The first member of the illustrious Doukas line to achieve prominence as a successful general, his rivalry with the powerful eunuch Samonas led to his revolt and eventual defection to the Arabs in 906–907.

Alexander Vasiliev suggested that this campaign was possibly waged in retaliation of the Arab sack of Thessalonica, the Byzantine Empire's second-largest city, a few months earlier.

Samonas bore a personal grudge against the Doukas family ever since Andronikos's son Constantine had seized him during an attempted flight to his native lands a few years earlier.

However, when Andronikos heard the news of the deposition of his friend the Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos (February 907), on whom he had placed hopes for mediation, he resolved to flee and asked for aid from the Arabs.

[9][10] The flight of Andronikos Doukas represents a peculiar episode: several scholars, such as Alexander Vasiliev and Romilly Jenkins, consider it evidence of a real plot against Leo, which included the Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos and perhaps also the admiral Eustathios.

[3][17] The careers of both Andronikos and Constantine, who in 913 also mounted an unsuccessful bid for the throne that cost him his life, entered folk legend and partly inspired the epic poem Digenes Akritas.