Historical sources on the revolt of Bardas Skleros differ on the sequence and location of the battles that ended it, one of which was fought at the plain of Pankaleia (Παγκάλεια), northeast of
Amorium. The history of
John Skylitzes, written in the late 11th century, reports that Skleros won a first battle near Amorium, as well as a second at Basilika Therma (modern
Sarıkaya), and that it was in a third engagement at Pankaleia that Phokas triumphed. According to Skylitzes, Phokas had been reinforced with 12,000
Georgian cavalry from
Tao through his friendship with its ruler,
David III, but his army again began to give way. Phokas then charged towards Skleros and engaged him in
single combat, in which the rebel general was wounded and fled, sowing panic among his men. The late 10th-century writer
Leo the Deacon on the other hand writes that the loyalist army under Bardas Phokas first encountered the army of Skleros at Pankaleia and was defeated, but secured a decisive victory in a second battle at an unspecified location. Other authors provide some further details:
Michael Psellos also reports the duel of the two generals at the decisive battle, while the early 11th-century Christian Arab historian
Yahya of Antioch alludes to two battles, and gives the dates as 19 June 978 and 24 March 979 respectively. What is undisputed is that after his defeat, Skleros fled to his Arab ally, the
Hamdanid emir
Abu Taghlib, and thence sought refuge in the
Buyid court in
Baghdad, where he remained for the next seven years. Based on Georgian sources, P.M. Tarchnichvili suggested in 1964 that the victory of Phokas took place at a site called "Sarvenis" in Georgian, which he identified as
Aquae Saravenae (modern
Kırşehir), north of
Caesarea, and that Skylitzes's third battle (who erroneously places Pankaleia near the river
Halys, which corresponds to the site of Kırşehir) is a fictionalized mixture of the real first and second battles, a view shared also by John Forsyth in his 1977 critical edition of Yahya's chronicle in English. According to Catherine Holmes, Skylitzes' account, although doubtlessly embellished, probably relies on an actual source given its level of detail, but that in the end "adjudicating between these possibilities is all but impossible" and that the only certain thing is that the decisive final battle took place in March 979. Earlier scholars, like
George Finlay and
George Ostrogorsky, generally accepted the account of John Skylitzes, with the decisive final battle between Skleros and Phokas at Pankaleia in March 979, sometimes labelled the "second" Battle of Pankaleia, depending on whether the first battle between the two generals near Amorium was also regarded as taking place at the same site. Modern scholars on the other hand have adopted a different reconstruction of events, with a first battle taking place at Pankaleia in June 978, a second battle some time at Basilika Therma in
Charsianon later in autumn/winter, and with the third and decisive battle taking place at Sarvenis in March 979. ==References==