Sulayman again leads the summer campaign in the next year and is again unsuccessful: while his forces besiege an imperial fortress, a disease strikes their camp.

Exacerbated by lack of supplies, this disease causes much loss of life both among men and beasts, while the army also suffers many casualties from the defenders' attacks.

So bad is the situation that the tenth-century Arab Christian historian Agapius reports that many of Sulayman's soldiers even defected to the Empire and converted to Christianity.

These failures are compounded by an imperial counterattack shortly after that targets Malatya.

The city is saved, although Hisham himself has to take the field with whatever forces he can assemble; nevertheless, this attack, the first after many years of Constantinople’s passivity, signals the shifting balance of power in the region.

In the same year, Sulayman receives and carries out his father's orders to execute all imperial prisoners, after a false report reaches the Caliph that the imperial forces had executed their own Muslim prisoners.