page_title: Battle of the Gates of Trajan
section_title: Origins of the conflict
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of the Gates of Trajan / Origins of the conflict
caption_attribution_description: English: Battle of the Gates of Trajan (17 August 986) Български: Битката в прохода Траянови врата (17 август 986 г.) Based on: [1]
context_page_description: The Battle of the Gates of Trajan was a battle between Byzantine and Bulgarian forces in the year 986.
  It took place in the pass of the same name, modern Trayanovi Vrata, in Sofia Province, Bulgaria. It was the largest defeat of the Byzantines under Emperor Basil II. After the unsuccessful siege of Sofia he retreated to Thrace, but was surrounded by the Bulgarian army under the command of Samuil in the Sredna Gora mountains. The Byzantine army was annihilated and Basil himself barely escaped.
  Fifteen years after the fall and the capture of Bulgarian capital Preslav, the victory at the Gates of Trajan extended the Bulgarian successes achieved since 976. Later on Tsar Samuil moved the capital from Preslav in the northeast to Ohrid in the southwest. The memory of the great victory over Basil II was preserved thirty years later in the Bitola inscription of Ivan Vladislav, the son of Aron.
context_section_description: In 971, the Byzantine emperor John Tzimiskes forced the captured Bulgarian emperor Boris II to abdicate and move to Constantinople following the fall of the  Bulgarian capital Preslav. The Byzantines had occupied only the eastern parts of Bulgaria; to the west, the four sons of the count of Sredets Nikola (David, Moses, Samuil and Aron) continued to rule western Bulgaria. They ruled the free territories in a tetrarchy residing in four separate cities in order to fight the Byzantines with higher efficiency.
  The war against Bulgaria was the first major undertaking carried out by Basil II after his ascension to the throne in 976, although the Bulgarian attacks had begun in that year. One of the reasons for the ten years of inaction was the policy of one of the strongest nobles in Byzantium, Basil, who de facto ruled the Byzantine Empire in the first years of his namesake. During that time, the main objective of the government in Constantinople was to crush the rebellion of the military commander Bardas Skleros in Asia Minor between 976 and 979.
  The local Byzantine governors were left alone to cope with the Bulgarian threat but they were unable to stop the Bulgarians. The positions of the brothers Samuil and Aron (the two eldest brothers David and Moses died soon after the beginning of the great offensive in 976) were strengthened not only by the rebellion of Skleros but also the neglect of the former Byzantine Emperor John Tzimisces towards the southwestern Bulgarian lands. After the fall of Preslav and the north-eastern areas of the Bulgarian Empire his main priority became the war against the Arabs in Syria, which gave the Bulgarians time to prepare for a long struggle from the center of the remaining parts of the Empire around the Ohrid and Prespa Lakes.
  For one decade after 976 Bulgarian offensives achieved major successes. Samuil managed to liberate north-eastern Bulgaria. Between 982 and 986 the Bulgarians occupied the main city of Thessaly (in modern Greece), Larissa. The constant Bulgarian attacks forced Basil II to respond.
caption: Plan of the battle.
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