On Saturday 3 October 610, ships carrying the younger Heraclius appeared off Constantinople near the Circular Fort, outside the walls by the Hebdomon.
That evening Emperor Phocas rode from the suburban palace at the Hebdomon into the imperial palace inside the city.
Heraclius stayed outside, in view of the capital, while divisions within Constantinople undermined organised resistance to his fleet.
Two more days
The overthrow did not happen on 3 October. Bonosus, Phocas’s commander, was killed by an excubitor on 4 October.
Phocas was seized and killed, and Heraclius was crowned by Patriarch Sergius, on Monday 5 October.
The Chronicon Paschale names Photius and Probus — not Heraclius — as the men who seized Phocas in the palace.
What the sources will not settle
They disagree about who killed Phocas. The Chronicon Paschale leaves the executioner unnamed, while John of Nikiu says Phocas was killed in Heraclius’s presence.
Heraclius the Elder, exarch of Africa, supported and led the revolt but remained in Africa; he did not accompany his son into Constantinople.
Nor did the state acquire a new name that day: calling the empire after 610 “Byzantine” is a modern periodisation convention.
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What the sources leave uncertain
The contemporary Chronicon Paschale securely dates the fleet’s appearance to Saturday, 3 October. Its manuscript gives the seizure of Phocas as the dawn of 6 October, but also calls the day Monday; editors correct this to Monday, 5 October.
Sources disagree about who killed Phocas and the details of his mutilation. The Chronicon Paschale does not identify Heraclius as the executioner; John of Nikiu says Phocas was killed in Heraclius’s presence.
Accounts differ over how much credit belonged to Priscus, the Excubitors and the Green circus faction; the surviving narratives may reflect later political self-presentation.
Tibetan tradition places Songtsen Gampo’s accession after the death — reportedly by poisoning — of his father, Namri Songtsen. The year cannot be securely fixed, and 618 is traditional rather than documented.
Matthew Kapstein gives the reign approximately as 617 to 649/650, while the Treasury of Lives places the accession in 629: an eleven-year difference.
The Old Tibetan Annals’ continuous yearly record begins only near the end of Songtsen Gampo’s life, and the Old Tibetan Chronicle is a later composite with acknowledged chronological problems.
A revolt at the accession
Groups formerly subject to both his father and his mother — including the Sumpa of eastern Tibet — opposed the new ruler and rebelled.
The rebellion was put down, which allowed Songtsen Gampo to retain the tsenpo’s authority over the emerging Central Tibetan state.
Namri Songtsen had already subordinated neighbouring polities, so this was the survival of an inherited position rather than the creation of a state from nothing.
What did not happen that year
The immediate change was dynastic succession and the survival of the new regime — not the simultaneous creation of Lhasa, the Tibetan script, Buddhism and an empire-wide legal code.
Princess Wencheng, his Chinese consort, arrived in Tibet in 641, decades after the traditionally dated accession.
“First emperor” is retrospective shorthand: his title was tsenpo, which an Old Tibetan–Chinese glossary treated as comparable to “Son of Heaven”.
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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~0618.
What the sources leave uncertain
The year 618 is traditional, not securely documented. Matthew Kapstein gives the reign approximately as 617–649/650, while the Treasury of Lives places the accession in 629.
The Old Tibetan Annals’ continuous yearly record begins only near the end of Songtsen Gampo’s life, while the Old Tibetan Chronicle is a later composite using earlier material and has acknowledged chronological problems.
The claim that he was thirteen derives from later royal tradition. It depends on accepting both an uncertain birth year and an uncertain accession year.
“Thirty-third king of the Yarlung dynasty” is traditional numbering. Helga Uebach notes that “Yarlung dynasty” is a modern convenience and no contemporary Tibetan dynastic name is known.
The Night Journey is conventionally dated to about 620, but no contemporary source supplies a Gregorian year. Muslim biographical traditions generally place it in Muhammad’s Meccan period before the 622 Hijra, while disagreeing over its year, month and day.
Qur’an 17:1 says that God carried “His servant” by night from the Sacred Place of Worship to the Farthest Place of Worship to show him divine signs. Islamic tradition identifies the servant as Muhammad and the destinations as Mecca and Jerusalem; the verse names none of them.
The commonly commemorated 27 Rajab is not established by an early, securely authenticated report.
Seven heavens, in the hadith
In the majority developed tradition Muhammad travelled with Gabriel on Buraq to Jerusalem and then ascended through the heavens, though early interpretations differed over whether the Jerusalem journey and the heavenly ascent were one event.
Sahih al-Bukhari’s account places Adam in the first heaven, Jesus and John in the second, Joseph in the third, Idris in the fourth, Aaron in the fifth, Moses in the sixth and Abraham in the seventh.
Buraq is described there as a white animal larger than a donkey and smaller than a mule.
Fifty prayers down to five
In that hadith Muhammad was shown the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary and the Frequented House, after which fifty daily prayers were imposed and then reduced to five following Moses’s repeated advice — each retaining the reward associated with the original fifty.
The shorthand “Muhammad met Allah” suppresses a major theological distinction: Aisha rejected the claim that Muhammad visually saw God.
Early traditions and later scholars also disagree over whether the experience was bodily, spiritual or visionary.
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Traditional date. Conventionally dated here; the research places it at ~0620.
What the sources leave uncertain
No contemporary source supplies a Gregorian year. Muslim biographical traditions generally place the event in Muhammad’s Meccan period before the 622 Hijra, but disagree over its year, month and day.
The commonly commemorated 27 Rajab is not established by an early, securely authenticated report.
Early traditions and later scholars disagree over whether the experience was bodily, spiritual or visionary and whether Isra and Miʿraj were originally one journey or separate narratives.
Qur’an 17:1 does not name Muhammad, Mecca or Jerusalem explicitly, although those identifications became standard in Islamic exegesis.
The contemporary Chronicon Paschale supplies the framework: Heraclius left Constantinople for the east on 25 March 624 with Empress Martina and his children, then celebrated Easter near Nicomedia on 15 April.
Theophanes dates the emperor’s taking the offensive against Persia to 20 April, after Heraclius had offered peace and threatened invasion if Khosrow II refused.
Modern editors read that 20 April “invasion” as the start of the march for Persia — not a documented border crossing or battle that day.
A date rescued from the wrong year
Theophanes places the campaign in an erroneous chronological entry. Modern scholars keep his day and month but move the episode into 624, using the Chronicon Paschale and the securely dated end of the war.
The Greek expression translated “invaded Persia” may mean only that Heraclius started his march for Persia.
The chronology is unusually difficult in any case: Theophanes wrote about two centuries later, assigned later events a year too early, and combined material from lost sources.
Khosrow’s first move was not a battle
In Theophanes’s narrative, news of the offensive caused Khosrow to recall Shahrbaraz from Roman territory and to send Shahin with additional forces against Heraclius.
The immediate route led through eastern Anatolia and Armenia toward Sasanian-controlled Caucasian territory; attacks on Dvin, Nakhchivan and Ganzak came later in the campaign.
“Sassanid Empire (now Iran)” also misleads: the empire included Iran, Iraq, Armenia and other territories.
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Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.
What the sources leave uncertain
The exact date is reconstructed. Theophanes gives 20 April but places the campaign in an erroneous chronological entry; modern scholars move it to 624 using the contemporary Chronicon Paschale and the securely dated end of the war.
The Chronicon Paschale dates departure from Constantinople to 25 March and Easter near Nicomedia to 15 April but does not itself name 20 April as an invasion date.
The Greek expression translated “invaded Persia” may mean that Heraclius started his march for Persia. It does not prove he physically crossed into the borders of modern Iran on 20 April.
Heraclius’s campaign chronology is unusually difficult because Theophanes wrote about two centuries later, assigned later events a year too early and combined material from lost sources.
The listing places the final prohibition in 626. In the episode preserved in Sahih al-Bukhari, Muhammad had a herald announce in Medina that khamr — translated as intoxicants or strong drink — had been prohibited.
Anas ibn Malik, who was serving a date-based drink in Abu Talha’s house, was ordered by Abu Talha to take it outside and spill it. Anas said it flowed through Medina’s streets.
A parallel report in Sahih Muslim says Muhammad forbade both drinking and selling the wine, after which people brought their stocks into the streets and poured them away.
The year is not secure
No consulted early source supplies a Gregorian year, so 626 cannot be treated as established.
Nöldeke’s critical chronology associates the general prohibition with the Banu Nadir campaign in Rabi I 4 AH, approximately 625, while a modern scholarly study argues instead for 8 AH, before the conquest of Mecca.
The hadith collections preserving the street-pouring episode were compiled generations after Muhammad; they are primary sources for the Sunni tradition, not contemporary eyewitness documents.
Khamr is not “alcohol”
Qur’an 5:90 instructed believers to avoid khamr, along with gambling, sacrificial stones and divining arrows.
The Qur’anic text presents a divine injunction and the hadith presents Muhammad announcing and enforcing it, so calling the episode solely his personal decree blurs the distinction.
Khamr is not perfectly equivalent to the modern category “alcohol” either: jurists later debated which fermented drinks the prohibition covered.
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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~0625.
What the sources leave uncertain
No consulted early source supplies a Gregorian year for the announcement, so 626 cannot be treated as secure.
Nöldeke’s critical chronology associates the general prohibition with the Banu Nadir campaign in Rabi I 4 AH, approximately 625. A modern scholarly study instead argues for 8 AH, before the conquest of Mecca, illustrating substantial chronological disagreement.
The hadith collections preserving the street-pouring episode were compiled generations after Muhammad. They are primary sources for the Sunni tradition but not contemporary eyewitness documents.
Khamr is not perfectly equivalent to the modern chemical and legal category “alcohol”; jurists later debated which fermented drinks the prohibition covered.
At dawn in Chang’an on 2 July 626, Li Shimin and his supporters occupied Xuanwu Gate, the northern entrance to the Tang palace complex, and waited for Crown Prince Li Jiancheng and Prince Li Yuanji.
When the brothers detected the ambush and turned back, Li Yuanji reportedly tried unsuccessfully to draw his bow; Li Shimin shot and killed Li Jiancheng.
Yuchi Jingde pursued Li Yuanji with seventy horsemen. After Li Shimin fell from his horse and Li Yuanji tried to strangle him with his bow, Yuchi intervened and killed Li Yuanji.
Heads at the gate
Fighting continued at the gate until the severed heads of Li Jiancheng and Li Yuanji were displayed, at which their remaining troops dispersed.
Yuchi Jingde then entered the palace armed and informed Emperor Gaozu of the killings — a separate episode in the surviving narrative from the display of the heads.
Gaozu ordered the remaining forces to obey Li Shimin, giving the coup immediate official effect.
Not a farewell, and not yet a throne
Li Shimin did not travel to Chang’an that morning. He already kept a residence in the capital’s Forbidden Park, and the farewell to Li Yuanji was a planned future ceremony rather than a journey he completed.
The traditional narrative says he learned beforehand that his brothers intended to kill him at that ceremony, accused them before Gaozu, and induced the emperor to summon them.
He became crown prince within three days; his accession as emperor followed on 3 September 626.
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What the sources leave uncertain
The date is well established by the Chinese record—Wude 9, sixth month, fourth day—and its conversion to 2 July 626.
Much of the detailed narrative comes through official Tang histories shaped under Li Shimin’s rule. Allegations that his brothers poisoned him or had finalized a murder plot remain disputed.
Modern scholarship questions whether the coup was simply a defensive response; it also reflected a collision among the separate political and military power bases of Gaozu, Li Jiancheng and Li Shimin.
On the standard scholarly reconstruction, Abu Sufyan’s Meccan and tribal confederates reached Medina on 8 Dhu al-Qa‘dah 5 AH — converted as 31 March 627 — and began an effective siege.
They found the open northern approach blocked by a trench that Muhammad’s followers had already dug, with lava fields protecting the oasis on its other sides. The fortification stopped them exploiting their cavalry advantage, turning the confrontation into a standoff.
Qur’an 33:9–11 remembers enemy forces coming against the believers from multiple directions, and describes the defenders as severely shaken.
The numbers, and the name
The Cambridge account gives the confederates 7,000 to 10,000 men, including about 600 cavalry, against roughly 3,000 Medinans with some twelve to twenty-four horses.
Across the whole siege, three Meccans and six Medinans are reported killed.
“Battle” can mislead: the trench produced a siege and standoff with limited crossings, not a single pitched engagement.
“27 days” is a composite
The consulted Cambridge narrative describes approximately a fortnight of siege. The frequently repeated twenty-seven days combines a claimed six-day digging period with a different twenty-night chronology.
The date itself is a scholarly conversion, and converting early Islamic dates is not wholly mechanical, because the calendar’s operation before the formal abolition of intercalation is debated.
The Banu Qurayza surrender was not part of 31 March: it followed the confederate withdrawal and a separate Muslim siege of their strongholds.
Researched 23 Aug 2026·5 sources·not yet auditedTraditional date
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Traditional date. This date is the conventional one, not one fixed by a contemporary record.
What the sources leave uncertain
The date 31 March 627 is a scholarly conversion of the traditional date 8 Dhu al-Qa‘dah 5 AH. Exact conversion of early Islamic dates is not wholly mechanical because the calendar’s operation before the formal abolition of intercalation is debated.
The consulted Cambridge narrative describes approximately two weeks of siege. The frequently repeated “27 days” combines a claimed six-day digging period with a different 20-night siege chronology and should not be presented as an uncontested duration.
Detailed narratives come primarily from sira and hadith works written generations later. The Qur’an is earlier but supplies few names, numbers or tactical details.
On 12 December 627, Heraclius’s Roman army met the Sasanian force commanded by Rhahzadh on ground near Nineveh, after manoeuvring to fight before Persian reinforcements could arrive.
Morning mist helped conceal the Roman deployment. Rhahzadh arranged his army in three formations and advanced against Heraclius.
The Great Zab crossing belongs to 1 December, eleven days earlier — not to the day of the battle.
A fight that lasted all day
The armies fought from morning until late in the day. Rhahzadh and several senior Persian officers were killed.
Heraclius was wounded on the lip, and his horse Dorkon was struck in the thigh by a spear.
Theophanes claims 28 Persian standards captured and Roman losses of 50 killed plus 10 wounded who later died — chronicler claims rather than independently verifiable counts.
Not a rout
The Persian formations were not destroyed or routed immediately. They remained near the battlefield into the night before withdrawing to defensive ground in nearby foothills.
That withdrawal left the route south toward the Sasanian metropolitan region open, and the expected reinforcements did not reach the remnants until 21 December.
Heraclius’s personal killing of Rhahzadh is a disputed literary tradition: Nikephoros gives a bodyguard a decisive role, while Theophanes describes Heraclius killing three Persians without identifying one of them as Rhahzadh.
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What the sources leave uncertain
The battle date and broad result are supported by both the Byzantine chronological tradition and modern scholarship.
The vivid personal-combat accounts were written nearly two centuries later and differ materially. Nikephoros says Rhahzadh challenged Heraclius, was first disabled by a bodyguard and then killed by the emperor; Theophanes instead describes Heraclius killing three Persians without identifying one as Rhahzadh.
Theophanes’s remarkably low Roman casualty figure and other precise battlefield totals are chronicler claims, not independently verifiable modern counts.
Modern scholarship describes a hard-fought Persian withdrawal, not the annihilation or immediate rout sometimes presented in popular accounts.
According to the early Islamic narrative, Muhammad left Medina in 628 with roughly 1,400 to 1,500 followers intending to perform the lesser pilgrimage, carrying about seventy marked sacrificial camels.
Quraysh barred their approach to Mecca, and the party camped at al-Hudaybiyya.
March 628 is the conventional conversion of Dhu al-Qa‘da 6 AH; no securely established Gregorian day survives, and the party’s size is a prominent traditional figure rather than an uncontested headcount.
“Son of Abdullah”
After negotiations, the Quraysh envoy Suhayl ibn Amr and Muhammad agreed that the Muslims would leave without entering Mecca, return for a three-day pilgrimage the next year, and observe a ten-year truce in which other tribes could ally with either side.
The traditional account says Ali wrote the agreement, and that at Suhayl’s insistence its wording identified Muhammad as “Muhammad son of Abdullah” rather than “the Messenger of God”.
It also required a Meccan fugitive arriving under a guardian’s authority to be returned. Suhayl’s son Abu Jandal arrived in fetters during the negotiations and was handed back.
Nobody moved
After the document was completed, Muhammad ordered his followers to sacrifice their animals and shave.
They initially remained motionless. After Umm Salama advised him to perform the rites himself first, they followed him and prepared to return to Medina.
The Muslims did not perform the umrah that year; access was deferred until the next.
Researched 23 Aug 2026·5 sources·not yet auditedTraditional date
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Traditional date. Conventionally dated here; the research places it at 0628-03.
What the sources leave uncertain
March 628 is the conventional conversion of Dhu al-Qa‘da 6 AH; no securely established Gregorian day is available.
The surviving narrative is preserved in later sira and hadith literature. Reports disagree about the party’s size—traditions range considerably beyond the commonly repeated 1,400—and about what weapons were carried.
The return clause’s scope requires care: later tradition distinguishes male fugitives from emigrating women, whom Quran 60:10 instructed the Muslims not to return.
A later Islamic narrative collected by Ibn Sa‘d says that, after al-Hudaybiyya in 628, Muhammad dispatched six messengers to rulers or courts associated with Abyssinia, Byzantium, Persia, Egypt, Ghassan and Yamama, summoning their recipients to Islam.
“World leaders” is anachronistic shorthand: the traditional recipients ranged from two emperors to regional rulers and Arabian chiefs, and Hawdha ibn Ali in Yamama was inside Arabia.
The principal narratives were written down generations later.
What the reported letters say
Sahih al-Bukhari preserves a reported letter to Heraclius that identifies the sender as Muhammad, invites him to embrace Islam and cites Qur’an 3:64 — a brief conversion summons, not a digest of doctrine.
Another Bukhari report says Abdullah ibn Hudhafa carried a letter through the governor of Bahrain to Khosrow II, who tore it up.
A report’s presence in a canonical hadith collection establishes its importance in Islamic tradition, but not Byzantine or Sasanian corroboration.
The package does not hold together
W. Montgomery Watt concluded that the packaged story cannot be accepted as it stands: he dated Dihya’s journey toward Bostra to summer 627, and argued that the Muqawqis mission also appears to predate al-Hudaybiyya.
Nadia Maria El-Cheikh treats the developed Heraclius narrative as Islamic image-building that helped legitimate Muhammad’s prophetic mission and the early Muslim state, rather than independent Byzantine confirmation of the audience and its response.
There is no secure evidence that all six missions occurred on one day, or even in one year.
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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~0628.
What the sources leave uncertain
There is no secure evidence that all six missions occurred on one day or even in one year.
The principal narratives were written down generations later. Bukhari preserves the reports as hadith, not contemporary imperial archives.
Scholars differ: some accept a historical core of diplomatic contact, while Watt rejected the coordinated conversion-summons narrative as it stands and reassigned some missions to dates before Hudaybiyya.
The physical objects sometimes exhibited as Muhammad’s original letters do not by themselves authenticate the traditional 628 dispatch narrative.
From Dastagird in January 628, Heraclius made a final offer to end the war before further destruction. Khosrow II rejected it, intensifying divisions within the Sasanian leadership.
Heraclius’s campaign had exposed Ctesiphon’s vulnerability while Khosrow’s main western army remained far away.
The conspirators — twenty-two senior officers by the final stage — first obtained assurances that Heraclius would negotiate with a replacement regime.
Four days on bread and water
On the night of 23–24 February, an elite and military conspiracy isolated Khosrow in Ctesiphon, released prisoners including Roman prisoners of war, and proclaimed his son Qobad Shiroe.
Qobad Shiroe was crowned as Kavadh II on 25 February. Khosrow was captured after trying to hide in a neighbouring garden, and was kept on bread and water while ministers recited the charges against him.
Kavadh ordered his execution on 28 February, and also killed his brothers or half-brothers, though their exact number and the sequence remain uncertain.
An armistice, not the peace
Khosrow’s death opened negotiations. News of the coup reached Heraclius on 3 April, his victory dispatch was read in Hagia Sophia on 15 May, and he returned to Constantinople for a triumph in June 628.
Recent scholarship distinguishes that 628 armistice and opening settlement from the final peace, which was completed after about two years of negotiations.
The True Cross was not demonstrably back in Heraclius’s hands at the 628 triumph: recent scholarship places its great restoration ceremony in Jerusalem on 21 March 630.
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Date corrected. The research places this at 0628-02-25.
What the sources leave uncertain
The coup and coronation dates are unusually well supported by the Chronicon Paschale tradition, but details such as the number and timing of Kavadh’s murdered brothers vary.
Recent reconstruction treats 628 as the beginning of a difficult two-year settlement. The final restoration of the prewar frontier was completed under later Sasanian rulers in 630.
The True Cross was not demonstrably back in Heraclius’s hands at his 628 Constantinople triumph. Recent scholarship places its great restoration ceremony in Jerusalem on 21 March 630.
A large financial indemnity is repeated in generic summaries but is not part of the securely reconstructed immediate 628 agreement.
The rebellions shared no single cause: one tribe might follow a new prophet, another profess Islam but withhold tax, another resist rule it had never accepted.
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After Muhammad’s death in 632 and the selection of Abu Bakr as caliph, opposition to Medina appeared across Arabia.
Some movements followed rival claimants to prophecy, others rejected taxation or Medinan political control, and some arose in places never previously under direct Medinan rule.
“Apostasy” reflects the terminology of later Muslim sources; modern historians stress that some opponents remained monotheists or Muslims while rejecting Medina’s taxes or authority.
Columns in every direction
Abu Bakr adopted the objective of extending the Medinan state’s authority throughout Arabia, and responded with military deployments and diplomacy together.
Khalid ibn al-Walid was dispatched with Muhajirun and Ansar toward Najd and the Banu Hanifa opposition in Yamama; Shurahbil ibn Hasana was sent toward the same broad theatre.
Other commanders were directed toward Bahrain, Oman, Mahra, Yemen, the Tihama coast and a rising near Medina — a distributed campaign rather than a single opening battle.
Negotiators as well as generals
Abu Bakr negotiated with tribal leaders at the same time, including a section of Banu Shayban, so submission, alliance and incorporation were pursued alongside battlefield defeat.
The year 632 is secure, but the sources preserve no reliable Gregorian launch day: a modern chronological study notes that the generals’ months and days are absent, and estimates roughly September for the broad dispatch.
The end is debated too — authoritative summaries place Arabia’s final reunification somewhere in 633–634, rather than on a secure day.
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What the sources leave uncertain
The year 632 for the start is secure, but the sources do not preserve a reliable Gregorian launch day. A modern chronological study notes that the generals’ detailed months and days are absent and estimates roughly September for the broad dispatch.
Most detailed narratives were written down long after the events, and reconstructions that assign nearly every skirmish an exact modern date create false precision.
“Apostasy” reflects the terminology of later Muslim sources. Modern historians stress that some opponents remained monotheists or Muslims but rejected Medina’s taxes or political control, while others had never submitted to Muhammad.
The terminal date is also debated; authoritative summaries place Arabia’s final reunification sometime in 633–634 rather than on a secure day in June 633.
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