Constantine Phokas ( gr, Κωνσταντῖνος Φωκᾶς; died 953/954) was a
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantin ...
aristocrat and general.
Life
Constantine was the youngest son of
Bardas Phokas the Elder
Bardas Phokas ( el, ) (c. 878 – c. 968) was a notable Byzantine general in the first half of the 10th century, and father of Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II Phokas and the ''kouropalates'' Leo Phokas the Younger.
Bardas was the scion of the Ph ...
, and brother of the general and later emperor
Nikephoros II Phokas
Nikephoros II Phokas (; – 11 December 969), Latinized Nicephorus II Phocas, was Byzantine emperor from 963 to 969. His career, not uniformly successful in matters of statecraft or of war, nonetheless included brilliant military exploits whi ...
and the general
Leo Phokas the Younger
Leo Phokas or Phocas ( el, Λέων Φωκᾶς, c. 915–920after 971) was a prominent Byzantine general who scored a number of successes in the eastern frontier in the mid-10th century alongside his older brother, the Emperor Nikephoros II Phoka ...
. When his father was appointed as
Domestic of the Schools
The office of the Domestic of the Schools ( gr, δομέστικος τῶν σχολῶν, domestikos tōn scholōn) was a senior military post of the Byzantine Empire, extant from the 8th century until at least the early 14th century. Originally ...
(commander-in-chief of the
Byzantine army) in 945, Constantine was appointed (military governor) of the
theme of
Seleucia, on the Empire's southeastern border with the Muslim world.
He participated in his father's campaigns against the Muslims, and was captured by the
Hamdanid
The Hamdanid dynasty ( ar, الحمدانيون, al-Ḥamdāniyyūn) was a Twelver Shia Arab dynasty of Northern Mesopotamia and Syria (890–1004). They descended from the ancient Banu Taghlib Christian tribe of Mesopotamia and Eastern ...
Emir of Aleppo
The rulers of Aleppo ruled as kings, emirs and sultans of the city and its surrounding region since the later half of the 3rd millennium BC, starting with the kings of Armi, followed by the Amorite dynasty of Yamhad. Muslim rule of the city en ...
,
Sayf al-Dawla
ʿAlī ibn ʾAbū l-Hayjāʾ ʿAbdallāh ibn Ḥamdān ibn al-Ḥārith al-Taghlibī ( ar, علي بن أبو الهيجاء عبد الله بن حمدان بن الحارث التغلبي, 22 June 916 – 9 February 967), more commonly known ...
, at the
Battle of Marash
The Battle of Marash ( tr, Maraş Muharebesi), also called the "Marash Affair", was a battle that took place in the early winter of 1920 between the French forces occupying the city of Maraş in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish National For ...
in 953. Constantine took part in Sayf al-Dawla's subsequent triumphal entry into Aleppo, but he soon fell ill and died (probably in early 954). Some Byzantine sources suggest that he was poisoned by Sayf al-Dawla after refusing to convert to Islam, while Arab sources claim that he was poisoned by Byzantine agents after Sayf al-Dawla refused a huge ransom offered by Bardas Phokas. Whatever the truth, Constantine's death seems to have been blamed on Sayf al-Dawla by the Byzantines, and many Arab captives, including some of the Hamdanid emir's relatives, were executed as a result. Some Byzantine and Arab sources claim that this resulted in the failure of a peace embassy sent by the Byzantines in June 954 under Paul Monomachos, but modern scholars discount this.
[Wortley (2010), p. 233]
References
Sources
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Phokas, Constantine
950s deaths
10th-century Byzantine military personnel
Byzantine generals
Byzantine governors
Constantine
Constantine most often refers to:
* Constantine the Great, Roman emperor from 306 to 337, also known as Constantine I
*Constantine, Algeria, a city in Algeria
Constantine may also refer to:
People
* Constantine (name), a masculine given nam ...
Byzantine people of the Arab–Byzantine wars
Byzantine prisoners of war
Year of birth unknown