Alexis (or Alexins) I., Comnenus, emperor of Trebizond (Trapezus), born in 1182, died in February, 1222. The enmity of Isaac Angelus to the family of the Comneni threatened the entire extermination of that illustrious house. The sons of the last Comnenian emperor of Constantinople, John and Manuel, were by his command mutilated and murdered in prison. The latter, however, left two infant sons, Alexis and David, who fled with their mother to their relative Thamar, the Georgian queen of Tiflis, by whom they were protected and educated. They gradually formed a dominion on the banks of the Phasis, which the distracted government of the Angeli failed to suppress. On the second capture of Constantinople by the Latins, in 1204, Alexis and his brother rallied around them numerous discontented Greeks, left their retreat, and passed the Phasis. Alexis captured Trebizond, Cerasus, and Mesochaldion, and took possession of all that coast of the Black sea as far as Amisus, while David advanced beyond the Halys, took Sinope, and pushed his conquests to the environs of Constantinople. Alexis now assumed the imperial title, proclaiming himself king and ruler of all Anatolia. His reign was troubled by perpetual wars with the Turks, and with Theodore Lascaris, who having, like Alexis, become master of a fragment of the empire, was entitled the emperor of Nicaea. In 1214 Alexis concluded a peace with Theodore, but the same year fell into the hands of the sultan of Iconium, and purchased his liberty by yielding to the Turks the town and district of Sinope. His empire at his death was reduced to the coast of the Black sea, comprised between the Phasis on the east and the Thermodon on the west.