Candia (Chandax, modern Heraklion), a city built…

Nitra, under Avar rule for more than two hundred years until their defeat by Charlemagne in the early ninth century, has become the capital of the Principality of Nitra, the oldest known independent Slavic state in the present-day Slovakia.

The first known Christian church built by the Western Slavs is consecrated around 828 by Archbishop Adalram of Salzburg at the seat of the ruling prince, Pribina, and in the same year the town is first mentioned as Nitrawa.

Aznar has fallen out with Bernard of Septimania, Berengar's successor in the March of Gothia.

In 828, Gascony revolts again.

The island of Pantelleria had been captured by Arabs around 700, and it was only discord among the Arabs that had prevented Sicily, a possession of Constantinople.

Instead, trading arrangements had been agreed upon and Arab merchants had established themselves in Sicilian ports.

After a Sicilian coup against an unpopular imperial governor had failed in 827, Euphemius, a wealthy landowner who had overcome the imperial garrison in Siracusa, had declared himself Emperor and invited Ziyadat Allah, the Aghlabid Emir of Tunisia, to help him.

The response had been a fleet of one hundred ships and ten thousand troops under the command of Asad ibn al-Furat, largely Arabized Berbers from North Africa and Spain.

After conquering much of Sicily in 827-28, the Muslim invaders colonize the city of Agrigento in 828 and begin establishing outposts in southern Italy.

The contest over the Istrian bishoprics, fomented by Charlemagne and by Lothair I between the patriarchs of Grado and Aquileia, continues, while Giustiniano works to increase the prestige of the Venetian church itself.

Traditionally, Venice had first been evangelized by Saint Mark himself and many Venetians have made the pilgrimage to Mark's grave in Alexandria, Egypt.

According to tradition, Giustiniano ordered merchants, Buono di Malamocco and Rustico di Torcello, to corrupt the Alexandrine monks who guarded the body of the evangelist and steal it away secretly to Venice.

The Venetian ship, with the corpse hidden among some pork, slipped through customs and sailed into Venice on January 31, 828 with the body of Saint Mark.

Giustiniano decides to build a ducal chapel dedicated to Saint Mark to house his remains: the first Basilica di San Marco in Venice.

The patriarchal seat is also moved to Rialto.

With an evangelist on its territory, Venice acquires a status almost equal to that of Rome itself.

Another assembly, at Ingelheim in June 828, considers a reprisal raid into Cordoban territory, but although a Frankish army is gathered in Thionville, it does not enter the lands controlled by Bernard as the risk of Muslim raiding seems to have declined.

Hugh of Tours and Matfrid of Orléans are deposed from their respective counties at the assembly of Aachen in 828, Orléans is granted to Odo, and Bernard's brother Gaucelm receives the fiefs of Conflent and Rasez.

As Leibulf of Provence had died in the spring, his vast dominions—Narbonne, Béziers, Agde, Melgueil, Nîmes, and probably Uzès—are assigned to Bernard.

Bernard takes from this wide collection of Septimanian honores the title "Duke of Septimania".

The two successor polities of the Roman Empire maintain an amicable correspondence: Constantinople’s Emperor Michael II sends a Greek manuscript of the complete works of the anonymous fifth-century theologian and philosopher known as Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite—four treatises and ten letters—to Frankish Emperor Louis in 827.

Although Michael is an Iconoclast, in practice he follows a policy of toleration.

He has even freed prisoners who had been jailed for their devotion to icons and recalled former patriarch Nikephoros, the late Theodore Studites, and other theologians who had been exiled for that reason.

Michael is half Jewish, and probably belongs to a Judeo-Christian sect that keeps the whole of Jewish law, except circumcision, and has close sympathies with the Jews.

Nikephoros dies in 828, leaving the “Antirrhetics” and the “Apology,” his major doctrinal writings against the iconoclasts, in which he argues that, as a historical human being, Jesus may be represented in pictures; his images, or icons, also merit veneration, however, because, even though fully human, he is the Son of God.

The Khazar Khaganate at its height is an immense and powerful state.

The Khazaria heartland is the lower Volga and the Caspian coast as far south as Derbent.

Khazar dominion over most of the Crimea and the northeast littoral of the Black Sea dates from the late seventh century.

By 800, Khazar holdings included most of the Pontic steppe as far west as the Dnieper River and as far east as the Aral Sea (some Turkic history atlases show the Khazar sphere of influence extending well east of the Aral).

During the Arab–Khazar war of the early eighth century, some Khazars had evacuated to the foothills of the Ural Mountains, and some settlements may have remained.

For a century and a half, the Khazars have ruled the southern half of Eastern Europe and present a bulwark blocking the Ural-Caspian gateway from Asia into Europe, while serving as a major artery of commerce between northern Europe and southwestern Asia along the Silk Road.

Their territory comprises much of modern-day southern European Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, large portions of the northern Caucasus (Circassia, Dagestan), parts of Georgia, the Crimea, and northeastern Turkey.

Various place names invoking Khazar persist today.

The Caspian Sea, traditionally known as the Hyrcanian Sea and Mazandaran Sea in Persian, is still known to Muslims as the 'Khazar Sea' (Bahr ul-Khazar).

Many other cultures still use the name "Khazar Sea".

In Hungary, there are villages (and people with family names) called Kozár and Kazár.

At the peak of their empire, the Khazar permanent standing army may have numbered as many as one hundred thousand, controlling or exacting tribute from thirty different nations and tribes inhabiting the vast territories between the Caucasus, the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains, and the Ukrainian steppes.

Khazar armies were led by the Khagan Bek and commanded by subordinate officers known as tarkhans.

When the bek sent out a body of troops, they would not retreat under any circumstances.

If they were defeated, every one who returned was killed.

Bulan was a Khazar king who led the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism.

The date of his reign is unknown, as the date of the conversion is hotly disputed, though it is certain that Bulan reigned some time between the mid-700s and the mid-800s.

Nor is it settled whether Bulan was the Bek or the Khagan of the Khazars.

D. M. Dunlop was certain that Bulan was a Khagan; however, more recent works, such as The Jews of Khazaria by Kevin Brook, assume that he was the Bek due to references to him leading military campaigns.

Khazar tradition held that before his own conversion, Bulan was religiously unaffiliated.

In his quest to discover which of the three Abrahamic religions would shape his own religious beliefs, he invited representatives from each to explain their fundamental tenets.

In the end, he chose Judaism.

Ansgar, born near Amiens to a noble family, is a product of the phase of Christianization of Saxony (present day Northern Germany) begun by Charlemagne and continued by his son and successor, Louis the Pious.

When Saxony becomes no longer the focus of Christianization, what is now Denmark falls under the sweeping missionary gaze, with a group of monks including Ansgar sent back to Jutland with the baptized Jutish king Harald Klak.

Ansgar returns two years later after educating young boys who had been purchased because Harald had possibly been driven out of his kingdom.

Ansgar had been one of a number of missionaries sent in 822 to found the abbey of Corvey (New Corbie) in Westphalia, and there became a teacher and preacher.

Louis, in response to a request from the Swedish king Björn at Hauge for a mission to the Swedes in 829, appoints Ansgar missionary.

With an assistant, the friar Witmar, he preaches and makes converts for six months at Birka, on Lake Mälaren, organizing a small congregation here with the king's steward, Hergeir, as its most prominent member.

Michael’s son Theophilos, crowned as co-emperor in 820, had shortly thereafter married a beauty, Theodora, chosen from a group of candidates.

Liberally educated by the scholar and ardent Iconoclast John Philoponus, Theophilos is also much influenced by the learned court of the famous Caliph Harun ar-Rashid of Baghdad, whose long rein had ended twenty years earlier.

On becoming sole emperor at sixteen upon the death of his father in October 829, he emulates Harun ar-Rashid by wandering about the capital informally, listening to his subjects' complaints.