ABSTRACT

It is widely held that the destruction of the invading army of the amir of Melitene in 863 marked something of a turning-point in Byzantium's position vis-à-vis its eastern Muslim neighbours. In the words of Georg Ostrogorsky, 'the tide turned and there began the era of Byzantine attack in Asia, an offensive which opened slowly but which for the second half of the tenth century moved forwards with ever increasing celerity'.1 And yet, as Ostrogorsky himself implies, substantial territorial gains were only made almost a century after the Battle of Bishop's Meadow, and this raises the question why 'the systematic advance ... on [Byzantium's] eastern frontiers'2 took so long. It was only in the mid-920s that a series of initiatives which have been seen as beginning 'the epoch of conquest' was launched. According to one authority, the emperors, 'supported by the substantial resources of an extensive empire, were equipped to pursue, after 926, a project of reconquest of eastern Anatolia, of Cilicia and of northern Syria'; the prime target of the earliest offensives, Melitene, was taken over directly, in 934, and then, according to another scholar, 'Byzantium's eastward drive was resumed'.3