Emirate of Crete

History

Crete had been raided by Muslim forces since the first wave of the Muslim conquests in the mid-7th century. It first experienced a raid in 654 and then another in 674/675, and parts of the island were temporarily occupied during the reign of the Umayyad Caliph al-Walid I (r. 705–715). However, the island at that time was not conquered and despite occasional raids in the 8th century, it remained securely in Byzantine hands; Crete was too far from the Arab naval bases in the Levant for an effective expedition to be undertaken against it.

Conquest of Crete

At some point in the second half of the reign of Byzantine Emperor Michael II (r. 820–829), a group of Andalusian exiles landed on Crete and began its conquest. These exiles had a long nomadic history. Traditionally they have been described as the survivors of a failed revolt against the emir al-Hakam I of Córdoba in 818. In the aftermath of the revolt's suppression, the citizens of the Córdoban suburb of al-Rabad were exiled en masse. Some settled in Fez in Morocco, but others, numbering over 10,000, took to piracy, probably joined by other Andalusians. They landed in Alexandria and took control of the city until 827, when they were besieged and expelled by the Abbasid general Abdullah ibn Tahir al-Khurasani. As W. Kubiak points out, however, the supposed origin from Córdoba is contradicted by other sources, which record the presence of Andalusian corsairs in Alexandria as early as 798/9, and their takeover is dated to 814, before the revolt took place; furthermore, the Andalusians' leader, Umar ibn Hafs ibn Shuayb ibn Isa al-Balluti, commonly known as Abu Hafs, came from a locality (Fahs al-Ballut, now Los Pedroches) that was far from Córdoba.

The exact chronology of the Andalusians' landing in Crete is uncertain. Following the Muslim sources, it is usually dated to 827 or 828, after the Andalusians' expulsion from Alexandria. Byzantine sources however seem to contradict this, placing their landing soon after the suppression of the large revolt of Thomas the Slav (821–823). Further considerations regarding the number and chronology of the Byzantine campaigns launched against the invaders and prosopographical questions of the Byzantine generals that headed them have led other scholars like Vassilios Christides and Christos Makrypoulias to propose an earlier date, c. 824. Under the terms of their agreement with Ibn Tahir, the Andalusians and their families left Alexandria in 40 ships. Historian Warren Treadgold estimates them at some 12,000 people, of whom about 3,000 would be fighting men. According to Byzantine historians, the Andalusians were already familiar with Crete, having raided it in the past. They also claim that the Muslim landing was initially intended as a raid, and was transformed into a bid for conquest when Abu Hafs himself set fire to their ships. However, as the Andalusian exiles had brought their families along, this is probably later invention. The Andalusians' landing-place is also unknown; some scholars think that it was at the north coast, at Suda Bay or near where their main city and fortress Chandax (Arabic: ربض الخندق, romanized: rabḍ al-kḫandaq, lit. 'Castle of the Moat', modern Heraklion) was later built, but others think that they most likely landed on the south coast of the island and then moved to the more densely populated interior and the northern coast.

Pirate emirate

Abu Hafs repulsed the early Byzantine attacks and slowly consolidated control of the entire island. He recognized the suzerainty of the Abbasid Caliphate, but ruled as a de facto independent prince. The conquest of the island was of major importance as it transformed the naval balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean and opened the hitherto secure Aegean Sea littoral to frequent and devastating raids.

The Andalusians also occupied several of the Cyclades during these early years, but Michael II organized another large-scale expedition, recruiting an entire new marine corps, the Tessarakontarioi, and building new ships. Under the admiral Ooryphas, this fleet managed to evict the Arabs from the Aegean islands but failed to retake Crete. Michael II's successor Theophilos (r. 829–842) sent an embassy to Abd ar-Rahman II of Córdoba proposing a joint action against the Andalusian exiles, but beyond Abd ar-Rahman giving his assent to any Byzantine action against Crete, this came to nothing. In October 829, those Arabs destroyed an imperial fleet off Thasos, undoing much of the work of Ooryphas and opening the Aegean and its coasts to pillage. Later they attacked Euboea (c. 835–840), Lesbos (837), and the coasts of the Thracesian Theme, where they destroyed the monastic centre of Mount Latros. They were heavily defeated, however, by the local strategos, Constantine Kontomytes.

After the death of Theophilos in 842, new measures to confront the Cretan threat were undertaken by the new Byzantine regime: in 843 a new maritime theme, that of the Aegean Sea, was established to better deal with the Arab raids, and another expedition to recover Crete was launched under the personal leadership of the powerful logothetes and regent Theoktistos. Although it succeeded in occupying much of the island, Theoktistos had to abandon the army due to political intrigues in Constantinople, and the troops left behind were slaughtered by the Arabs. In an effort to weaken the Arabs in 853, several Byzantine fleets engaged in coordinated operations in the Eastern Mediterranean, attacking the Egyptian naval base of Damietta and capturing weapons intended for Crete. Despite some Byzantine successes against the Arabs in the following years, the Cretans resumed their raids in the early 860s, attacking the Peloponnese, the Cyclades, and Athos. In 866, the Byzantine Caesar Bardas assembled another large-scale expeditionary force to subdue Crete, but his murder by Basil the Macedonian only two weeks after the fleet set sail from the capital spelled the end of the undertaking.

Byzantine reconquest

Cretan piracy reached another high in the 930s and 940s, devastating southern Greece, Athos, and the western coasts of Asia Minor. As a result, Emperor Constantine VII (r. 913–959) sent another expedition in 949. This too was routed in a surprise attack, a defeat which Byzantine chroniclers ascribe to the incompetence and inexperience of its leader, the eunuch chamberlain Constantine Gongyles. Constantine VII did not give up, and during the last years of his reign he began preparing another expedition. It would be carried out under his successor, Romanos II (r. 959–963), who entrusted its leadership to the capable general Nikephoros Phokas. At the head of a huge fleet and army, Phokas sailed in June or July 960, landed on the island, and defeated the initial Muslim resistance. A long siege of Chandax followed, which dragged over the winter into 961, when the city was stormed on 6 March.

The city was pillaged, and its mosques and walls were torn down. Muslim inhabitants were either killed or carried off into slavery, while the island's last emir Abd al-Aziz ibn Shu'ayb (Kouroupas) and his son al-Numan (Anemas) were taken captive and brought to Constantinople, where Phokas celebrated a triumph. The island was converted into a Byzantine theme, and the remaining Muslims were converted to Christianity by missionaries like Nikon "the Metanoeite". Among the converts was the prince Anemas, who entered Byzantine service and fell at Dorostolon, in the war of 970–971 against the Rus'.

Legacy

This early Muslim period of Crete remains relatively obscure due to a paucity of surviving evidence regarding its internal history. Furthermore, other than a few place names recalling the presence of the Arabs, no major archaeological remains from the period survive, possibly due to deliberate Byzantine destruction after 961. This has influenced the way the emirate is generally regarded: scholars, forced to rely mostly on Byzantine accounts, have traditionally viewed the Emirate of Crete through a Byzantine lens as a quintessential "corsair's nest", surviving on piracy and the slave trade.

The picture painted by the few and scattered references to the Cretan emirate from the Muslim world, on the other hand, is of an ordered state with a regular monetary economy and extensive trade links, and there is evidence that Chandax was a cultural centre of some importance. The survival of numerous gold, silver, and copper coins, of almost constant weight and composition, testifies to a strong economy and a high living standard among the population. The economy was strengthened by extensive trade with the rest of the Muslim world, especially with Egypt, and by a booming agriculture: the need to sustain an independent state, as well as access to the markets of the Muslim world, led to an intensification of cultivation. It is also possible that sugar cane was introduced to Crete at the time.

It is unclear what happened to the island's Christians after the Muslim conquest; the traditional view is that most were either converted or expelled. There is evidence from Muslim sources, however, for the continued survival of Christians on Crete, as a subject class, as in other Muslim conquests, although according to the same sources the Muslims, whether descendants of the Andalusians, more recent migrants, or converts (or any combination of these) formed the majority. There is also evidence of rival classes on the island as when Theodosius the Deacon reports that the rural Cretans, not rulers of the land but inhabitants of crags and caves, descended from the mountains under their leader Karamountes during the siege of Chandax by Nikephoros Phokas to assist the besieged. It seems that the Byzantine Christian population of the countryside was left relatively alone, while the Muslim element (including native converts) predominated in the cities.

List of emirs

The succession of the emirs of Crete has been established by Arab and Byzantine sources, but chiefly through their coinage. The dates of their reigns are therefore largely approximate: