850s

Millennium:	1st millennium
Centuries:	8th century – 9th century – 10th century
Decades:	820s 830s 840s – 850s – 860s 870s 880s
Years:	850 851 852 853 854 855 856 857 858 859
Categories:	Births – Deaths – Architecture Establishments – Disestablishments

This is a list of events occurring in the 850s, ordered by year.

By place

Asia

• Emperor Montoku succeeds Emperor Nimmyō as Emperor of Japan.

Europe

• Louis II is crowned co-emperor with his father Lothair I.
• First recorded Viking attack on the Welsh coast.
• Vikings of Rorik conquer Utrecht and keep the city for 70 years. The bishop of Utrecht takes refuge in Deventer.

By topic

Religion

• April 20 – Guntherus becomes Bishop of Cologne.

By place

Europe

• Vikings plunder London and Canterbury.
• Charles the Bald, Louis the German and Lothar meet in Meersen.
• Garcia Iñiguez succeeds his father Iñigo Arista as king of Navarra.
• August 22 – Battle of Jengland. Erispoe, king of Brittany and son of Nominoe, defeats the Franc king Charles the Bald in Jengland-Beslé near Grand-Fougeray in Brittany. This is considered as the birth of the Breton state.
• September – Treaty of Angers. Charles the Bald acknowledges Erispoë as king of Brittany. He lets him have the County of Nantes, the County of Rennes and the County of Retz which become part of the Breton nation. The King of Brittany takes the oath to the King of France (but not an hommage lige which would be an allegiance). To mark the sovereignty of the Breton state, the Dukes of Brittany are since then crowned as "Duke, king in their lands".

Asia

• Oldest known mention of the Andaman Islands.
• The Arab merchant Suleiman al-Tajir visits Tang Dynasty China, observing the manufacturing of Chinese porcelain at Guangzhou and writes of his admiration for its transparent quality. He also describes the mosque at Guangzhou, its granaries, its local government administration, some of its written records, and the treatment of travellers, along with the use of ceramics, rice-wine, and tea.

By place

Europe

• Saint Swithun becomes Bishop of Winchester, England.
• Boris I Michael succeeds the duumvirate of Malamir and Presian as monarch of Bulgaria.
• Duke Trpimir I, successor to prince Mislav and founder of the Trpimirović dynasty issues the first exact date state document among all Slavonic peoples. In this Latin document duke Trpimir refers to himself as the duke of Croats (dux Chroatorum) and to his country as the state of the Croats (regnum Chroatorum).

By place

Egypt

• May 22–May 23 – A Byzantine fleet sacks and destroys Damietta in Egypt.

Asia

• Tuan Ch'eng-Shih publishes Miscellaneous Offerings from Yu-yang in China.

By place

Europe

• Charles the Bald, Louis the German and Lothar meet at Attigny.
• Horik II succeeds Horik I as king of Denmark.
• Cyngen of Powys makes the first known pilgrimage to Rome of a Welsh ruler.
• Viking Chieftain Hubba winters in Milford Haven with 23 ships.
• First written record of Novgorod.

Asia

• Jayavarman III succeeds his father Jayavarman II as ruler of the Khmer Empire.

By place

Europe

• Louis II succeeds Lothar as Western Emperor. Two other sons, Lothar II and Charles, also get parts of the kingdom.
• The Slavic alphabet is created by Saints Cyril and Methodius.
• Æthelwulf, king of Wessex and Bretwalda, abdicates in favor of his son Æthelbald.
• Edmund becomes king of East Anglia.

By topic

Religion

• September 29 – Pope Benedict III succeeds Pope Leo IV as the 104th pope.
• Anastasius is made anti-pope by Lothair.
• Æthelwulf of Wessex grants churches in the kingdom of Wessex the right to receive tithes.

By place

Asia

• December 22 – Another deadly earthquake strikes Damghan, Iran, killing 200,000 people.

Europe

• Ethelbald usurps the throne of Wessex from his father Ethelwulf.
• Ordoño I of Asturias is said to have begun the repopulation of the town of León.

Byzantine Empire

• Bardas becomes regent for the Byzantine Emperor Michael III.
• November – An earthquake in Corinth, Greece, kills an estimated 45,000.

By place

Europe

• The Vikings raid Dorestad.

Byzantine Empire

• Michael III of Byzantium, under the influence of his uncle Bardas, banishes his mother Theodora. Bardas becomes the most powerful person in the empire.

By place

Europe

• Louis the German invades West Francia, hoping to secure Aquitaine from his brother Charles the Bald, but fails.
• Donald I succeeds the throne of Scotland.

Asia

• Emperor Seiwa ascends the throne of Japan.
• An enormous flood along the Grand Canal of China inundates large tracts of the North China Plain, killing tens of thousands of people and adding to the further decline of the Tang Dynasty.

By topic

Religion

• April 24 – Pope Nicholas I succeeds Pope Benedict III as the 105th pope.
• Patriarch Ignatius is imprisoned and (December 25) deposed to be succeeded by Patriarch Photius I.

By place

Europe

• January 15 – Battle of Saint-Quentin, Aisne: Humfrid defeats Louis the German.
• Iberian peninsula: Battle of Abelda: the Asturians defeat the Muslims.^{[citation needed]}. The same year, Viking raiders attack the region and burn the mosques of Sevilla and Algesiras, they also sack the western coasts of Spain (known as al-Sharq al-Andalus) and the Balearic Islands.
• The Russian city of Novgorod is first mentioned in the chronicles.

Africa

• The University of Al Karaouine is founded in Fes, Morocco (recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest university in the world).

Significant people

• Charles the Bald
• Louis the German
• Lothar
• Ethelwulf of Wessex
• Bardas
• Kenneth I of Scotland
• Halfdan the Black
• Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi