John I Tzimiskes was the senior Byzantine emperor from 969 to 976. An intuitive and successful general who married into the influential Skleros family, he strengthened and expanded the Byzantine Empir
Detail of the Gunthertuch, a Byzantine silk tapestry depicting John Tzimiskes being greeted by the Blues and Greens at a triumph
Tentative reproduction of the lost portrait of John I. He is depicted beardless, although literary sources describe him as having a reddish/blonde facial hair.
The coronation of John Tzimiskes, from the Madrid Skylitzes
The Byzantine army under John I lays siege to the Bulgarian capital at Preslav.
Nikephoros II Phokas, Latinized Nicephorus II Phocas, was Byzantine emperor from 963 to 969. His career, not uniformly successful in matters of statecraft or of war, nonetheless greatly contributed to
John I Tzimiskes
…born in 924 or 925, as Leo the Deacon states that he died aged 51, to an unnamed member of the Kourkouas family and the sister of the future Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas. Both the Kourkouai and the Phokadai were distinguished Cappadocian families, and among the most prominent of the emerging military aristocracy of Asia…
Nikephoros in a 15th-century manuscript, Biblioteca Marciana, Venice. The portrait is almost certainly imaginary.
Icon of St. Nikephoros by Theophanes the Cretan
Nikephoros's entry into Constantinople as Emperor through the Golden Gate in summer 963
Tarsus surrenders to Nikephoros Phokas (seated).