Charles, called home from his invasion of…

Leo profits from discord among the Bulgarians by granting the Bulgarian khan Telerig asylum in Constantinople from 776 to 777 and marrying him to a cousin of his wife Irene.

He also conducts three campaigns against the Arabs in Anatolia and Syria from 777.

Telerig, despite his apparent success, finds it necessary to flee Bulgaria to Leo IV the Khazar in 777.

The imperial government grants Telerig asylum and the title of patrikios.

Telerig converts to Christianity under the name of Theophylaktos and marries a cousin of the Empress Irene.

Al-Mahdi actively persecutes the Manichaeans, whom he defines as heretics to deny them status as a protected community.

He also tries to identify Manichaeans who have joined the Muslim community without abandoning their previous ideas and practices.

Charles begins to eye expansion opportunities in the European southwest for his brand of Christian civilization.

He takes time out from his annual ravaging of the “heathen Saxons” to lead a large Frankish army southward across the Pyrenees toward Zaragoza in strife-torn Muslim Spain, where the Umayyads are resisting a takeover by the usurping Abbasids.

Barred from admission to Zaragoza, the Frankish army ravages several small towns.

The Tripolitanian Ibadiyya had, on the death of al-Rustam, elected as Imam Abu l-Hatim al-Malzuzi, who, having launched a second unsuccessful revolt in 768, is killed in 772.

Charles calls a national diet at Paderborn in 777 to integrate Saxony fully into the Frankish kingdom by bringing Saxony closer to Christianity.

Many Saxons are baptized: missionaries, mainly Anglo-Saxons from England, have been recruited to carry out this task.

Charles issues a number of decrees designed to break Saxon resistance and to inflict capital punishment on anyone observing heathen practices or disrespecting the king's peace.

Widukind is first mentioned by the Annals in 777, when he is the only one of the Saxon nobles not to appear at Charles's court in Paderborn.

He stays instead with the Danish king Sigfred (possibly Sigurd Hring).

The Westphalians again invade the Frankish Rhineland in 778 and subsequently fight a running battle against Charles’s forces and their local allies, while the king is busy in Spain.

The Muslims escalate their annual raids against the Empire by invading Anatolia in force in 778, but imperial troops repulse the invasion at the Battle of Germanicopolis, killing thousands of Muslims during and after the battle.

Christian Basques (Gascons) of Navarre, infuriated by the Frankish depredations, join with Muslims to ambush and massacre the Frankish rearguard under Charles’ nephew and prefect Roland, or Hruodlandus, at the pass of Roncesvalles in 778.

(The slain Hruodlandus is later immortalized in the twelfth century chanson de geste, “The Song of Roland”).

Li Kuo briefly serves as regent when Emperor Daizong falls ill in 779, and when Emperor Daizong subsequently dies, succeeds him as Emperor Dezong.