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| - Summary: Pepin becomes the Holy Roman emperor, the Omayyads save their asses in Egypt, Chinese power shattered in Central Asia, Western Byzantium prey to a succession war; failed Eastern Byzantine "rentrée" in Italy 751 The Egyptian Omayyad forces rallied by Marwan II and led by his distant relative Abd ar-Rahman defeat the Abbasid army at Aqabade ad Aqaba and retake the holy cities of Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina. The T’ang Chinese army led by Gao Xianzhi conquers Chach/Tashkent and kills the local Qarluq ruler, Baghatur Tudun; thereafter the Chinese suffer a crushing and decisive defeat against Abbasid forces and rising Qarluqs at the Talas river (on that occasion, captured Chinese soldiers spread the knowledge of paper into the Muslim world). Western Göktürks, Turgesh/T’u-ch’ueh and Tibetans take advantage to rise in rebellion and attack the Chinese rearguards; Khagan Bayanchur’s Uygur replace the Chinese as overklords of the Tarim basin (eastern Turkestan). Pepin the Short dethrones Childeric III, the last weak Merovingian king of the Franks, and is hailed as the new king; his accession to the throne marks the beginning of the use of having the sovereign anointed with blessed oil at the hands of high prelates. This year is the date for the most ancient printed book known in the world, a Korean copy of a Buddhist “sutra” 752 Marwan II adopts Abd ar-Rahman as his heir and successor despite his defeat at Quneitra against the Abassids; Abbasid forces take over Oman by killing Al-Julanda, the local Ibadi-Zaydi imam, but the interior of the country remains firmly in the hands of the Shi'ite rebels. Premature death of the Western Roman/Byzantine emperor Leontius II in Syracuse; empress Theodota acts as regent for the infant Maurice II. The Spoletan Lombards, led by Duke Anspert, take advantage to invade southern Italy, seizing parts of Puglia and Campania and reclaiming back upper Lazio from the Papacy 753 King Dantidurga Rashtrakuta of Kannada overthrows the ruling Western Chalukyas of Vatapi/Badami, establishing the Rashtrakutas as the new regional power. After a lengthy siege the Austrasian Lombards conquer Ravenna from the Exarchate of Adria, then their king Lupus dies from malaria. After vainly trying to appease the Spoletan Lombards, marauding southern Italy and threatening Rome itself, Pope Stephen II departs to France to call Pepin the Short for help. Then Constantine V of Byzantium plunges in Puglia with a strong fleet, taking Taranto, Gallipoli, Brindisi and defeats the Spoletan Lombards at Murgia Basilica (*not existing OTL, inner central Puglia). The Abbasid general Abu Muslim retakes Hijaz with Mecca and Medina from the Omayyads 753-775 Open, harsh struggle between basileus Constantine V and the “idolatric” Byzantine monks adverse to iconoclasm 754 Also the second Chinese invasion of Nanzhao/Yunnan fares very badly. Young Maurice II dies in Syracuse, thus extinguishing the Leontidian dynasty; a long civil war for the imperial crown of the West ensues, because whilst in Syracuse empress Theodota rules, outside no less then seven pretenders spring up with one thing in mind: forcibly marry her and reign. (Eastern) Byzantium takes further advantage of the chaos imposing anew its rule in Dalmatia and conquering almost all of southern Italy save Naples, held by Duke Totilian, a pretender to to the Syracusan crown; Constantine V also subjects the church of southern Italy to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, enforcing unpopular Iconoclasm. Pepin the Shot meantime enters Italy, trounces the Spoletans at Pistoia with Neustrian Lombard help and enters Rome with Pope Stephen II; Tuscany reverts to Neustrian Lombardy, the Papacy has back its land in Lazio and gains the Perugia strip in western Umbria under Frankish protection. The archbishop of Mainz, The Anglo-Saxon Boniface, after evangelizing Germany for decades is martyred by hetahen Frisians at Dokkum; despite this setback, the Frisian archbishopric of Utrecht is to become a strong center of ecclesiatic power. The T’ang Chinese lose Kashgar at the hands of the Uygurs 754-756 Constantine V has Iconoclasm reaffirmed and confirmed as Byzantium’s state confession, despite heavy and often violent opposition from the clergy and people, especially in Europe 755 The Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur order the murder of Abu Muslim, one of the paramount leaders of the Abbasid revolution from their beginnings in Khorasan. Constantine V’s Byzantines and Peipn the Shorts Franco-Lombards clash in the epic battle of Tuscolo, south of Rome, where the Byzantines are narrowly defeated; thereafter the basileus abandons Italy for Constantinople, leaving his generals there to deal with the Frankish menace 755-756 Khorasan again hosts an uprising, this time a Zoroastrian one led by a Sindbad. General John Vivariotes conquers Syracuse after a long siege and forcibly maries empress Theodota, having himself styled Roman Emperor of the West, but gaining no recognition by both his rivals and the Papacy; he cannot even rule over western Sicily, where the pretender Jannakes has his own strongholds 755-763 General An Lushan rises in rebellion in the T’ang Chinese empire; despite his violent death in 757, his revolt triggers mass uprisings and upsets the empire 756 Abd Ar-Rahman I succeeds Marwan II as Caliph in al-Fustat (Egypt); the division of the Muslim world in two rival Caliphates is confirmed. The strategos (governor) of Byzacena (eastern central Ifrigia, *OTL Tunisia) and pretender to the Syracusan throne Marcianus Bulla crushes the Kharijite Arabs of Libya (paying lip service to Omayyad Egypt) and his local rival Facundus in the battle of Midnatha; the Arabs, however, are able to retake the island of Djirva (*OTL Djerba) and stage devastating pirate raids in the Mediterranean. Pepin the Short, while reducing Byzantine strongholds in Puglia, hurries back to northern Italy to confront the Austrasian Lombard invasion led by king Anscarius, who is decisively defeated and killed at Brescello on the Po river with help from the Venetic fleet of the Exarch of Adria, Galla (who falls in battle); Ravenna is thereafter reverted to the Exarchate, while Lombard Austrasia becomes another Frankish client, thus completing Frankish overlordship upon the Lombard states. The North African Berbers of the Kahinid Exarchate invade Visigothic Spain but are completely routed by King Reccared III at the Rio Grande (*OTL Guadalquivir) 757 The first official feudal oath in Europa is taken by Duke Tassilo of Bavaria, who swears loyalty to king Pepin the Short. Pope Stephen II then invites Pepin in Rome and crowns him as Holy Roman Catholic Emperor of the West, a precise choice against the Western Byzantine still locked in endless civil war. Constantine V takes Melitene (*OTL Malatya) and Theodosiopolis (*OTL Erzurum) from the Abbasids. The defeated Western Chalukyas, now vassals to the Rashtrakutas of SW India, move their capital from Badami/Vatapi to Pattadakal 758 An Abbasid fleet sacks Canton/Guangzhou, China, after a bewildering trip following the monsoon from the Persian Gulf to the Southern China Sea. Costantine V deports the Slavs from Thrace to Anatolia as soldier-peasants. Arabs and local Islamicized Berbers, led by Abu-l-Khattab Abd al-A'la ibn Assamh al-Ma'afiri, found a theocratic Kharijite state in the Djebel Nefusah, south of Tripoli (Libya). The Slavic Duchy of Pannonia is established between the Danube and Drava rivers after a successful Franco-Lombard expedition against the Avars led by emperor Pepin; a reduced Avar Khaganate is confined east of the Danube 758-759 A new Eastern Byzantine offensive in southern Italy conquers Lucania/Basilicata and Calabria; Duke Stephen II of Naples is able to hold his own in Campania 759 Emperor Pepin Magnus (the Great) ousts the Visigoths from Septimania (the region around Narbonne), then tames the rebellious northern Basques, reaching the Pyrenees. Costantine V defeats the Bulgarians at Markellai (Thrace) 760 The T’ang Chinese, who are suffering most grave internal disturbances, are completely ousted from Eastern Turkestan ca. 760 Tat-Ugek’s White Onoguro-Bulgars, vassals to Khazaria, migrate from their lands in the Don river region onto the middle Volga, where they establish a strong khanate under only nominal Khazar suzerainty; their arrival finally separates the Finnic peoples from the Ugric ones; the latter, the Magyars, dwelling across the Uralic range, clash and intermingle with the Onoguro-Bulgars starting a migration towards the Ukraine.
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