Byzantium’s Winter Sack of Aleppo

Attacking in the dead of winter was the ultimate cheat code that crushed a medieval dynasty.

Back in December 962, the Byzantine general Nikephoros Phokas decided he was done

waiting for warm weather to settle a score. He marched his army through freezing

snow straight to Aleppo, the jewel of the Arab world. The ruler,

Sayf al-Dawla, was completely caught off guard because nobody campaigned in winter.

It was a massacre. The Byzantines smashed the walls, stripped the golden roof off the palace,

and looted everything, even stealing a legendary boar tusk from Greek mythology. They turned a thriving

metropolis into a ghost town in days. Aleppo fell because they got comfortable,