The Al-Askari Mosque, today one of the…

The Image of Edessa, according to Christian tradition, is a holy relic consisting of a square or rectangle of cloth upon which a miraculous image of the face of Jesus was imprinted—the first icon ("image").

In Eastern Orthodoxy, and often in English, the image is known as the Mandylion.

According to the legend, King Abgar of Edessa wrote to Jesus, asking him to come cure him of an illness.

Abgar received a reply letter from Jesus, declining the invitation, but promising a future visit by one of his disciples.

This legend was first recorded in the early fourth century by Eusebius of Caesarea, who said that he had transcribed and translated the actual letter in the Syriac chancery documents of the king of Edessa, but who makes no mention of an image.

Instead, the apostle "Thaddaeus" is said to have come to Edessa, bearing the words of Jesus, by the virtues of which the king was miraculously healed.

The report of an image, which accrued to the legendarium of Abgar, first appears in the Syriac work, the Doctrine of Addai: according to it, the messenger, here called Ananias, was also a painter, and he painted the portrait, which was brought back to Edessa and conserved in the royal palace.

The first record of the existence of a physical image in the ancient city of Edessa (now Urfa) was in Evagrius Scholasticus, writing about 593, who reports a portrait of Christ, of divine origin, which effected the miraculous aid in the defense of Edessa against the Persians in 544.

John Kourkouas had invaded northern Mesopotamia in 943, and besieges Edessa in 944.

As the price for his withdrawal, Kourkouas obtains from its inhabitants one of Constantinople's most prized relics, the mandylion, the holy towel allegedly sent by Jesus Christ to King Abgar V of Edessa.

This is the final great achievement of Romanos's reign.

Romanos concludes a treaty with Prince Igor of Kiev in 944.

This crisis having passed, Kourkouas is free to return to the eastern frontier.

It has sometimes been suggested that a marriage alliance might bring together the Eastern and Western parts of the empire and so provide for a united defense against the common enemy in Sicily—the Arabs.

In 944, Constantine's five-year-old son is married to a daughter of Hugh of Provence, the Carolingian claimant to Italy.

Constantine also keeps up diplomatic contact with Otto I, the Saxon king of Germany.

Romanos' later reign has been marked by the old emperor's heightened interest in divine judgment and his increasing sense of guilt for his role in the usurpation of the throne from Constantine VII.

On the death of Christopher, by far his most competent son, in 931, Romanos had not advanced his younger sons in precedence over Constantine VII.

Fearing that Romanos will allow Constantine VII to succeed him instead of them, his younger sons Stephen and Constantine, impatient to succeed to power, arrest their father in December 944, carry him off to the Prince's Islands and compel him to become a monk.

The Lekapenos brothers threaten the position of Constantine VII, and the people of Constantinople, fearing only that the Porphyrogenitus emperor might be included in the purge accompanying the seizure of power, riot until Constantine appears at a window of the palace.

This show of loyalty emboldens him to banish Romanus' sons on January 27, 945.

Stephen and Constantine are likewise stripped of their imperial rank and sent into exile to their father.

Having never exercised executive authority, Constantine remains primarily devoted to his scholarly pursuits and relegates his authority to bureaucrats and generals, as well as to his energetic wife Helena Lekapene, the daughter of Emperor Romanos I and his wife Theodora.

Romanos II is a son of Emperor Constantine VII and Helena Lekapene.

Named after his maternal grandfather, Romanos had been married, as a child, to Bertha, the illegitimate daughter of Hugh of Arles, King of Italy, who changes her name to Eudokia after her marriage.

Constantine crowns his son Romanos co-emperor on April 6, 945.

John Kourkouas, although considered by some of his contemporaries "a second Trajan or Belisarius," is dismissed after the fall of the Lekapenoi in 945.

Nevertheless, his campaigns in the East have paved the way for the even more dramatic reconquests in the middle and the second half of the tenth century.

Constantine, now thirty-nine, will rule alone from this point forward.

He appoints to the highest army commands four members of the Phokas family, which had been in disgrace under the Lekapenoi, but takes no further reprisals, except for an incidental remark, in De ceremoniis, that Romanus Lecapenus was neither an aristocrat nor a cultured man.

That he does not depart from the admiral's basic policy-at home, maintaining a delicate balance among civil and military officers, landed aristocrats, and peasant soldiers; abroad, friendship with the Rus, peace with the Bulgarians, a limited commitment in Italy, and a resolute offensive against the Muslims—may be ascribed to statesmanship as well as to timidity.

The policy continues to be effective.

The Chersonese Greeks had alert the emperor about the approaching Kievans, who fled in 944/945.

This time, Constantinople hastens to buy peace and concludes a treaty with Kievan Rus'.

Its text is quoted in full in the Primary Chronicle.

The Emperor had sent gifts and offered tribute in lieu of war, and the Rus’ had accepted.

Envoys are sent between the Rus’, Constantinople, and the Bulgarians in 945, and a peace treaty is completed.

The agreement again focused on trade, but this time with terms less favorable to the Rus’, including stringent regulations on the conduct of Rus’ merchants in Cherson and Constantinople and specific punishments for violations of the law.

Constantinople may have been motivated to enter the treaty out of concern of a prolonged alliance of the Rus', Pechenegs, and Bulgarians against them, though the more favorable terms further suggest a shift in power.

The Hamdanids had captured Aleppo and …

…Homs and have occupied northern Syria following the death of ibn-Ra'iq in 942; a shaky truce ends the civil war in 944.

'Ali, one of three sons of Buyeh, of Daylamite origin, had been appointed governor of Karaj about 930 by the Daylamite leader Mardaviz ibn Ziyar.

'Ali had seized Isfahan and Fars, while …

…his brothers, Hasan and Ahmad, took Jibal, Khuzestan, and Kerman.

The weakened Baghdad-based Abbasid caliphate now holds no more than nominal suzerainty over its subjects; real power having devolved to the largely independent secular regional dynasties who govern in the caliph's name.

Although the 'Abbasids' foreign mercenary troops have continued to be regularly converted to Islam, the base of imperial unity through religion is gone, and some of the new army officers have quickly learned to control the caliphate through assassination of any caliph who will not accede to their demands.

The power of the army officers had already weakened through internal rivalries when the Buyid dynasty begins threatening the Abbasid capital.

Tuzun, the Turkish general who had deposed and blinded the previous caliph al-Muttaqi, marches with al-Mutktafi, the new caliph he has installed, to Wasit and defeats them.

The tribute due from Mosul being withheld, Tuzun also marches against the Hamdanid ruler Nasir al-Dawla; but, after friendly relations are reestablished, he returns.

Soon after, Tuzun dies, and is succeeded by Abu Ja'far, one of his generals.

Baghdad now falls into a fearful state of distress.

Supplies, stayed by the enemies all round, no longer reach the markets, and people are reduced to eat dogs, cats and garbage.

The mob is driven by starvation to plunder the shops of their remaining stores.

Multitudes flee the city for Basra or elsewhere, dying in great numbers from weakness.

Abu Ja'far, finding himself unable to control affairs, at last requests the aid of Nasir al-Dawla from Mosul; even offering, if he would come, to vacate in his favor the supreme command, but the Hamdanids are at the moment engaged on one hand with the Rus' in Azerbaijan, and on the other with the Ikhshidids in Syria.

Just at this time, the governor of Wasit surrenders to the chief of the Buyids, and joining him marches on Baghdad.

Abu Ja'far and the Caliph flee into hiding.

The rise of the Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta has had a great impact on India, even on India's north.

Sulaiman (851), Al Masudi (944) and Ibn Khurdadba (912) wrote that their empire was the largest in contemporary India and Sulaiman further called it one among the four great contemporary empires of the world.

Abū Yazīd's father Kayrād was a trans-Saharan trader from Qastilia, where he was born; he had grown up in Tozeur, then head gone to Tahert, the Rustamid capital and the main center of (Ibadi) Kharijism in the Maghreb of the time and took up teaching.

The Nakkariyyah branch of Sufri Kharijism was named after him.

However, in 909 the Ismaili Shī‘ī Fatimids had conquered the Rustamids and, soon after, the Sufri state of Sijilmassa to the west.

Abū Yazīd had moved to Tiqyus and had begun agitating against Fatimid rule in 928.

When the Fatimid al-Mahdi died in 944, Abū Yazīd launches a rebellion in the Aures mountains and declares himself Shaykh al-Mu'minīn "Elder of the Believers", seeking aid from the Umayyads of Andalus.

Early in his rebellion, Abū Yazīd is given a gray donkey which he uses to ride, for which he receives the nickname "Possessor of the donkey.”

Abū Yazīd also habitually wears a short woolen jubba cloak and with his conspicuous frugality, he recalls the Kharijite imams of Tahert and Sijilmassa.

Abū Yazīd is initially notably successful.

He takes Baghai, then …