John Kaminiates was a Greek resident of Thessalonica when the city, then one of the largest in the Byzantine Empire, was besieged and sacked by a Saracen force led by Leo of Tripoli in 904. His account of the city's plunder, On the capture of Thessalonica, survives in four manuscripts; though of these, none were written before the fourteenth century, causing some concern over the text's authenticity.
