The Eastern Roman Empire’s victories against Islam reached such heights that a military treatise on fighting Muslims, long believed to have been written by Nikephoros himself (though more likely written jointly with or by his brother, General Leo Phokas), opens with an apologia: [The treatise might not offer] much application in the eastern regions at the present time. For Christ, our true God, has greatly cut back the power and strength of the offspring of Ishmael and has repelled their onslaughts. Nonetheless, in order that time, which leads us to forget what we once knew, might not
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