The Byzantines in this case carefully distinguished the Scythians from the Goths and Huns who also followed Attila.

The Persians were forced to withdraw, and the Byzantines followed them east.

The Byzantines followed, and pushed deep into Persian territory, culminating in a raid on Atropatene, but in 577, Justinian was defeated in Persian Armenia, forcing a Byzantine withdrawal.

The region went then under the hegemony of the Seljuq dynasty 11th century CE, followed by the Danishmends, the Byzantines during the crusades, Çobanoğlu and Jandarid beyliks.

A war between the two empires soon followed ; in 812 the Byzantines agreed to recognize the existence of two Roman Empires in return for an assurance that the remaining Byzantine possessions in Italy would be uncontested.

The Byzantines, on the other hand, were weakened by a series of catastrophic defeats against the Bulgars, followed in 820 by the Revolt of Thomas the Slav, which attracted the support of a large part of the Byzantine armed forces, including the thematic fleets.

" Puzzled at this response, the envoys eventually followed his advice and returned to Carthage where they were taken prisoner by the victorious Byzantines.

Yet more campaigns and invasions followed and Adıyaman was controlled by Byzantines 395-670, Ummayads from 670 and then Abbasids 758-926.

This might be because of the general disarmament of the Empire in the twenty years leading up to the sacking, or because the Byzantines had lost access to the areas where the primary ingredients were to be found, or even perhaps because the secret had been lost over time.

* 1302 – Battle of Bapheus: decisive Ottoman victory over the Byzantines opening up Bithyniea for Turkish conquest.

Thus, in 1329 after this Battle of Pelekanon the Byzantines gave up the idea of getting the Kocaeli lands back and never tried conducting a field battle against the Ottoman forces.

However Matthew Kantacouzenos asked his father, Byzantine Emperor John Kantacouzenos VI for help and 10, 000 Ottoman Turks showed up at Demotika in October 1352 and engaged the forces of John V's Serbian allies in an open field battle which resulted in the destruction of the allies and a victory for the more numerous Turks in the service of the Byzantines.

In 1031 Edessa was given up to the Byzantines under George Maniakes by its Arab governor.

The peace treaty with the Byzantines lasted until 1175, when Kilij Arslan refused to hand over to Manuel the territory conquered from the Danishmends, although both sides had for some time been building up their fortifications and armies in preparation for a renewed war.

The settlement witnessed the hegemony of many cultures and races, such as Hittites, Persians, Greeks, Parthians, Pontus, Galatians, Romans and Byzantines, up to Seljuks and finally the Ottoman Turks, and the traces from its long past stand all over the area.

In the East, the Byzantines are still — as it was in our history up to the advent of Islam — involved in a never-ending cold war ( occasionally flaring up into actual fighting ) with its Persian arch-enemy, represented in the series by the female spy Mirrane.

Several Georgians nobles defected to the Byzantines, but Bagrat's loyal subjects put up a stubborn fight.

The importance of Umbria in Roman and medieval times was intimately bound up with the Via Flaminia, the consular road that supplied Rome and served as a military highway into and out of the City: for this reason once the Roman empire collapsed, Umbria became a strategic battleground fought over by the Church, the Lombards and the Byzantines, and suffered consequently, becoming partitioned among them and disappearing from history.

Kaninë castle was the last to fall to the Byzantines probably in 1294, while Corfu and Butrint remained in Angevin hands at least up to 1292.

The Byzantines overran Bulgarian-controlled northeastern Thrace, but Ivan Alexander rushed southward with a small army and swiftly caught up with Andronikos III at Rusokastro.

In 1453, the Byzantines launched a night attack during the Fall of Constantinople, using a powder keg to blow up a Turkish siege tower.

Smaragdus inherited a war with the Lombards from his predecessor Callinicus, and refused to give up the daughter of the Lombard king Agilulf, as well as her husband, both of whom had been taken prisoner by the Byzantines in 601.

The Muslims controlled the road to Emessa, so the Byzantines went west and then north up the Beqaa Valley.

The Lombards played on the pre-existing hostility between the Avars and the Byzantines, claiming that the latter were allied with the Gepids.

Attempts to mollify Justin II with tributes failed, and as a result the Byzantines kept themselves neutral if not outright supportive of the Avars.

Historians consider this the decisive factor in convincing Alboin to undertake a migration, even though there are indications that before the war with the Gepids a decision was maturing to leave for Italy, a country thousands of Lombards had seen in the 550s when hired by the Byzantines to fight in the Gothic War.

The Norman danger ended for the time being with Robert Guiscard's death in 1085, and the Byzantines recovered most of their losses.

An alliance with his brother-in-law Michael Asen III of Bulgaria against Stefan Uroš III Dečanski of Serbia failed to secure any gains, as the Serbians defeated the Bulgarians before the latter could join with the Byzantines in the Battle of Velbazhd ( modern Kyustendil ) in 1330.

The siege was long and famine broke out in the Christian camp ; the Byzantines and crusades blamed each other for the failure, and a truce was signed with Saladin.

Since the Bulgarians were not satisfied with the positions of the Pope after prolonged negotiations, they reached favorable agreement with the Byzantines and the decision was taken that the Bulgarian Church should become Eastern Orthodox.

This came about through trade with the Byzantines, as well as through Gothic membership of a military covenant, which was based in Byzantium and involved pledges of military assistance.

Kallinikos ' development of Greek fire came at a critical moment in the Byzantine Empire's history: weakened by its long wars with Sassanid Persia, the Byzantines had been unable to effectively resist the onslaught of the Muslim conquests.

The full-scale device built on this basis established the effectiveness of the mechanism's design, even with the simple materials and techniques available to the Byzantines.

The Byzantines reached their lowest point under Phocas, with the Sassanids occupying the whole of the eastern Mediterranean.

The Byzantines dispatched an army to reinforce Africa, but its commander Nicephorus the Patrician lost a battle with the Arabs and reembarked.

The Byzantines were frequently at war with the Seljuqs and other Turkish dynasties for control of Anatolia and Syria.

This subdivision, however, together with the independent indocility of the duchies, deprived the kingdom of unity, making it weak even when compared to the Byzantines, especially after they began to recover from the initial invasion.

The Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih of the 9th century ( d. 911 ) cited the Byzantine lyra, in his lexicographical discussion of instruments as a bowed instrument equivalent to the Arab rabāb and typical instrument of the Byzantines along with the urghun ( organ ), shilyani ( probably a type of harp or lyre ) and the salandj ( probably a bagpipe ).

While Murad was besieging the city, the Byzantines, in league with some independent Turkish Anatolian states, sent the sultan's younger brother Mustafa ( who was only 13 years old ) to rebel against the sultan and besiege Bursa.

The Meccans signed treaties with both the Byzantines and the Bedouins, and negotiated safe passages for caravans, giving them water and pasture rights.

After a series of such raids, the Byzantines had to use superior forces to deal with them.

The Genoese, in trying to repel a Venetian fleet from destroying their ships in Golden Horn, bombarded the sea walls of Constantinople and pushed Byzantines to ally with Venetians.

After this, Eutychius reached an uneasy truce with Gregory, and the pope in return forged a temporary truce between the Lombards and the Byzantines.

A temporary lull in the conflict between the Byzantines and the Lombards allowed Gregory to deal with some longstanding internal issues, in particular the ongoing jurisdictional dispute between the Patriarchs of Grado and Aquileia.

In the 7th century Pisa helped Pope Gregory I by supplying numerous ships in his military expedition against the Byzantines of Ravenna: Pisa was the sole Byzantine centre of Tuscia to fall peacefully in Lombard hands, through assimilation with the neighbouring region where their trading interests were prevailing.

In the war with Sassanid Persia ( 502 – 505 ), Theodosiopolis and Amida were captured by the enemy, but the Persian provinces also suffered severely and the Byzantines recovered Amida.