Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 89 h The Odyssey of the Andalusian Conquerors of Crete... Translation: At this time, the [Andalusian] fleet raided the land of the Franks. May God destroy them [the Franks]. ‘Abd al-Maliq Sa‘īd b. Abī Khamāmah was their leader [admiral] and the number of the ships was forty, of which twenty were ḥarrāqāt , carrying the Greek fire and mari- time implements, and the other twenty carried the marines. And the number of the marine fighters embarked [on the ships] was 1,000 and that of the sailors 2,000. And their place of embarkation was the port of Almería ( al-Marīyah ). It is obvious from the above passage that the type of ḥarrāqāh (pl. ḥarrāqāt ), corresponding to the Byzantine “πυρφόρον πλοῖον”, was originally a supple- mentary warship carrying the implements of Greek fire and accompanying the dromon which was armed with machinery for launching the Greek fire. Similarly, it is reported in Theophanes Continuatus 123 that the fleet of Nicepho- rus Phocas, prepared for the reconquest of Arab Crete in 960–961, included 1000 dromons [armed with fire launching equipment] and 2000 “πυρφόρα πλοῖα” carrying the implements for Greek fire. 124 Needless to say, Ibn Ḥayyān’s above passage indicates that the Arab warships by the 10 th century were fully equipped with the machinery and implements needed for Greek fire. Paradoxi- cally, there are still some scholars who insist that the Greek fire remained a se- cret weapon of the Byzantines through their whole history. 125 The aboveArabic text demonstrates the inevitable need for the use of the par- allel Arabic sources for a better understanding of the function of the Greek fire. It should be also noted that after the 12 th century the advanced Arab technology, strengthened by that of the Chinese, produced formidable weapons in which the Greek fire was combined with bārud , a primitive form of gunpowder. 126 123 Theophanes Continuatus, Chronographia, ed . Bonn, 1838, 475. 124 For other later types of the ḥarrāqāt see M. Öztürk, “A Glimpse on the Use of the Ḥarrāqas in the Red Sea and on the Nile from the Fāṭimid till the End of the Mamluk Periods”, in the 12 volume of Graeco-Arabica . 125 For a typical example see A. Roland, “Secrecy, Technology, and War: Greek Fire and the Defense of Byzantium, 678–1204”, Technology and Culture 33.4 (Oct. 1992), 655–679; see also note 122 below. 126 The use of the Greek fire by the Arabs is underestimated by a number of modern scholars; see Th. K. Korres, «Ὑγρόν πῦρ»: ένα όπλο της βυζαντινής ναυτικής τακτικής , 3 rd ed., Thessaloniki 1995; C. Caratolios, Το υγρόν πυρ & η συμβολή του στη βυζαντινή ισχύ , Athens 2013; Caratolios’ study relied almost solely on Korres’ above mentioned book and he failed to use the recent works concerning the Greek fire, i.e. J. Haldon, “‘Greek fire’ Revisited. Recent and Current Research”, n. 57 above; Christides, “Nafṭ”, EI 2 , VII (1993), 884–886; idem, “Greek fire”, EI 3 (2013), 146– 148; idem “The Contribution of the Arabic Sources to the Study of Greek Fire: Ibn al-Manqalī