804-09: (or 805:)
Reconquest of the western Peloponnesus.
The strategos of Hellas, based probably at Corinth, defeated the Slavs and (809) resettled Greeks who claimed descent from those who had left the region two centuries earlier (Vine 1991: 80; Treadgold, State p.425). It would appear that the theme of the Peloponnesus was created at that time (c.805) (Toynbee p.262; Vine 1991: 81). Cf 807: Patras.
Originally Athens was part of the theme of Hellas formed in the late seventh century with its capital in Thebes, later Corinth. However, it can perhaps be deduced from an inscription on one of the columns in the Parthenon
concerning the death of Leo, strategos of the theme of Hellas, in August 848, that during the first half of the ninth century Athens may have become the seat of the theme. Other inscriptions on the columns tell us that the bishopric of Athens was elevated to the rank of archbishopric before the middle of the ninth century (Kazanaki-Lappa, in Laiou ed. 2002).
805:
Sicily: The Aglabid governor of Africa, Ibrahim, and Constantine, the patrikios governing Sicily, agreed to a truce of 10 years, although the political
instability in North Africa - with the Idrisíds taking power in Morocco [see 809]
and the Umayyads sacking the islands of Corsica and Sardinia - made the truce ineffective. Luckily for the Byzantines, the Umayyads, Idrisíds and Aglabíds were too occupied fighting each other to form a common front. Cf 806: Corsica.
c.805:
fl. the chronicler Theophanes.
His chronicle preserves a vibrant childhood memory of icebergs created from the thawing of the frozen Black Sea, and floating past Constantinople in February of 764 (see there). Under Leo V he received the title of spatharios [deputy commander of the imperial guard, in this case probably an honorary award]. He later founded a monastery near Sigiane on the Asian side of the Sea of Marmara, where he lived until his death. His chronicle of world events, from AD 284 (the point where the chronicle of George Syncellus ends) to 813, is invaluable for preserving the materials of Byzantine history that otherwise would be lost for the seventh and eighth centuries.
805-06:
1. With Harun absent in the farther East, two Romaniyan armies attack respectively attack Melitene and raid into Cilicia, where they sack Tarsus. In response, Harun invades (806) and enters Cappadocia; meanwhile (805), as we noted, a rebellion by Bardanes is crushed.
Harun’s admiral in Syria, Humayd b. Ma’yuf al-Hamdani, attacked rebels on Cyprus (806) in concert with the land invasion.
This massive Arab invasion led by Harun was the most spectacular of his reign. With 135,000 men, it was also probably the largest ever sent against Byzantium. Evidently this figure comprised just his regular troops, with volunteer irregulars and camp-followers adding to the host (Tabari, cited by Kennedy 1981: 77, 131; Treadgold 1997: 426). The proportion of regular soldiers to irregulars (Ar. muttawi’ah, ‘volunteers’) is not known. Theophanes offers the most unlikely total figure of “300,000”.
Harun had recruited "50,000" indigenous non-Arabic Iranian-Khurasanis to strengthen his army. They would have included many heavily armoured horse-archers. Theophanes also mentions Libyans, Palestinians and Syrians (TCOT: 163).
Leading separate commands, his generals took one Byzantine stronghold after the other. According to Theophanes, “60,000” men marched on Ancyra, but withdrew without attacking it.
The Muslims penetrate to Heraclea in SE Asia Minor: presentday Eregli in Cappadocia west of Tyana (not to be confused with Heraclea on the Asian Black Sea coast north-east of Nicomedia) (June). Heraclea was burnt to the ground, but the emperor bought peace with the caliph for a modest tribute of 30,006 nomismata (July) [Treadgold 1997: 426].
The capture of Heraclea was a great victory and made Harun al-Rashid's triumph complete. Meanwhile admiral Homaid or Khoumeid, i.e. Humayd b.
Ma’yuf al-Hamdani, sailed (806) his fleet to a Cyprus in revolt, landed on the island, took possession of it, and led “17,000” (or 16,000) prisoners back into Syria. [Let us imagine the 16,000 captives were ferried in two runs: if 100 prisoners were crammed into each ship, then 80 ships would have been required.] Some were sold for ransom, the rest perhaps enslaved (Kennedy 2008: 327). Theophanes says Harun “resettled” the Cypriots which may imply they became free peasants rather than slaves.
Humiliation: The terms of the treaty required Nicephorus to acknowledge that formally he and the empire were now under Muslim protection or even
vassalage. This is signalled by payment of a personal tax, the jizya. When Theophanes is describing the humiliation of Emperor Nikephoros by Caliph Harun al-Rashid (805/06), he tells us that the Byzantine emperor (whom he profoundly disliked) undertook to pay the caliph 30,000 gold coins per annum for the state plus three nomismata as his own poll tax [Arabic jizya,
‘capitation tax’] and a further three for his son Stavrakios. The Arab sources say, in dinars: 50,000 + four + two respectively. It is clear that by this pact the Byzantines were compelled to accept a public humiliation much more painful than any financial loss would have been; yet the loss itself was not so terrible if we bear in mind that to have fought a major campaign against the caliphate (with very little chance of success, as things stood at that time) would have cost a great deal more (thus Oikonomides 2002; also El Cheikh 2004: 97).
2. Byzantine Venetia and Dalmatia, present-day coastal Croatia, briefly defect
to Charlemagne. See next.
805-09:
The West: Defecting from the Byzantine side, the Doge of Venice, Obelerio, and his brother Beato did homage to Charlemagne in Aachen on Christmas Day 805. Obelerio even chose a Frankish bride, the first dogaressa. This act precipitated a war with Byzantium. In 809, a Greek fleet from Constantinople led by the prefect of Cephalonia, the dux Paul, or rather a detachment from his fleet, landed in the Venetian lagoon and attacked a Frankish flotilla at Comacchio at the mouth of the Po but was defeated (Haywood 1991: 111).
The Franks under Charlemagne’s son Pepin launched a long, but
unsuccessful siege of Venice in 810. The siege lasted six months and Pepin's army was ravaged by the diseases of the local swamps and was forced to withdraw. A few months later Pepin died.
805-11:
Dalmatia: The Frankish annals mention the Irish-born cleric Donatus from 805 as an ambassador of the Dalmatian cities to Charlemagne in Thionville
[Diedenhofen, south of today’s Luxembourg]. According to tradition, Donatus (later Saint Donatus ‘of Zadar’) brought the relics to Zadar from
Constantinope, when he was there with the Venetian ‘associate or deputy doge’ Beato, the brother of the doge Obelerio. They had been ordered by Charlemagne to negotiate the border between the Byzantine Empire and Croatian territories that were in dominion of Frankish Empire of Charlemagne.
See 812.
806:
1. The Adriatic: Byzantium with a strong fleet brought Venetia and Dalmatia back into line and thus restored in 806 its supremacy in the Adriatic,
according to Dvornik, The Slavs, 92–94, 160–167, citing Cosmas Pragensis, I 27: MGHSS, ns, II 49 sq.. Cf below: 806/07.
2. Corsica: A long contest begins for control of the Western Mediterranean:
African Muslims - Umayyads from Spain and Idrisids from Morocco - raid Carolingian (Frankish-ruled) Corsica. The Muslims won a major naval engagement in 806, but the following year the Christians prevailed (Pryor 1988: 104). Cf 846.
Sardinia remained nominally Byzantine, although in practice self-ruling. - A peace treaty was in force between Byzantine Sicily and Aghlabid Ifriqiya; and for some years (perhaps until 812) the Tunisians refrained from attacking Christian shipping (Ahmad p.5). Cf below: raids from 807.
Contest for the Mediterranean, AD 806-961
Pryor 1988: 104 lists 28 major naval engagements across the Mediterranean from AD 800 to 1000. The Christians won 16, the Muslims 12. But
strategically the contest went to the Muslims because during the 800s they took control of most of the key islands along the trunk routes, or rather, what used to be the main sea lanes: there was little east-west trade in the 700s. In particular the Empire lost, or began to lose, Crete from 825 and western Sicily
from 827; eastern Sicily including Syracuse held out until 878. The low point for the Christians in terms of maritime weakness was to come with the
Muslim conquest of parts of peninsular Italy - Byzantine Taranto and Lombard Bari - in 840: for a generation the Muslims will, at that time, dominate the the Straits of Otranto, the entrance to the Adriatic.
But Bari will be recovered in 871 and Taranto in 880. It was not until after Crete was retaken in 961, however, that Byzantium would be able to restore relatively safe trading routes from Italy to the East.
806-15:
Nicephorus, aged about 36, patriarch of Constantinople: a former bureaucrat and a historian. He produced a short chronicle of the period 602-769 in impressive Attic-style Greek, an early signal of the revival of learning.
806/7:
1. Europe: An East Roman fleet brought Venetia and Dalmatia back into line, and the emperor led an army into the Balkans. There the region of Serdica, modern Sofia, was briefly recovered from the Slavs. See 807-08 – lost to the Bulgarians.
“In the spring of A.D. 807 the Emperor Nicephorus dispatched a fleet to recall the rebellious dependency to its allegiance. The patrician Nicetas, who was in command, encountered no resistance; the Dukes submitted;
Obelierius was confirmed in his office and created a spathar (spatharius); his brother was carried as a hostage to Constantinople along with the bishop of Olivolo. Fortunatus, who had been reinstated at Grado, fled to Charles. Thus Venice was recovered without bloodshed.” – Bury 1912. See 809.
2. Arab attacks on Cyprus (806) and Rhodes: Gk Rodhos (807). Harun laid waste to Cyprus “because the people ... had broken the treaty” [of 688]. That is to say, they had either refused to pay taxes or molested the Cypriot
Muslims, or both.
The attack on Rhodes by admiral Khoumeid (Homaid) was less successful.
Although the island was devastated, the Byzantine garrison held out, and the Muslim fleet withdrew. On the return voyage, a wild storm came up. Off Myra - near modern Kale or Demre on the middle southern coast of Asia Minor, i.e.
about halfway between Rhodes and Alanya – the storm sank a large number of the fleet’s ships (TCOT: 164).
c.807:
Greece: Muslim pirates link up with rebellious Slavs. The Peloponnesian Slavs, conspiring with the Saracens—"Saracens and Africans" is the phrase used by Constantine Porphyrogenitus—launch a major attack on the Romanic outpost of Patras (probably already the new thematic capital) but are defeated.
Probably Patras had been rebuilt in 805 or 806, and this revolt by the Slavs took place sometime in the period 807-11 (Vine 1991: 81; Herrin 2007: 94 dates the siege or attack to 806).
The Byzantine punitive expeditions that followed led to the definitive reconquest of the Peloponnesus. See 809; also 810-11. Because Patras resisted the attacks of the Slavs, its bishopric received the title of
Metropolitan (senior) See from the Emperor Nicephorus I.
Pagan Slavs, aided by Arab ships, attack Patras in Greece: at the (western) mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, but are repulsed (805-807).
The Slavic revolt of 805/807 in the Peloponnese, during which the ‘city’
(read: fortress-town) of Patras was threatened, was put down by the Imperial army, an outcome that the Christian or Rhomaion: Byzantine population attributed to the intervention of Saint Andrew, the protector of Patras. This victory signified also the permanent re-establishment of Imperial authority in the southern regions of the Greek peninsula.
Colonies of Christians were later (809) sent to re-settle parts of the
Peloponnese. Peninsular Greece proper was returned to imperial rule by 810.
807:
1. The East: Summer raid by Arab forces. The Arab historians say that Harun ordered the destruction of all churches in the frontier area of Cilicia because the local Christians, still a majority, were thought to be acting as a fifth column for the enemy (Kennedy 1981: 131).
2. Historiography: George the Syncellus served under the Patriarch Tarasius, 784-806, but he did not follow the usual path and succeed Tarasius upon the Patriarch's death. Instead he retired to a monastery, where he composed the work which was to be his claim to fame, the Eklogê Chronographias, or the
‘Selection of Chronography’. Syncellus apparently intended to bring the work down to his own day but was prevented by his death in 810, and his labours were later completed by his associate Theophanes Confessor.
From 807:
Byzantine or ex-Byzantine Sardinia: The second wave of Muslim naval expeditions against the region coincides with the growth of the Aghlabite emirate in Ifriqiyah and the consolidation of the Umayyads in Spain.
In the first two decades of the ninth century we can enumerate five raids on Sardinia: in 807, 809, 813, 816–817, and 821–822. But after 822 the
Muslims will apparently stop raiding Sardinia until 934–935, probably because their energies were by then wholly devoted to conquering Sicily (Cosentino, Byz Sardinia). Cf 819-22.
807-08/09:
1. Exchange of prisoners between the Eastern Muslims and the East Roman Empire; al-Tabari does not specify the numbers involved (Toynbee 1973:
390).
2. Thrace: With the caliph pre-occupied in distant Khurasan, the basileus Nicephorus takes the opportunity to open hostilities against pagan Bulgaria, sucessfully pushing west as far as Serdica, where he installed a garrsion (807). But a Byzantine army is subsequently defeated (809) by Krum near Strymon, the present-day Struma River which crosses the modern Bulgarian-Greek border.
Theophanes said that "the Bulgarians captured (in 808) more than 1,000 pounds of gold directed for the soldiers’ salaries in Macedonia and liquidated the strategos and a lot of soldiers". Or in Turtledove’s translation, “they took
away 1,100 pounds of gold and killed a great number of soldiers, including the army’s general and officers. Not a few regimental officers from the other themes [presumably meaning Thrace] were also present and every one of them who was there was lost” (TCOT: 165).
Next, around Easter 809, Krum takes and razes the outlying Romanic-Byzantine fortress-outpost of Serdica, today’s Sofia, where the Romanic-Byzantine garrison of “6,000” was “slaughtered” (idem; also Norwich, Apogee p. 7). This took place in the borderlands of Slavic Macedonia, western Bulgaria and imperial Thrace. Nicephorus responded by leading a further army to the region, and initially planned to rebuild the sacked fortress. His troops
rebelled, however, as they would have to do the rebuilding, and the excursion ended (TCOT: 166). Two years later Nicephorus will succeed in punishing the Bulgars by sacking and burning their capital Pliska (see 811).
Serdica, its walls razed, was left abandoned thereafter; and in due course - by 864 - a Slavonic settlement will grow up beside the old Roman fortress (TCOT: 165; Vine 1991: 95; Browning p.99).The fighting between the Empire and Bulgaria in the period 809-814 centred on the three imperial land
fortresses at Serdica/Sofia, Philippopolis/Plovdiv and Adrianople; and the sea-port of Develtus [modern Debelt, near Burgas] – which is to say, across the southern half of present-day Bulgaria. (From south to north, the ports on the Black Sea coast were: Sozopolis, Develtus, Anchialus, Mesembria and Varna.) 809:
1. Nicephorus rescinded Irene’s tax cuts (see 801) and added a special tax on the circulation of slaves. This was particularly targeted at slaves being traded to the East from western Europe through the Dodecanese (Rotman 2009: 70).
2. The Adriatic: A Byzantine fleet anchored off Venice in 809, attacked a Frankish flotilla based at Comacchio but retired beaten to Cephalonia. The doge Obelerio then invited Pepin the Frankish King of Italy to occupy Venice, but the Venetians resisted and deposed Obelerio in 810.
“A Greek fleet arrived, under the patrician Paulus, strategos of
Kephallenia, wintered in Venice, and in spring (809) attacked Comacchio, the chief market of the Po trade. The attack was repelled, and Paulus treated with Pippin [the Frankish king], but the negotiations were frustrated by the
intrigues of the Dukes, who perhaps saw in the continuance of hostilities a means for establishing their own independence between the two rival
powers. Paulus departed, and in the autumn Pippin descended upon Venetia [the greater Venice region] in force. He attacked it from the north and from the south, both by land and by sea. His operations lasted through the winter.
In the north he took Heracliana, in the south the fort of Brondolo on the Brenta; then Chioggia, Palestrina, and Albiola ; finally Malamocco”. —Bury 1912.
2. Emperor Nikephoros created a new fourth cavalry tagma, or standing regiment, the Hikanatoi division, in about 809. Greek: tagma ton Hikanaton, meaning the "Worthies" or “Able Ones”. This brought the total in the seven central regiments to 22,000 men: 4,000 each in the cavalry Watch, Scholae, Excubitors and Hicanati; and 2,000 each in the infantry Walls, Optimates and Numera (Treadgold 1995). Altogether, including new thematic troops
recruited and sent to the southern Balkans [see next], this enlarged the army by 10,000 men (Treadgold 1997: 428).
According to Haldon, 1984: 256, it was during this reign (by 811) that the cavalry Tagmata began regularly to campaign together as the leading element in the emperor’s forces. Cf 811.
Morocco: Idris II, 809-28, the first Idrisid, makes Fez his capital. The Idrisids were Shi’ites.
c.809:
Greece: Byzantine reconquest or reoccupation of the southern Balkans completed. Although there was some fighting, most of the expansion was by peaceful occupation at the expense of unwarlike - or should we say 'prudent'? - Slavs.
This is signalled by Thessalonica and Cephalonia, the latter meaning the Ionian Islands and coastal Epirus, being expanded and raised from
“archontates” (minor governorships) into full Themes, each with probably 2,000 soldiers. The Peloponnese was created, or more likely confirmed, as a new theme, also with probably 2,000 soldiers.
Together with the extension of the theme of Hellas to include Thessaly, this meant that nearly the whole of present-day Greece was now returned to Byzantine rule. Thousands of Christian families were forcibly resettled there from Asia Minor (Theophanes says “of every theme”), and new troops recruited (TCOT: 166 ff).
The new units of 1,000 soldiers—a drungus commanded by a drungary—
seem to have been placed as follows, in or after 809: two in greater
Thessalonica [i.e. Macedonia and Thessaly]; one or two in the Peloponnesus;
and two in the new theme of Cephalonia, which included mainland Epirus.
Most of these units were drawn from the 4,000 Mardaïte [Marda-ite] or Greco-Mardaite ex-oarsman from the naval themes of Hellas, who were now
converted from naval rowers to infantry and called “the Mardaites of the West” (Toynbee p. 87; Treadgold Army pp. 29,72; map in Treadgold 1997:
444). The Syrian Mardaites had first settled in Hellas some 120 years before and must by now have been entirely ‘hellenised’.
The villages where these units were headquartered, including Corinth, Patras [Patrai] and Lacedaemon, would grow into new "medieval"-style fortress-towns by 850.
“He [Nicephorus I] built de novo the town of Lacedaimon and settled in it a mixed population, namely Kafirs [converts from Islam], Thrakesians [from western Asia Minor], Armenians and others, gathered from different places and towns, and made it into a bishopric” (Chronicle of Monembasia, quoted by Mango 1980: 28).
The reconquest was insecure for some decades. Even as late as c.820, as we learn from the travels of St Gregory the Decapolite [d. 842], it was virtually impossible to cross the central Balkans by land without falling into the hands of Slavic brigands (Mango in Rice 1965: 111). In Macedonia the Slavs living on the lower reaches of the Strymon were very active as pirates and no doubt
still pagan. Evidently the Slav chiefdoms dominated the middle segments of the ancient highway (Via Egnatia) from Constantinople to Thessalonica, and presumably almost all traffic to Greece went by sea, although we may guess that large parties well escorted by troops could travel overland from the capital.
Land traffic east-west across the centre of the peninsula – from Macedonia to Albania along the interior sector of the Via Egnatia – was not securely re-established until 867.
With Patras securely controlling the western reaches of the Gulf of Corinth, maritime trade via Kenchreai [modern Kechries], the port of
Corinth*, through the Gulf with Italy seems to have an increased markedly.
This was a faster and safer route than going right around the lower
Peloponnesus, and would explain the “spectacular” growth in coins dated
Peloponnesus, and would explain the “spectacular” growth in coins dated