«Тахиййат»: Сборник статей в честь Н. Н. Дьякова

m 54 n Vassilios Christides stantinople in more than one attempts in ca. 669–674 1 . Even Mu‘āwiyah’s fa- mous naval victory known as “Dhāt a ṣ - Ṣ āwārī” brought no permanent benefits. It should be noted that while this famous battle (ca AH 34/AD 654–5) is usually heralded as a pioneering naval triumph of the Arabs, a careful scrutiny reveals that it was an audacious brave and actually Pyrrhic victory 2 . More research is needed to illuminate further the exact conditions which led to this encounter between Byzantines and Arabs in the high seas in which for the first and the last time so many warships were involved in a naval battle, usually placed on the Lycian coast near Phoenix 3 . Unfortunately, the recent article by C. Zuckerman regressed the study of the battle of Dhāt a ṣ - Ṣ āwārī. Ignoring completely even the rudimental rules of naval warfare and all rel- evant modern works, this author repeated again the view of a successful naval battle manifesting the supposedly excellent new naval tactics based on the construction of a new type of warship by the Arabs 4 . Actually the inef- ficiency of the naval preparedness of both the Arabs and the Byzantines in this naval battle is demonstrated from the first stage of their confrontation. From the beginning of the battle we notice that the immobilized confronted fleets were wrongly positioned without taking into consideration the axiom- atic rule that a sailing fleet in open water should almost never sail in the exact direction of its destination, but toward to a point some distance to windward of it, moving into a “column formation”, one ship behind the other trying to keep the same distance and the same speed among them. From this “column formation” the fleet moves into the “line abreast formation” when approach- ing closely the enemy fleet 5 . The constant aggressive naval policy of Mu‘āwiyah- without the proper preparation- continued by his successors until the second siege of Constantinople 1 The first siege of Constantinople is usually placed in the year 674; however, Hitti, Philip, History of the Arabs , 10 th ed., New York, 2002. P. 201, reports that actually there were more than one small-scale sieges from 669–674. See the comprehensive article by Karapli, Kateri- na, The First Siege of Constantinople by the Arabs (674–678): Problems — Iconography, in: East and West. Essays on Byzantine and Arab Worlds in the Middle Ages , ed. J. P. Monferrer- Sala, V. Christides and Th. Papadopoullos, Piscataway N.J., 2009. P. 325–336. 2 Christides V. The Naval Engagement of Dhāt a ṣ Ṣ āwārī 34 A.H./A.D. 655–656. AClassi- cal Example of Naval Warfare Incompetence, in: Byzantina 13 (1985). P. 1331–1345. 3 Hitti placed the battle of Dhāt a ṣ Ṣ āwārī in Phoenix, which seems plausible; see Hitti, History of the Arabs (cf. note 8), p. 167; attempts to identify other locations are speculative. For a new extensive discussion of the battle of Dhāt a ṣ Ṣ āwārī see my forthcoming article, Encounters between Byzantines andArabs in the Sea from the 7 th C. to the 11 th C. (cf. note 4). 4 Zuckerman C. Learning from the Enemy and More: Studies in “Dark Centuries” Byzan- tium, in: Millenium 1 (2004). P. 116. 5 Pagès J. Recherches sur la guerre navale dans l’antiquité , Paris, 2000. P. 52, where there are designs of various formations of the fleets.