The Paulicians were a Christian sect which—persecuted by the Byzantine state—had established a separate principality at Tephrike on Byzantium's eastern border and collaborated with the Muslim emirates of the Thughur, the Abbasid Caliphate's borderlands, against the Empire.

The Paulicians were fiercely iconoclastic, adhered to a very distinct Christology, and rejected the authority and practices of the official Byzantine Church, following their own leaders.

[4] According to the chroniclers, up to 100,000 Paulicians were massacred, while the remnants fled from their strongholds in east-central Anatolia, and found refuge among the Empire's Muslim enemies, the Arab emirates of the Thughur, the Arab–Byzantine frontier zone along the Taurus–Antitaurus mountain ranges.

At this point, the sources record that a dispute broke out between the men of the two thematic corps as to who was the bravest; the two generals decided to take advantage of their troops' high morale and impetuousness to attack, despite their orders.

Chrysocheir himself managed to escape with a small detachment of bodyguards, but he was brought at bay at Konstantinou Bounos (probably modern Yildiz Dagı).

The remaining Paulicians were resettled in the Balkans, while a large contingent was shipped off to Southern Italy to fight for the Empire under Nikephoros Phokas the Elder.

[1] Thus Alexander Vasiliev proposed a first victorious battle for the Byzantines, followed by the sack of Tephrike and the final Paulician defeat at Bathys Ryax, all in 872.