Editing Nikephoros I (section)

==Background==
According to several sources outside the Byzantine context, such as [[Michael the Syrian]], [[al-Tabari]], and [[Mas'udi]], there is a tradition that suggests Nikephoros had [[Ghassanid]] [[Arabs|Arab]] origins and that he descended from the final Ghassanid ruler [[Jabala ibn al-Ayham]].{{sfn|Bekkum|Drijvers|Klugkist|2007|p=97}}{{sfn|Cooper|Decker|2012|p=42}}{{sfn|Biliarsky|2013|p=208}} Al-Tabari assets that he obtained this information from Byzantine sources,{{sfn|Alexander|1985|p=66}} although no surviving Byzantine chronicle explicitly mentions the emperor's ethnic background.{{sfn|Bekkum|Drijvers|Klugkist|2007|p=97}} Paul Julius Alexander, a modern scholar, proposes that al-Tabari might have indeed transmitted information found in Byzantine writings. He points to an apocalyptic text that has been preserved in a "hopelessly corrupt" copy, where it is mentioned that the emperor hailed "from the race of Gopsin".{{sfn|Alexander|1985|p=66}} The historian Nadia Maria El-Cheikh transmits another, alternative, tradition from Arab sources (specifically [[al-Masudi]]), in which Nikephoros supposedly originated from the [[Iyad (tribe)|Iyad tribe]]; she doubts both traditions, believing that they are simply legends.{{sfn|El-Cheikh|2004|pp=95, 132 n. 40}} If he was of Arabian ancestry, one of his ancestors must have migrated to [[Pisidia]] in [[Asia Minor]], where Nikephoros was born.{{sfn|Vasiliev|1964|p=271}}

[[File:Byzantine Empire 802 AD.png|left|thumb|The Byzantine Empire at the beginning of the reign of Nikephoros I, in 802 AD.]]