De velitatione bellica

De velitatione bellica is the conventional Latin title for the Byzantine military treatise on skirmishing and guerrilla-type border warfare, composed circa 970. Its original Greek title is Περὶ Παραδρομῆς (Peri Paradromēs, "On Skirmishing").

In the mid-7th century, the Byzantine Empire had lost most of its lands in the East to the Muslim conquests. Following the repulsion of two Arab sieges of Constantinople, the imperial capital, the situation was stabilized, and the border between Byzantium and the Muslim Caliphate was established along the Taurus Mountains defining the eastern edge of Asia Minor. For the next several centuries, warfare would assume the pattern of larger or smaller raids and counter-raids across this barrier. For the Arabs, these raids (razzias) were carried out as part of their religious obligation against their major infidel enemy, and assumed an almost ritualized character. The Byzantines remained generally on the defensive, organizing Asia Minor into combined civil-military provinces called themata. On the mountainous border, smaller districts, the kleisourai (singular: kleisoura meaning "defile, enclosure"), were established.

From the late 9th century, however, the fracturing of the Muslim world and the increasing strength of Byzantium caused a shift in the balance of power, as Byzantine campaigns penetrated into Cilicia, Armenia, northern Mesopotamia, and northern Syria. The last major enemy to face the Byzantines in the region was the Hamdanid Emir of Aleppo, Sayf ad-Dawla. For ten years, from 944 to 955, he conducted raids into Asia Minor, inflicting several heavy defeats on the Byzantines in the process. In the next decade, however, the situation was reversed, as the brothers Leo and Nikephoros Phokas (soon to be proclaimed emperor Nikephoros II) inflicted several defeats on his forces and proceeded to invade and occupy northern Syria in the late 960s.

...
Wikipedia