who were the asia minor peoples
ASIA MINOR. THE first Oriental religion adopted by the Romans was that of the goddess of Phrygia, whom the people of Pessinus and Mount Ida worshiped, and who received the name of Magna Mater deum Idea in the Occident.
Turks began appearing at the edges of Asia Minor (Anatolia) in the 11th century. Many of these were mercenaries in the employee of local Arab and Persian rulers to the east of the Byzantine Empire and Armenia, the dominant states in Asia Minor. In 1037, the Seljuk Empire, a Turkic state, was founded northeast of Iran in Central Asia and quickly overran much of Persia, Iraq, and the Levant. By the 1060s, the Seljuk Empire bordered Byzantine Asia Minor. Of course, the Turks were a minority ruling a Persian/Arab/Kurdish majority. The main strategic threat to the Turks was the Fatimid Caliphate based in Egypt.