Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 74 h Vassilios Christides addressed the issue. At that time (the turn of the ninth century), the Arab ships of the Eastern Mediterranean were constructed almost identically to the Byzantine ones. 60 Their main warship, called shīni in Arabic and dromōn in Byzantine texts, was about 40 meters long, weighed between 350–370 tons, was rigged with two lateen sails and had a crew of about 200 men. Amid- ships there was a wooden tower (ξυλόκαστρον), manned by a limited number of marines, but occasionally supplemented with other soldiers. 61 The main weapon of those ships was a siphon for launching the Greek fire; placed on 60 J. Lirola Delgado, El poder naval de Al-Andalus en la época del Califato Omeya , Granada 1993; see also H. S. Khalilieh, Admiralty and Maritime Laws in the Mediterranean Sea (ca. 800– 1050). The Kitāb Akriyat al-Sufun vis-à-vis the Nomos Rhodion Nautikos , Leiden-Boston 2006. For the Copts’ maritime technology inherited by the Byzantine tradition, see T. M. Muhammad, “The Role of the Copts in the Islamic Navigation in the 7 th and 8 th Centuries: the Papyrological Evidence”, Journal of Coptic Studies 10 (2008), 1–32. 61 For the use of the types of shīni-dromon and the supplementary warships χελάνδιον —  sha- landi by the Andalusians, see D. Nakhili, Al-Sufun al-Islāmīyah , Alexandria 1979, 81; for the type of χελάνδιον– shalandi see Katerina Karapli, “Βυζαντινό Χελάνδιον — Αραβικό Shalandi”, in Cultural Relations between Byzantium and the Arabs , ed. Y. Y. Al-Hjji and V. Christides, Athens 2007, 79–84; idem, “Additional Note”, in Byzantine and Arab Sailing Ships (7 th –13 th cent.) , Athens-Oinoussai 2001, 34–35; see also D. A. Agius, “The Arab Shalandī”, Orientalia Lovanien- sia Analecta , 102. Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras III, Leuven 2001, 49–60. For the first stage of the Arab-Byzantine naval warfare see Christides, “The Naval Battle of Dhāt al-Ṣawāri Revisited (ca 653, 654 or 655)”, in Maritime Contacts of the Past: Deciphering Connections amongst Communities , ed. Sila Tripati, New Delhi 2014, 513–531; idem, “The Lit- erary Sources for the Naval Battle of Dhāt al-Ṣawāri”, in Greece, Rome, Byzantium and Africa , Studies presented to Benjamin Hendrickx on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, ed. W. Henderson and E. Zacharopoulou, Johannesburg —Athens 2016, 153–175. Fig. 6. Chronicle of John Skylitzes, cod. Vitr. 26–2, fol. 130, Madrid National Library 59