Siege of Petra
550 CE.
Shown on the map at 41.768°, 41.753°.
The siege of Petra was fought in 550 AD, between the Byzantines (East Romans) under general Bessas, and the Sasanian Persian garrison of Petra in the buffer state of Lazica. The strategic fortress had previously been held by the Byzantines before it was seized in 541 by the Sasanian king Khosrow I, and his Lazi allies. This conquest gave the Sassanian Empire access to the Black Sea and marked the beginning of the Lazic War. After a failed attempt to recapture Petra in 549, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I sent an army under Bessas to retake the fortress. The Byzantine historian Procopius described the resulting siege in vivid detail. The initial mining operations that were undertaken by the besiegers against the fort walls were ineffective. Based on advice from the Sabirs, their nomadic allies, the Byzantines constructed a type of lightweight battering ram that could be deployed on the sloped plain leading to the walls. The defenders responded by throwing incendiary bombs; however, a part of the wall was successfully damaged in the attempt. Bessas and his men attempted to scale the weakened wall twice, resulting in fierce fighting and heavy casualties.
Text from the Wikipedia article Siege of Petra (550–551), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.