The Chronicle of Theophanes is one of the most important surviving sources for the history of early medieval Byzantium. Compiled by the Byzantine monk Theophanes in the early ninth century, the chronicle covers the years 602–813 CE and remains indispensable for the study of Byzantium and its neighbours.
This period witnessed some of the most dramatic transformations in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages: the rise and expansion of the Arab Islamic empire, the collapse of the Sassanian Persian state, the Iconoclast controversy, Bulgar incursions, large-scale Slavic settlement in the Balkans, and the profound territorial contraction of the Byzantine Empire. Writing in the midst of these upheavals, Theophanes preserved a wealth of information that would shape later Byzantine historical writing and continue to inform modern scholarship.
Edited and translated by Harry Turtledove, this University of Pennsylvania Press edition provides English-speaking readers with direct access to a foundational historical text from one of the most consequential periods in Mediterranean history. Includes a bibliography (image 12).
