Sack of Amorium 838
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate. Wikidata lists more than one location for this battle; the first is shown.
Key facts
| Year | 838 | Wikidata P580 (start time) |
|---|---|---|
| Era | Medieval (500–1499) | derived from year |
| Location | Turkey | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Asia | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Arab–Byzantine wars | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | Abbasid Caliphate, Byzantine Empire | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 39.0204, 31.2891 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The siege of Amorium by the Abbasid Caliphate in mid-August 838 was one of the major events in the long history of the Arab–Byzantine Wars. The Abbasid campaign was led personally by the Caliph al-Mu'tasim (r. 833–842), in retaliation to a virtually unopposed expedition launched by the Byzantine emperor Theophilos (r. 829–842) into the Caliphate's borderlands the previous year. Mu'tasim targeted Amorium, an Eastern Roman city in western Asia Minor, because it was the birthplace of the ruling Byzantine dynasty and, at the time, one of Byzantium's largest and most important cities. The caliph gathered an exceptionally large army, which he divided in two parts, which invaded from the northeast and the south. The northeastern army defeated the Byzantine forces under Theophilos at Anzen, allowing the Abbasids to penetrate deep into Byzantine Asia Minor and converge upon Ancyra, which they found abandoned. After sacking the city, they turned south to Amorium, where they arrived on 1 August. Faced with intrigues at Constantinople and the rebellion of the large Khurramite contingent of his army, Theophilos was unable to aid the city.
Amorium was strongly fortified and garrisoned, but a local inhabitant revealed a weak spot in the wall, where the Abbasids concentrated their attack, effecting a breach.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Sack of Amorium (revision 1370729467), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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