Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 88 h Vassilios Christides It is worth mentioning here that the Arab conquest of Crete, which was fa- cilitated by the naval power of Egypt and coincided with the Arab conquest of Sicily (starting in 827), marks the decline of the Byzantine naval superiority in the Eastern Mediterranean and the rise of the Arab hegemony. 120 On the other hand, the reconquest of Crete by the Byzantine general Nicephorus Phocas in 961 became the springboard for the recovery of the Byzantine naval power which was completed with their reconquest of Cyprus in 965 and of the ports of Asia Minor. 121 APPENDIX A Usṭūl 122 ([Andalusian] Fleet) (Passage from Ibn Ḥayyān, Al-Muqtabas V, ed. P. Chalmeta, Madrid 1979, p. 366.) Arabic text: الاسطول وفيها غزا الأسطول إلى بلد الفرنجة ، اهلكهم الله ، وقائده عبد الملك بن سعيد بن أبي حمامة ، وكانت عدة مراكبه أربعين مركباً ، عشرين حرّاقات فيها النفط والآلات البحرية ، وعشرين فيها الرجال المقاتلة ، وكانت عدة ركابه من الجند ألف رجل ، ومن البحريين ألفين وكان ركوبهم من مدينة المريّة. to any Arabic sources, save for some passages of Nuwayri, in D. Tsougarakis, Byzantine Crete from the 5 th Century to the Venetian Conquest , Athens 1988, which contains several useful archaeological remarks. 120 Although the Arabs of Sicily undertook several sea raids against the islands of the Aegean, especially the Cyclades (see Nike Koutrakou, “Crete and Sicily: parallel and diverging perceptions of the islands by middle and late Byzantine writers (10 th –15 th c.)”, in the 12 volume of Graeco-Ara- bica, 129–170), they were not correlated with the systematic sea raids of the Arabs of Crete which were often undertaken for permanent occupation; see Christides, The Arab conquest of Crete , 192, map II. For the Byzantine naval weakness at this period see M. Ballan, “Andalusi Crete (827–961) and the Arab-Byzantine Frontier in the Early Medieval Mediterranean”, URL: https://ballandalus. wordpress.com/2015/04/09/andalusi-crete-827–961-and-the-arab-byzantine-frontier-in-the-early- medieval-mediterranean-2/ (accessed: 15.05.2023). 121 For the inability of the Arab fleet of the Ikhshīdit rulers of Egypt to cope with the Byzantine navy, see Christides, the section “An Unsuccessful Attempt by the Ikhshīdids of Egypt to assist the besieged Arabs of Crete in 960”, in The Image of Cyprus in the Arabic Sources , Lefcosia 2006, 154–155. 122 The word usṭūl comes from the Greek “στόλος». By the tenth century the Andalusian fleet numbered about 100 warships; see D. Nakhilli, Al-Sufun al-Islāmīyah , 2.