Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

361 Dimitrios G. Letsios. Leo VI the Wise and the Saracens... aimed “to provide a specialized corps of imperial personnel, in this case army officers, with systematic instruction in the principles of their professional expertise”. 1 In this military collection Leo drew on extensive mass in existing military treatises, mainly the Strategikon , and incorporated substantial part of its prooimion in the Taktika . Leo’s military handbook was drafted as binding legislation to force the military leaders in their actions; the language used in the imperial instructions makes clear that they were obligations in performing war. The religious motivation is clearly reflected in the Taktica and this emerged from the ninth century context. “Leo combines the exigencies of battle with the doctrines of Christianity and casts the conflict in broader terms of religious distinction” and it is obvious in his military legislation that he contests at first place the Arab sea power. TheMuslim pirates’ raids threatened to turn the Mediterranean into “a Saracen lake”, as it has been pointed out, 2 and Leo, fully aware of the Arab challenge, wanted to address every kind of military operation, on land as well as naval campaigns in a systematic manner. Thus, Leo’s most original military instructions, included in constitutions 18 and 19 update the Byzantine battle tactics to 9 th century reality. Leo explicitly admits that his entire military legislation was perceived in order to systematize the Byzantine response to the problems caused by the Saracens, which in his view were equally troublesome to the previous Persian threat. 3 1 Magdalino, The Non-Juridical Legislation (1997), 174–75. 2 Riedel, Leo VI, 32–34;M. Riedel, “The Sacrality of a Sovereign: Leo VI and Politics in Middle Byzantium,” in Zwei Sonnen am Goldenen Horn? , ed. M. Grunbart, L. Rickelt and M. M. Vučetić, Berlin 2011, Band 3/1, 127–135; C. Picard, La mer des Califes, Une histoire de laMéditerranée musulmane , Paris 2015, 83–121. 3 Dagron, Byzance et le modèle islamique (1983), 220–221: «tout l'ou- vrage a été conçu par lui ‘en pensant au peuple des Saracènes, car ce peuple voisin de notre État ne nous cause pas moins d'ennuis aujourd'hui que le peuple perse n'en a causés aux empereurs d'autrefois, et il n'afflige pas moins quotidiennement nos sujets’». Taktika 18, 103, 495–497 (p. 474f.): “Ἐπειδὴ δὲ διαφόρων ἐθνικῶν παρατάξεών τε καὶ διαθέσεων ἐμνημονεύσαμεν, φέρε λοιπὸν καὶ τοῦ νῦν ἐνοχλοῦντος τῇ Ῥωμαϊκῇ ἡμῶν πολιτείᾳ ἔθνους τῶν Σαρακηνῶν ἐπιμνησθῶμεν κατὰ δύναμιν”.