The earliest extant recorded mention of Balhae comes from the Old Book of Tang, which was compiled between 941 to 945.

Southern Manchuria and northern Korea were previously the territory of Goguryeo, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea.

Goguryeo had fallen to the allied forces of Silla and the Tang Dynasty in 668.

The Tang had annexed much of western Manchuria, while Silla has unified the Korean peninsula south of the Taedong River and become Unified Silla.

In the confusion of uprising by the Khitan against the Tang, Dae Jung-sang, a former Goguryeo official, who is a leader of remnants people of Goguryeo, allies with Geolsa Biu, a leader of Mohe, and rises against the Tang in 698.

After Dae Jung-sang’s death, his son Dae Jo-yeong, a former Goguryeo general, succeeded his father.

Geolsa Biu dies in battle against the Tang army led by the general Li Kaigu.

Dae Jo-yeong manages to escape outside of the Tang controlled territory with the remaining Goguryeo and Mohe soldiers.

He defeats the pursuing army sent by Wu Zetian at the Battle of Tianmenling, which enables him to establish the state of Balhae in the former region of Yilou.

The Arabs have by 698 taken most of North Africa from the Empire.

The area is divided into three provinces: Egypt with its governor at al-Fustat, Ifriqiya with its governor at Kairouan, and the Maghreb (modern Morocco) with its governor at Tangiers.

The constant minor warfare between Damascus and the Constatinople, endemic since the peace of 679, breaks out into full scale war in spring 698, when the Muslim commander Hasan ibn al-Nu'man and a force of forty thousand men crushes Roman Carthage.

Many of its defenders are Visigoths sent to defend the Exarchate by their king, who also fears Muslim expansion.

Many Visigoths fight to the death; in the ensuing battle Roman Carthage is again reduced to rubble, as it had been centuries earlier by the Romans.

The loss of the mainland African Exarchate is an enormous blow to the Empire in the Western Mediterranean because both Carthage and Egypt have been Constantinople's main sources of manpower and grain.

It is also an enormous blow because it permanently ends the Roman presence in Africa.

The Tufan threat ceases in 699.

The Tufan king Tridu Songtsen, unhappy that Lun Qinling is monopolizing power, takes an opportunity when Lun Qinling is away from the capital Lhasa to slaughter Lun Qinling's associates.

He then defeats Lun Qinling in battle, and Lun Qinling commits suicide.

Lun Zanpo and Lun Qinling's son Lun Gongren surrender to Zhou.

After this, Tufan will experience internal turmoil for several years, and there will be peace for Zhou on the Tufan border.

Also in 699, Wu Zetian, realizing that she is growing old, fears that after her death, Li Xian and the Wu clan princes will not be able to have peace with each other, and she compels him, Li Dan, Princess Taiping, Princess Taiping's second husband Wu Youji (a nephew of hers) the Prince of Ding, and other Wu clan princes to swear an oath to each other.

Construction on the site of Fujiwara-kyo had begun as early as 682, near the end of the reign of Emperor Temmu, as revealed by ongoing excavations from 2006.

With a brief halt upon Emperor Temmu's death, construction had resumed under Empress Jitō, who officially moved Japan's capital from Asuka to Fujiwara-kyo in 694.

Fujiwara is Japan's first capital built in a grid pattern on the Chinese model; recent investigation has revealed that the city covered an area of roughly five kilometers, much larger than previously thought.

The palace occupies a plot measuring about one square kilometer, and is surrounded by walls roughly five meters high.

Each of the four walls has three gates; Suzakumon, the main gate, stands at the center of the south wall.

The Daigokuden and other palace buildings are the first palace structures in Japan to have a tile roof in the Chinese style.

The area had previously been the domain of the Nakatomi clan, who oversee the observation of Shintō rituals and ceremonies on behalf of the Imperial court.

Heraclius, appointed by his brother Tiberios III as patrikios and commander-in-chief (monostrategos) of the Anatolian themes, crosses with his army the mountain passes of the Taurus Mountains into Cilicia in autumn 698, and thence heads to northern Syrian.

After defeating an Arab army from Antioch, …

…Heraclius raids as far as Samosata before returning safely to the Empire in the spring of 699.

This success only serves to provoke a massive Arab response: over the next few years, the Caliphate's generals Muhammad ibn Marwan and Abdallah ibn Abd al-Malik will launch a series of campaigns that will conquer what remains of Roman Armenia, without Heraclius being able to respond effectively.

Umayyad troops invade Armenia in 699 and secure the submission of Smbat VI Bagratuni.

The Lombards take the whole of northern Italy following the departure of the imperial presence in the western Mediterranean.

Papal resistance has, by the end of the seventh century, induced the Lombards to consolidate their power in northern and central Italy, where they achieve a high degree of political unification.

A Roman ford across the River Avon, about ninety miles (one hundred and forty-five kilometers) northwest of London, is the nucleus of the Anglo-Saxon village of Stratford, first mentioned in 699.

Ine of Wessex pushes the Dumnonii, or southern Welsh (as the Britons become known) further into Cornwall.