In October 944, the Hamdanid emir Sayf al-Dawla captured Aleppo and soon extended his control over northern Syria, from Homs in the south to the frontier lands with the Byzantine Empire in the northwest and parts of western Upper Mesopotamia.

[4][5] Due to the geographical position of his realm, the Hamdanid ruler also emerged as the champion of the Muslim world against the recent advances of the Christian Byzantines in the eastern Anatolian borderlands.

[10][12] In 960, trying to take advantage of Nikephoros' absence with the bulk of his army in the reconquest of Crete, Sayf al-Dawla launched a major invasion of Byzantine Cappadocia, but was attacked and almost annihilated in an ambush by Leo Phokas.

[16][17][18] Modern historians have seen this as a deliberate scorched-earth strategy that "created a wasteland between Syria and Cilicia that broke the lines of supply between the two regions",[18] and that opened up the road to Aleppo.

[16][19][18] Sayf al-Dawla appears to have been oblivious to this threat: instead, he sent his generals, Qarghuyah and Naja al-Kasaki, to conduct counter-raids into Byzantine territory, while he tried to restore his authority in Cilicia and rebuild Anazarbus.

[20] Sayf al-Dawla briefly confronted the Byzantine army with the small force at his disposal before his capital, but, unable to offer any meaningful resistance, he abandoned the city.

[20] Left without hope of relief, the Aleppines began negotiations, but as the city collapsed into chaos, Nikephoros took advantage and ordered his men to storm it on 23/24 December.

All the population had fled up to it (to take refuge from the Greeks) and here most of them perished with all their goods and chattels.Some modern scholars have considered the sack of Aleppo as a mere setback for the Hamdanid ruler, but not ultimately critical for his realm, focusing rather on the conquest of Cilicia that followed in 963–965.