727-43 Attacks by Lombard King Liutprand on Byzantine territories in Italy
732 Defeat of Arab expeditionary force by Frankish leader Charles Martel near Poitiers
735 Death of the Venerable Bede
740 Major victory of Byzantines over Arabs at Akroinon
750 Overthrow of Ummayad caliphate by Abbasid dynasty
751 Pippin III deposes last Merovingian king and becomes first Carolingian king of the Franks; fall of Ravenna to Lombard King Aistulf
754 Martyrdom of St Boniface in Frisia; meeting of Pope Stephen II and Frankish King Pippin III resulting in alliance
754-75 Period of hard-line iconoclasm under Emperor Constantine V
756 Establishment of independent emirate in Spain by Ummayad prince 'Abd al-Rahmān
c. 760 Composition of forged 'Donation of Constantine' purporting to record massive grant of lands and rights to the papacy
762 Foundation of Baghdad as capital of Abbasid caliphate
c. 768 Final Frankish conquest of Aquitaine
772 First of Charlemagne's campaigns against the Saxons
774 Take-over of Lombard kingdom by Frankish King Charlemagne
778 Defeat of Charlemagne's army by the Basques at Roncevaux
783 Beginning of Byzantine reconquest of the Peloponnese
787 Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea; temporary end of iconoclasm
793 Lindisfarne sacked by Vikings
799 Establishment of scholarly centre at monastery of Studion in Constantinople by Abbot Theodore
800 Coronation of Charlemagne as emperor in Rome
800-909 Rule of Aghlabids as independent dynasty in North Africa
801 Beginning of Frankish 'Spanish March' in north-east Spain
811 Defeat of Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus I by Bulgars
812 Byzantine recognition of imperial title of Charlemagne
c. 813-c. 915 Period of serious Arab naval raids on shores of

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