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People: Don John of Austria
Topic: Byzantine-Muslim War of 871-85
Location: Gniezno Poznan Poland

Byzantine-Muslim War of 871-85

Years: 871 - 885

Campaigns led personally by Basil I against the Abbasids in northern Mesopotamia (871–873) are followed by a series of expeditions against the Muslims in Sicily and Southern Italy.

The final loss of Sicily cannot be averted, but the Arabs are driven from Southern Italy and Dalmatia, laying the foundations of the Catepanate of Italy.

"{Readers} take infinitely more pleasure in knowing the variety of incidents that are contained in them, without ever thinking of imitating them, believing the imitation not only difficult, but impossible: as if heaven, the sun, the elements, and men should have changed the order of their motions and power, from what they were anciently"

― Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (1517)