The details of the siege and the events leading up to it are preserved in four sources: the chronicle of Michael Panaretos,[1] the Encomium of St Eugenius of Trebizond by Constantine Loukites, the chronicle of Ali ibn al-Athir,[4] and most extensively, the Synopsis of John Lazaropoulos.[5] A possible fifth one is the Syrian chronicler Ibn Natif, who refers to a conflict dated around 1230 between Sultan Kaykubad and "Laskari" where Kaykubad won the first battle but lost the second; R.M. Shukurov has tried to identify those conflicts with this one, but Peacock is probably right in identifying them as a confused report of the 1214 Siege of Sinope.[6] In his edition of Lazaropoulos' work, Jon Olof Rosenqvist notes a number of problems in Lazaropoulos' account, which led Rosenqvist to argue that he used two sources, one he identifies as consisting of hagiographic materials, and a second Rosenqvist speculates was an "epic composition in verse" comparable to the Digenis Akritas.