The invading Liao forces, who had not brought adequate supplies for their invasion, had begun looting the newly conquered territory and imposed high taxes on the ethnic Chinese population in the formerly Jin lands.

This had sparked a series of rebellions that culminate in 947 with the establishment of the Later Han Dynasty by the former Jin governor Liu Zhiyuan.

After occupying Kaifeng for only three months, Emperor Taizong and the Liao are forced to retreat north.

During the retreat, …

…Emperor Taizong dies of a sudden illness, just south of modern-day Shijiazhuang, Hebei.

Romanos dies in June 948, and is buried, like the other members of his family, in the church of Myrelaion.

Constantine VII, having lived long under constant threat of deposition—or worse—by the Lekapenoi family, is extremely resentful of them.

In his De Administrando Imperio, a manual written for his son and successor, Romanus II, he minces no words about his late father-in-law: "the lord Romanus the Emperor was an idiot and an illiterate man, neither bred in the high imperial manner, nor following Roman custom from the beginning, nor of imperial or noble descent, and therefore the more rude and authoritarian in doing most things ... for his beliefs were uncouth, obstinate, ignorant of what is good, and unwilling to adhere to what is right and proper.” (Jonathan Shepard (ed.). The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, p. 39.)

Constantine VII orders the immediate restitution of all peasant lands, without compensation, in 947; by the end of his reign, the condition of the landed peasantry, which forms the foundation of the whole economic and military strength of the Empire, will be better off than it had been for a century.

Sayf takes Damascus in 947 after two unsuccessful attempts.

He now marches his army toward Egypt.

The Fatimids in 947 finally defeat Abu Yazid’s rebels in the Kiyana Mountains near what will later become Qalaat Beni Hammad.

The Sanhaja Berbers had spread out, after the arrival of Islam, to the borders of the historic Sudan as far as the Senegal River and the Niger.

From the ninth century, Sanhaja tribes were established in the Middle Atlas range, in the Rif Mountains and on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.

A part of the Sanhaja, such as the Kutama, settled in central/eastern Algeria and northern Niger.

They have played an important part in the rise of the Fatimids.

Ziri ibn Manad is a clan leader of the Berber Sanhaja tribe who, as an ally of the Fatimids, defeats the rebellion of Abu Yazid (943–947).

His reward is the governorship of the western provinces, an area that roughly corresponds with modern Algeria north of the Sahara.

Ziri has the gubernatorial residence of Ashir built southeast of the future site of Algiers, in which endeavor he is supported by the Fatimids with craftsmen and architects.

Århus, a seaport in eastern Jutland, Denmark, in 948 becomes a bishopric.

Otto I establishes the Bishopric of Brandenburg in 948.

A missionary diocese and a suffragan to the Archbishopric of Mainz, it includes the territory between the Elbe on the west, the Oder on the east, and the Schwarze Elster on the south, and taking in the Uckermark to the north.

Its seat is Brandenburg upon Havel.

The Hamdanids, after scoring initial victories against the invaders, are occupied with blocking incursions by imperial forces in the north, and are thus compelled to cede central and southern Syria to the Ikhshidites in 948.

A peace treaty is negotiated between Sayf ad-Dawlah and the Ikhshidids.

Hereafter Sayf's, most important concern will be with the Eastern Roman Empire.