Alexios Axouch

Alexios Axouch or Axouchos, sometimes found as Axuch (Greek: Ἀλέξιος Ἀξούχ or Ἀξοῦχος), was a 12th-century Byzantine nobleman and military leader of Turkish ancestry.

Alexios Axouch was the son of John Axouch, the megas domestikos of the Byzantine army, boyhood friend and "right-hand man" of Emperor John II Komnenos (r. 1118–43). Alexios himself married Maria Komnene, the daughter of John II's eldest son and co-emperor Alexios, who died in 1142.

An experience soldier, Alexios was awarded the rank of protostrator and participated in several military campaigns during the middle reign of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143–80). He was sent to Southern Italy in 1157, in an effort to retrieve the Byzantine position there following the defeat of megas doux Alexios Komnenos. Despite having at the same time to manage the delicate relations, fraught with mutual suspicion, with the Holy Roman Empire, which dominated northern Italy, Axouch was apparently very successful in his mission, leading to the conclusion of an honourable peace with King William I of Sicily in 1158 that allowed the Byzantine army to extricate itself from the Italian adventure. This allowed Manuel to focus his attention in the East, where his policies in Cilicia against the Armenian lord Thoros had failed spectacularly. In 1165, Alexios himself was sent to Cilicia as commander-in-chief (strategos autokrator) and governor (doux). He possibly also participated in the war with Hungary in 1166 alongside the future Béla III of Hungary.

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