A second Arab army, commanded by Sass'n…

The powers of the secret police officials meanwhile continue, but appear to be curbed starting about 692, when Lai Junchen is foiled in his attempt to have the chancellors Ren Zhigu, Di Renjie, Pei Xingben, and other officials Cui Xuanli, Lu Xian, Wei Yuanzhong, and Li Sizhen executed, as Di, under arrest, had hid a secret petition inside a change of clothes and had it submitted by his son Di Guangyuan.

The seven are still exiled, but after this incident, particularly at the urging of Li Zhaode, Zhu Jingze, and Zhou Ju, the waves of politically motivated massacres decrease, although do not end entirely.

Also in 692, Wu Zetian commissions the general Wang Xiaojie to attack Tufan, and Wang recaptures the four garrisons of Xiyu that had fallen to Tufan in 670—Qiuzi, Yutian, Shule, and Suiye.

Sisebert’s rebellion having been suppressed, Egica calls a general council of the church in Spain to deal with the future security of the kingship and the discipline of the renegades.

Sixty bishops, five abbots, and six counts attend the council.

The bishops of Narbonensis cannot attend on account of an epidemic.

The Sixteenth Council of Toledo, the second of Egica's three councils, first meets on April 25, 693.

The king opens the council with a speech declaring that any officials who betrayed the trust of the Gothic people would be driven from office and enslaved to the treasury, forfeiting their property to the royal coffers.

The king, the council concurs, could bestow this confiscated property on anyone he wished, the church obviously not excluded.

The descendants of rebels are likewise prohibited from holding any palatine office.

Finally, the rebels are anathematized on the basis of the seventy-fifth canon of the Fourth Council.

On May 2, the final day of the council, the bishops solemnly excommunicate Sisebert for life and defrock him.

He will be allowed communion on his deathbed only, unless the king pardons him earlier.

Furthermore, his descendants are barred from holding any offices and any other rebel or descendant of a rebel who might rise up against Ergica is to be sold into slavery.

Without precedent, the bishops transfer the archbishop of Seville, Felix, to Toledo and the archbishop of Braga, Faustinus, to Seville.

They also order the bishops of Narbonensis to approve the decrees of the Sixteenth Council in a local synod of their own.

The council also reforms the laws of the realm on several points.

Incorporated into the Forum Iudicum formulated by Chindasuinth, published by Recceswinth, and modified by Erwig is the law that any oath rendered unto anybody other than the monarch is invalid and illegal.

A few laws are revoked and some are reestablished, such as that prohibiting the mutilation of slaves.

The council reaffirms Chindasuinth's penalty of castration for homosexuality, but only defrocking and exile for clerical offenders, though Egica increases that penalty to castration as well, after the council.

The council is also important in the long legal history of the Visigoths in suppressing Judaism.

Egica has apparently added to Erwig's law code tax-freedom to Jewish conversos and transferred their former burden to the unconverted.

At the Sixteenth Council, converts are allowed to trade with Christians, but not until he has proved himself by recitation of creeds and eating of non-kosher food.

Penalties are even enacted against Christians who transact with unconverted or unproven Jews.

In regards to the church, aside from dealing with the rebel Sisebert and the vacancy of his see, two important decrees are promulgated.

Firstly, the bishops are ordered to maintain all church edifices in good repair and keep a priest in each parish.

Secondly, the bishops are ordered to take all offerings offered by "rustics" to pagan gods and exterminate these continuing practice (no doubt only occurring in the remotest provincial backwaters).

Campaigns against the Kharajites begin to prove successful  only after 'Abd al-Malik appoints al-Hajjaj to govern Basra, but …

…another Kharijite trouble center develops north of Kufah.

The Seventeenth Council of Toledo first meets on November 9, 694 under King Egica.

It is the king's third council and primarily directed, as was the Sixteenth, against the Jews, of whom Egica seems to have had a profound distrust and dislike.

The king opens the synod by claiming that he has heard news of Jews overthrowing their Christian rulers overseas and that Iberian Jews are conspiring with these cousins to end the Christian religion once and for all.

The council therefore decrees in its eight canon that all Jews, except those in Narbonensis, are to be deprived of their property, which is to be given to their Christian slaves, and enslaved themselves.

All Jewish children reaching the age of seven should be taken from their homes and raised as Christians.

Their slavekeepers are chosen by the king and are to be contractually obligated to never allow the practice of the Jewish religion again.

It is, however, almost certain that, in at least some parts of Spain, these regulations were not strictly enforced, particularly in towns where Jews were deemed indispensable to the economy; though in others, they certainly were.

Indeed, as a result of the disintegrating Visigothic power, the law is hardly enforced beyond the capital city itself.

The council tries to protect the life of Egica's queen and children after his death, knowing the harm which could befall the royal family during a succession, and the bishops order prayers said for their souls.

The council's minutes remain the best source of information for its period in Spanish history.

Ine of Wessex, who makes peace with Kent in 694, becomes in this year the second Anglo-Saxon king to issue a written code of laws, after Ethelbert of Kent.

He issues a legal code proclaiming the Britons, descended from Celts and Roman-Celts, and the Anglo-Saxons, whose Germanic forebears had conquered the Britons, equal under the law.

This changes the nature of administration in Wessex and does a great deal to centralize the kingdom, which had previously been composed of sub-kingdoms more loosely united.

Ine is also said to have built the minster at Glastonbury.

Li Zhaode, who had become powerful after Wu Chengsi's removal, was himself thought to be too powerful, and Wu Zetian had removed him in 694.

Around this time also, the empress had become highly impressed with a group of mystic individuals—the hermit Wei Shifang (on whom she bestows a chancellor title briefly), who claims to be over three hundred and fifty years old; an old Buddhist nun who claims to be a Buddha and capable of predicting the future; and a non-Han man who claims to be five hundred years old.

During this time, Wu briefly claims to be and adopts the cult imagery of Maitreya, the future Buddha, in order to build popular support for her reign.

However, in 695, after the imperial meeting hall and the Heavenly Hall are burned by Huaiyi (who is jealous at Wu Zetian's taking on another lover, the imperial physician Shen Nanqiu, Wu Zetian becomes angry at these individuals for failing to predict the fire; the old nun and her students are arrested and made into slaves; Wei commits suicide; and the old non-Han man flees.

Subsequently, she also puts Huaiyi to death.

After this incident, she appears to pay less attention to mysticism and is even more dedicated than before to the affairs of state.

However, Wu Zetian's administration is soon in for various troubles on the western, then the northern, borders.

Justinian II has contributed to the development of the thematic organization of the Empire, creating a new theme of Hellas in southern Greece and numbering the heads of the five major themes—Thrace in Europe, Opsikion, the Anatolikon, and Armeniakon themes in Asia Minor, and the maritime corps of the Karabisianoi—among the senior administrators of the Empire.

He has also sought to protect the rights of peasant freeholders, who serve as the main recruitment pool for the armed forces of the Empire, against attempts by the aristocracy to acquire their land—putting him in direct conflict with some of the largest landholders in the Empire.

Although strife between Blues and Greens has persisted throughout the century, internal revolt has failed to imperil the Heraclian dynasty until the reign of Justinian II.

If his land policies threaten the aristocracy, his tax policy is no more popular with the common people.

Through his ruthless policy and the merciless extortion by his finance officials Stephen and Theodotos, the emperor has raised the funds to gratify his sumptuous tastes and his mania for erecting costly buildings.

This, ongoing religious discontent, conflicts with the aristocracy, and displeasure over his resettlement policy eventually drives his subjects into rebellion.

The population rises in 695 under Leontios, the strategos of Hellas, imprisoned by the emperor after the defeat by the Arabs at Sebastopolis and newly freed, and proclaims him Emperor.

Justinian is deposed and his nose is cut off (it will later be replaced by a solid gold replica of his original) to prevent his again seeking the throne: such mutilation is common in the of the Eastern Roman Empire (hence his byname Rhinotmetus).

He is exiled to Cherson in the Crimea.

A patrician by the name of Symbatius had proceeded to rebel in Armenia in the meantime, and opened up the province to the Arabs, who proceed to conquer it in 694–695.

The reestablishment of Umayyad rule in the Islamic realms is at first more apparent than real.

The Kharijites are still either restless or in open revolt.

The Kharijites in Persia, who are especially dangerous, capture Mosul in 695 and occupy large areas of central Iraq.