Pepin’s Conquest of Berry and Bourges (762–763)…

Al-Mansur, the Abbasid Caliph, had sent over four thousand Arab mercenaries in 756 to assist the Chinese against An Lushan.

After the war, they remain in China.

Al-Mansur is referred to as "A-p'u-ch'a-fo" in the Chinese Tang Annals.

The Old Book of Tang describes Guangzhou as important port in the south of China.

Direct routes connect the Near East and China in this period: a Chinese prisoner, who had been captured in 751 in the Battle of Talas and had stayed in Iraq for twelve years, returns to China by ship on a direct route from Iraq to Guangzhou.

Sacked by Arab and Persian raiders during the turmoil of the An Shi Rebellion, tThe port will remain shut down for the next five decades while foreign vessels dock at Hanoi instead, yet Guangzhou will thrive again once it is reopened to foreign trade in the early ninth century.

Telets leads a well-trained and well-armed army against the Empire and devastates the Empire's frontier zone, inviting the emperor to a contest of strength.

Emperor Constantine V marched north on June 16, 763, while another army is carried by a fleet of eight hundred ships (each carrying infantry and twelve horsemen) with the intent to create a pincer movement from the north.

Telets at first fortifies the mountain passes with his troops and some twenty thousand Slavic auxiliaries.

Later he changes his mind and leads out his troops to the plain of Anchialos (Pomorie) on June 30.

The bloody battle of Anchialus begins at mid-morning and lasts until dusk.

At the end, Telets is deserted by his Slavic auxiliaries, who desert to the emperor, who wins the field, but chooses to return home in triumph.

According to the Byzantine sources, Constantine V brought home a throng of Bulgarian prisoners in wooden restraints, for the entertainment of Constantinople's populace, then had them killed.

Jerusalem, despite being proclaimed a goal of Muslim pilgrimage, loses some of its earlier importance when the caliphate is moved by the new 'Abbasid dynasty from Damascus to Baghdad in 762.

Like most of the Umayyads, their successors, the 'Abbasids, pursue a liberal policy toward Christians and Jews.

Along with Syria, Palestine becomes subject to 'Abbasid authority, based in Baghdad, and, like Syria, it does not readily submit to its new masters.

Unlike the Umayyads, who leaned on the Yemeni (South Arabian) tribes, the Abbasids, in Syria, favor and indeed use the Qays (North Arabian) tribes.

Enmity between the two groups is, therefore, intensified and becomes an important political factor in Palestine.

Ibrahim, due to his brother Muhammad's rushed actions, had failed to coordinate his own uprising with his brother's, and had only declared himself two weeks before Muhammad's death, on November 23, 762.

Ibrahim's revolt at first had met with quick success, securing control over Ahwaz, Fars and Wasit, and his army register (diwan) was said to number one hundred thousand names.

When the news of Muhammad's death arrived, the rebels had acclaimed Ibrahim as his successor.

Ibrahim now was faced with a choice: a group of dedicated Alid supporters, which had managed to escape from Kufa, urged him to march on the city, while the Basrans preferred to stay in place and reach a negotiated settlement.

This dissension is indicative of the disparate nature of Ibrahim's supporters.

The Alid cause is fractured into several competing groups with different political objectives, and Ibrahim represents the Hasanid branch only.

The Husaynids refuse to take part in an uprising, while Ibrahim quarreswith the Zaydi branch on everything from political objectives and leadership to the tactics to be followed or the provisioning of their troops.

Elsewhere, support for the uprising is cautious and most Alid supporters adopt a wait-and-see attitude, limiting themselves to verbal support or contributions of money.

Al-Mansur in the meantime uses his time more effectively: he mobilized troops in Syria and Iran and brings them to the Iraq, and recalls Isa Ibn Musa from Medina to lead them.

Finally, Ibrahim decides to march on Kufa, but on the way he abandons this plan and turns back.

Instead of returning to Basra, however, he encamps at Bakhamra, a location on the road between the two cities.

Here, on 21 January, Ibrahim with his troops, reduced by defections to some fifteen thousand men, confronts the Abbasid army under Isa ibn Musa.

Isa's vanguard is at first beaten, but the battle ends in a crushing Abbasid victory.

Ibrahim himself is heavily wounded and escapes with a handful of supporters.

Ibrahim dies of his wounds on February 14, 763, signaling the end of the Alid Revolt.

The failure of Muhammad and Ibrahim's revolt is followed by a large-scale reprisal campaign against the Alids, many of whom are imprisoned or killed, until the death of al-Mansur brings about another period of attempts at conciliation under al-Mahdi (r. 775–785), which will end after another Alid uprising in 786.

Yan (An-Shi) Emperor Shi Chaoyi hangs himself to avoid being captured by troops sent by the renegade General Li Huaixian, thus ending the seven-year An Lushan Rebellion against the Tang Dynasty.

Li Huaixian has his head delivered to Chang'an.

The several years of fierce fighting and great loss of life has left Tang central authority severely weakened, with a substantial transfer of power from the central government and its formerly influential scholars to provincial military governors.

The Tibetans under Trisong Detsän begin invading the weakened provinces of imperial China’s weakened T'ang dynasty from 763 Sowing terror along the border with wanton destruction, arson, and killing, the Tibetans raid, at one point, as far as the capital at Chang’an, which they temporarily seize on November 18 and plunder.

Each time the Chinese forces succeed in defeating the Tibetans, the invaders retreat into their mountain strongholds and await another opportunity to attack.

The political contest between the imperial minister Oshikatsu and the powerful priest Dokyo erupts in 764 in civil war, in which Oshikatsu and most of his followers are defeated and killed.

A Duchy of Naples had been created after the fall of the Exarchate of Ravenna.

Although Naples' Greco-Roman culture endures, it eventually switches allegiance from Constantinople to Rome under Duke Stephen II, putting it under papal suzerainty by 763.

At the beginning of his reign, Naples was still a loyal dukedom of the Empire, her dukes appointed by the emperor.

In 761, therefore, she had denied entry to the papal envoy, the Bishop Paul, an opponent of the iconoclasm then gripping the Eastern Roman world.

Stephen was no less a supporter of the iconoclasm than the emperor himself.

At that time, Stephen had addressed Antiochos, the patrician of Sicily and his technical overlord, as "our lord" and "most excellent patrikios and protostrategos" (763).

By 764, however, Naples had thrown off iconoclasm and Paul is able to take up his see.