlier agreement with Manuel, the emperor declared war in 1176 and led a very large