Kourkouas

Kourkouas (Κουρκούας) is the name of a Byzantine aristocratic family dedicated to the civil service at Constantinople. The feminine form of the name is Kourkouaina.
==History==
Of Armenian descent, the Kourkouoi emerged in the tenth century as part of the high-ranking Anatolian military aristocracy, and frequently intermarried with dynatoi such as the Skleroi and the Phokades. After the Battle of Manzikert, they moved to Constantinople and shifted to the civil service, a transformation that was greatly rewarded when one of their own became the Ecumenical Patriarch Michael II in the 1140's. Since then, the family has been a near constant presence in the imperial and ecclesiastical bureaucracies
Category:Byzantine families