Ibn Fadlan also records his encounters with…

The wars of reconquest on the eastern frontier in this period and the general military orientation of imperial policy have brought to the fore a new class of aristocracy, whose wealth and power are based on land ownership and who hold most of the higher military posts.

Trade and industry in the cities are so rigidly controlled by the government that almost the only profitable form of investment for private enterprise is the acquisition of landed property.

The military aristocracy, therefore, has taken to buying up the farms of free peasants and soldiers and reducing their owners to varying forms of dependence.

As the empire grows stronger, the rich become richer.

Given the system of agriculture prevailing in Anatolia and the Balkans, every failure of crops, every famine, drought, or plague produces a quota of destitute peasant-soldiers willing to turn themselves and their land over to the protection of a prosperous and ambitious landlord.

The first emperor to see the danger in this development is Romanus I Lekapenos, who, in 922, passes laws to defend the small landowners against the acquisitive instincts of the “powerful”; for he realizes that the economic as well as the military strength of the empire depends on the maintenance within the theme system of the institution of free, yet taxpaying, soldier-farmers and peasants in village communities.

(Only freemen owe military service.)

A large Bulgarian army under the Kavhan Theodore Sigritsa marches swiftly through the Strandzha Mountains in 922 to reach the outskirts of Constantinople.

Romanos sends troops under the Domestic of the Schools Pothos Argyros and the admiral Alexios Mosele to face the Bulgarians.

The battle takes place at Pegae.

The initial Bulgarian blow is irresistible, and the imperial commanders are the first to flee, with Mosele drowning in a desperate attempt to reach a ship.

Most of the defending soldiers and sailors are killed, drowned, or captured.

After the battle, the Bulgarians burn the palaces in Pegae, loot the Golden Horn, and triumphantly return to Preslav.

Constantinople has meanwhile attempted to ignite Serbia against Simeon, but he has substituted Pavle with Zaharije Pribisavljević, a former refugee at Constantinople that he had captured.

Islamic mystic Al-Hallaj was born around 858 in Fars province of Persia to a cotton-carder (Hallaj means "cotton-carder" in Arabic).

His grandfather was a Zoroastrian.

His father lived a simple life, and this form of lifestyle had greatly interested the young Al-Hallaj.

As a youngster he memorized the Qur'an and would often retreat from worldly pursuits to join other mystics in study.

Al-Hallaj was originally a Hanbali Sufi Muslim and later turned to be a Qarmatian Batiniyya.

Al-Hallaj had eventually married and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he stayed for one year, facing the mosque, in fasting and total silence.

After his stay at the city, he had traveled extensively, writing and teaching along the way.

He had traveled as far as India and Central Asia, gaining many followers, many of whom had accompanied him on his second and third trips to Mecca.

After this period of travel, he had settled down in the Abbasid capital of Baghdad.

Among other Sufis, Al-Hallaj is an anomaly.

Many Sufi masters feel that it is inappropriate to share mysticism with the masses, yet Al-Hallaj openly does so in his writings and through his teachings.

He had thus began to make enemies.

This had been exacerbated by occasions when he would fall into trances which he attributed to being in the presence of God.

During one of these trances, he would utter "I am The Truth, " which is taken to mean that he was claiming to be God, since al-Ḥaqq "the Truth" is one of the Ninety Nine Names of Allah.

In another controversial statement, al-Hallaj had claimed "There is nothing wrapped in my turban but God, " and similarly he would point to his cloak and say, "There is nothing in my cloak but God."

This type of mystical utterance is known as shath.

Statements like these had led to a long trial, and his subsequent imprisonment for eleven years in a Baghdad prison.

Accused of heterodoxy and charlatanism, he is publicly dismembered and burned to death on March 26, 922.

Legends will soon develop around al-Hallaj’s supposed Christlike resurrection.

An infuriated Simeon, no longer able to climb to the throne in Constantinople by diplomatic means, once again has to wage war to impose his will.

Bulgaria increases its pressure on the Empire between 920 and 922, campaigning in the west through Thessaly and reaching the Isthmus of Corinth.

John, Bishop of Pavia, surrenders his city to Rudolph in 922; it will be sacked by the Magyars in 924.

Rudolph is here crowned King of the Lombards.

Abd ar-Rahman III, the Umayyad emir of al-Andalus, has failed to restore calm by his grant of amnesty to rebel Muslim Arabs, Berbers, and Muladi (Spanish converts to Islam).

The emir has launched three different campaigns against Ibn Hafsun (who died in 917) and his sons, who command an army of dissenters and tribesman.

Among the rebel leader’s sons, Jafar ibn Hafsun holds the stronghold of Toledo.

Abd ar-Rahman orders the ravaging of the city's countryside.

Jafar, after two years of siege, escapes the city to ask for help in the northern Christian kingdoms.

In the meantime, Abd ar-Rahman obtains the surrender of the city from its population, after promising them immunity, although four thousand rebels escape in a night sally.

The city surrenders on August 2, 922.

The Banu Muhallab of Guadix submit to Abd ar-Rahman in 921.

The rebel leaders of Jerez and …

…Cádiz surrender to the emir, …