Dai Viet (or Annam) has grown weak under a series of ineffectual rulers during intermittent hostilities with China.

Khmer monarch Suryavarman II, seeing opportunity for expansion at the Viets’ expense, coerces the Chams into aiding him against the Vietnamese.

In 1128, he leads a combined Khmer-Cham force of about twenty thousand north along the “old ambassador route” from Savannakhet (in the region of present south-central Laos) to Nghe An (in the region of present northern Vietnam), but the Vietnamese rout the invasion.

In the fall, Suryavarman dispatches over seven hundred ships to ravage Dai Viet’s coastal regions while continuing to skirmish with ground troops.

The Jurchen had followed their conquest of southern Manchuria by seizing Liao territory in northern Shanxi (Shansi) and Zhili (Chihli) in China, then erected a capital at Huining Fu and established the Jin (“golden”) dynasty.

During the early years of building up their empire, Jurchen rulers have often moved people from elsewhere in China to their capital, Shangjing.

The first Jin emperor, Wanyan Aguda (r. 1115-1123) resettled captives to the Shangjing area during his war against the Liao Empire.

Aguda's successor, Wanyan Wuqimai (r. 1123-1134) has continued the policy, resulting in numerous wealthy people, skilled craftsmen from Yanjing (Beijing) and the former Northern Song capital Bianjing (Kaifeng) being relocated to Shangjing.

Historical accounts report that, after the fall of Bianjing in 1127, the Jurchen generals brought to Shangjing (and elsewhere in North China) several thousand people, including: "about 470 imperial clansmen; erudites and students of the imperial academy; eunuchs; medical doctors; artisans; prostitutes; imperial gardeners; artisans of Imperial Constructions; actors and actresses; astronomers; musicians".

A variety of valuable goods captured in Bianjing is brought to the Jin capital as well.

Palaces were not much more than tents in Aguda's days, but in 1123 Jurchen had built their first ancestral temples and tombs (where the captured Song emperors Huizong and Qizong venerate the Jin ancestors in 1128), and in 1124 the new emperor Wuqimai had ordered a Chinese architect, Lu Yanlun, to build a new city on uniform plan.

The city plan of Shangjing emulates major Chinese cities, in particular Bianjing (Kaifeng), although the Jin capital is much smaller than its Northern Song prototype.

The Liao emperor, eight years after the establishment of the Jurchen Jin Dynasty, had fled in 1123 to Western Xia, whose Emperor Chongzong had submitted to the Jin demand of the emperor’s person.

Western Xia becomes a vassal state of Jin.

After the Jin Dynasty’s destruction of the Northern Song Dynasty in 1127, Western Xia attacks and takes several thousand square miles of land from the former territory of the Northern Song.

The marriage of John Komnenos to the Hungarian princess Piroska has involved him in the dynastic struggles of the Kingdom of Hungary.

In giving asylum to Álmos, a blinded claimant to the Hungarian throne, John had aroused the suspicion of the Hungarians, who, led by Stephen II, had invaded the Empire’s Balkan provinces in 1127, with hostilities lasting until 1129 (however, an alternative chronology has been suggested with the Hungarian attack and Greek retaliation taking place in 1125 with a renewal of hostilities in 1126).

The Hungarians had attacked Belgrade, Niš, and Sofia; John, who was near Philippopolis in Thrace, counterattacked, supported by a naval flotilla operating on the River Danube.

After a challenging campaign, the details of which are obscure, the emperor manages to defeat the Hungarians and their Serbian allies at the fortress of Haram or Chramon, which is the modern Nova Palanka; many Hungarian troops are killed when a bridge they are crossing collapses as they are fleeing from an attack by imperial forces.

John then launches a punitive raid against the Serbs, who had aligned themselves with Hungary, many of whom are rounded up and transported to Nicomedia in Asia Minor to serve as military colonists.

This wis done partly to cow the Serbs into submission (Serbia was, at least nominally, an imperial protectorate, and partly to strengthen Constantinople’s frontier in the east against the Turks.

The Serbs are forced to acknowledge imperial suzerainty once again.

The Serbian campaign may have taken place between two distinct phases in the war against Hungary.

The Hungarians, following this campaign, renew hostilities with Constantinople by attacking Braničevo, which is immediately rebuilt by John.

Further imperial military successes follow (Choniates mentions several engagements), resulting in a restoration of peace.

The empire is confirmed in its control of Braničevo, …

…Belgrade and …

…Zemun; …

…Constantinople also recovers the region of Sirmium (called Frangochorion in Choniates), which had been Hungarian since the 1060s.

The death in 1127 of the Hungarian pretender Álmos had removed the major source of friction.

Bohemond’s rule will be marked from 1128 by conflicts with Joscelin I of Edessa and skirmishes in the northern border.

Both Bohemond and Joscelin attack Aleppo individually, but refuse to cooperate in a larger siege against the city.

Roger of Salerno had given away territory to Joscelin, but Bohemond does not consider these donations legitimate as they had been made without his authority, even though he had been a minor at the time.

The dispute comes to open conflict between Antioch and Edessa, with Joscelin allying with the Muslims against Bohemond.

The Latin Patriarch of Antioch places an interdict over the County of Edessa.

Bohemond’s cousin Roger II invades and conquers Taranto in 1128, claiming it as the heir of William II of Apulia.

Bohemond, being away, can do nothing to prevent this.

This year, Baldwin II marches north to mediate in the dispute, and Joscelin abandons his claims.

Meanwhile, the atabeg Zengi consolidates his power over Aleppo and Mosul and the crusaders will never again have a chance to impose their authority over Aleppo.

Baldwin plans to attack Aleppo as well, but Antioch, which had passed to Bohemond II when he came of age in 1126, had begun to fight with Edessa and the plan fell through.

Aleppo and Mosul are united under the much stronger ruler Zengi in 1128, and Crusader control of northern Syria begins to dwindle.