World Timeline

AD 522: Dhu Nuwas seizes the throne of the Himyarite Kingdom in Yemen. He attacks the Aksumite garrison at Zafar, capturing the city and burning the churches.
 
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AD 524: King Sigismund of Burgundy is executed at Orléans after an 8-year reign, and is succeeded by his brother Godomar. He rallies the Burgundian army and begins plundering Frankish territory.
 
AD 528: Emperor Xiaoming of Northern Wei is poisoned by order of his mother, the regent Empress Dowager Hu.
 
AD 531: Clotilde returns with the Frankish army and dies on the journey home. She is buried in Paris alongside her father Clovis I.
 
AD 533: In a letter, Emperor Justinian I declares the Bishop of Rome (currently John) to be "head of all Bishops, and the true and effective corrector of heretics."
 
AD 535: The death of Amalasuintha gives Byzantine Emperor Justinian I a pretext to invade Italy and begin the Gothic War.
 
AD 537: In Rome, famine brings the city to despair; Belisarius sends his secretary Procopius to Naples for more reinforcements and supplies. Vitiges arranges a three-month armistice for Gothic envoys to travel to Constantinople.
 
AD 540: King Khosrow I breaks the "Eternal Peace" treaty with the Byzantine Empire after eight years. Responding to an embassy from the Ostrogoths urging action against Emperor Justinian I's expanding power, he leads the Persian army up the River Euphrates. Extracting tributes from towns along the way, Khosrau I besieges and captures Antioch. He plunders the city extensively, transporting valuable artworks, including marble statues and mosaics, back to Persia.
 
AD 541: Bubonic plague appears suddenly in the Egyptian port of Pelusium, spreading to Alexandria and, the following year, to Constantinople. This is the beginning of a 200-year-long pandemic that will devastate Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
 
AD 543: Barsanuphius, a famous hermit close to Gaza, retreats fully from the world after the death of Seridus, abbot of the nearby monastery, and fellow hermit John the Prophet with whom he wrote over 850 letters to people seeking his advice and guidance. Aelianos follows Seridus as abbot of the monastery.
 
AD 551: Bumin Qaghan, chieftain of the Göktürks, founds the Turkic Khaganate. He unites the local Turkic tribes and throws off the yoke of Rouran domination.
 
AD 553: Gothic War: Frankish invasion — Two Frankish-Alemanni dukes, brothers Lothair and Buccelin, cross the Alps from Germany with a force of 75,000 men, mostly Frankish infantry. In the Po Valley, they win an easy victory over a much smaller Byzantine force at Parma, and are joined by remnants of the Gothic armies, bringing the total strength of the invaders to about 90,000 men. Narses, gathering his forces as quickly as possible, marches north to harass the Franks, but is not strong enough to engage them in battle. In Samnium (Southern Italy) the brothers divide their forces: Lothaire goes down the east coast, then returns to the north, to winter in the Po Valley. Buccelin follows the west coast into Calabria, where he spends the winter — his army being seriously wasted by attrition and disease.
 
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