917
year
Year 917 (CMXVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
August 20 – Battle of Achelous: A Byzantine expeditionary force (62,000 men) under General Leo Phokas (the Elder) is routed by the Bulgarians at the Achelous River near the fortress of Anchialos (modern Pomorie) on the Black Sea coast. Phokas flees to Mesembria (modern Nesebar) and escapes by boarding a ship. Tsar Simeon I (the Great) becomes de facto ruler of the whole Balkan Peninsula, except the well-protected Byzantine capital of Constantinople and the Peloponnese.
Fall – Battle of Katasyrtai: The Bulgarian army under Simeon I marches southwards to Constantinople. Leo Phokas, who survived at Anchelous, gathers the last Byzantine troops to intercept the Bulgarians before they reach the capital. The two armies meet near the village of Katasyrtai, just outside Constantinople. After a surprise night attack, the Byzantines are completely routed from the battlefield.
Europe
Bulgarian–Serbian War: Simeon I sends a Bulgarian expeditionary force under Theodore Sigritsa and Marmais to Serbia. The two persuade Petar Gojniković, a Serbian prince who formed an anti-Bulgarian coalition, to meet for a peace agreement.
“917” enters the record as year. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what year can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“917” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, year provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24802. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “917” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.