Sayf al-Dawla
He participated in his father's campaigns against the Muslims, and was captured by the Hamdanid Emir of Aleppo, Sayf al-Dawla, at the Battle of Marash in 953. Constantine took part in Sayf al-Dawla's subsequent triumphal entry into Aleppo, but he soon fell ill and died (probably in early 954). Some Byzantine sources suggest that he was poisoned by Sayf al-Dawla after refusing to convert to Islam, while Arab sources claim that he was poisoned by Byzantine agents after Sayf al-Dawla refused a huge ransom offered by Bardas Phokas. Whatever the truth, Constantine's death seems to have been blamed on Sayf al-Dawla by the Byzantines, and many Arab captives, including some of the Hamdanid emir's relatives, were executed as a result. Some Byzantine and Arab sources claim that this resulted in the failure of a peace embassy sent by the Byzantines in June 954 under Paul Monomachos, but modern scholars discount this.