Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 122 h Dimitrios G. Letsios The Christian Topography of the Alexandrian traveler Kosmas Indikopleus- tes, one of the works planned to be included in our data base, although it also draws from earlier geographical and other sources, contains important factual data, for the sea trade in an obscure period, the last centuries of Antiquity. Cos- mas’ testimony confirms that Yemen was an important crossing in the maritime route from the Mediterranean to Caylon/Sri Lanka, a fact that sheds some light to the antagonism between powers which shook the region at the time. 36 Anatolia In order to follow hagiographical information in another frontier area at a later time, we turn now to Anatolia. Amorion, the most important city in Asia Minor was in the centre of the Arab-Byzantine conflict in Anatolia in the third decade of the 9 th century. Information on relevant events is abundant in the sources included in our data base. Hagiography has documented the execution of forty-two Byzantine prisoners on the 6 th of March 845, an event that the hagiographical tradition referred to as the forty-two Martyrs of Amorion . 37 Byzantine and Arabic sources describe the massacre of the city’s men and the capture of women and children. In fact, only the most important among them, the officials, patricians and generals, are recorded by name. 38 Indeed, both sides, Arabs and Byzantines, were keeping war prisoners, especially, the more prominent, for a possible prisoners’ exchange. In any event, religion might have guided the Arab practice and possibly the prisoners’ conversion to Islam was envisaged. 39 It is indeed surprising that those prisoners were executed in 36 W. Wolska-Conus (ed.), Cosmas Indicopleustès. Topographie chrétienne. Introduction, texte critique, illustration, traduction et notes , vols. 3, SC 141, 159, 197, Paris 1968–1973; Robin, Arabia and Ethiopia Robin; Mango, Marlia Mundell, “Byzantine Maritime Trade with the East (4th-7th Centuries),” Aram 8 (1996), 139–163. 37 As easy reference for the two versions relating the execution of the forty-two Martyrs of Amo- rion, the entries in the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database , A. Kazhdan and A.-M. Talbot (eds.), Washington, D. C. 1998, (v. Euodii BHG 1214 ODB 800, v. Michaelis BHG 1213 ODB 800), with additional literature. 38 M. Lykaki, “The Byzantine Musclulinity at war: An Approach of the Manliness of the Army in the Midddle Byzantine Era”, in: Byzantion Nea Hellás 39(2020), 229–253: Kallistos Melissenos tourmarche of Koloneia, Konstantinos Vavoutzikos, protospatharios, Theodoros Krateros, drom- eus Vassoi and patrician Theofilus, 42, with additional literature, in n. 44. 39 A. Kolia-Dermitzaki, “The Execution of the Forty-two Martyrs of Amorion: Proposing an interpretation”, Al-Masaq 14(2002), 141–162; Cf. Eadem, “Some Remarks on the Fate of Pris- oners of War in Byzantinum (9th-10th Centuries)”, in: La Liberazione dei "captivi" tra Cristi- anità e Islam : oltre la crociata e il Gihad: tolleranza e servizio umanitario; atti del Congresso interdisciplinare di Studi Storici (Roma, 16–19 settembre 1998) organizzato per l'VIII centenario dell'approvazione della regola dei Trinitari da parte del Papa Innocenzo III, il 17 dicembre 1198 / 15 safar, 595 H, Città del Vaticano 2000, 583–620.