This is, perhaps, one of the most significant statements for the strategic aims of the Byzantine governments in the tenth century, written in the years 948–52 by Emperor Constantine VII in his monumental work regarding the administration of the Byzantine Empire, intended for his son and heir to the throne, Romanus. It does not simply highlight the strategic importance of Armenia to the eastern frontiers of the empire, something which becomes more apparent to the reader of the De Administrando Imperio if they compare the length of the so-called ‘Caucasian chapters’ to the rest of the work, but it also underlines the strategic importance of the fortress-towns around Lake Van and the Diyar-Bakr as ‘buffer zones’ between Armenia and the caliphate – the towns of Khliat, Arzes, Perkri, Manzikert, Mayyafariqin and Amida. In order to understand the strategic role of these towns to imperial policy in the East in the first half of the tenth century, and the imperial expansion into northern Mesopotamia, we should first examine Byzantine foreign policy from the wars of Basil I against the Paulicians to the imperial armies sent against the cities of Armenia and the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia) by Romanus I Lecapenus.

This chapter examines the political reasons behind the empire's involvement in Armenia and northern Mesopotamia in the first half of the tenth century, the wars with the Muslims, its delicate diplomatic negotiations with the Armenian princes, and the emergence of a new enemy in the East. It does not claim to break new ground in the study of the Byzantine Empire's foreign policy and diplomacy in Armenia in the tenth century; Jonathan Shepard has produced two magnificent papers on the Byzantine notion of frontiers and imperial expansionism and on the empire's foreign policy in the East, focusing on Armenia.