John Kaminiates

tenth century) 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, (Εις την άλωσιν της Θεσσαλονίκης, Eis tēn alōsin tēs Thessalonikēs) survives in four manuscripts; though of these, none were written before the fourteenth century, causing some concern over the text's authenticity.

[2] He gives a very detailed description of the attack and his experience on the pirate ship, which was initially heading to Crete and then to Paphos, Tripoli and Tarsus in Cilicia.

His work is an invaluable source about the sack of Thessaloniki in 904, as well as the slave trade in the eastern Mediterranean during the medieval times.

Other scholars like Ioannis Tsaras, David Frendo and Paolo Odorico support that the extant text is a reworked or modified version of a 10th century original.