Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

325 Vassilios Christides. The Cycle of the Arab-Byzantine Struggle in Crete... information, i.e. he reports that each Arab marine carried a hidden short dagger inside his shield. 1 The same author reports that the deck of the ship should be covered with The next attempt for the conquest of Crete took place, under the leadership of Logothetēs Theoctistus, during the turbulent reign of Michael III (842–867) and is dated to 18 March 843 in the Byzantine sources. 2 Little is known about this expedition in the Byzantine sources which briefly report that Theoctistus landed onCrete unopposed, set up his camp and fought successfully against the Cretan Arabs, but suddenly he decided to return to Constantinople abandoning a large portion of his army that was slaughtered by the Arabs. Vasiliev expressed the view that it was in this expedition, as mentioned in the “Synaxarium of Constantinople”, thatMagister Sergius, an ardent zealot of Orthodoxy, undertook the command of the abandoned Byzantine army in Crete where he died. 3 While more details about this expedition are not reported in the Byzantine sources, it is of great importance that there is an Arabic source in which some valuable information is added. Ibn Dāya (d. ca 941), based on eyewitness evidence, reports that the Byzantines in this expedition established a strong military camp and tightly besieged the Arabs outside the walls of Handax. The Cretan Arabs, suffocated by hungriness, were ready to surrender when suddenly the Byzantines mysteriously decided to stop the siege. Moreover, Ibn Dāya mentions that a holy man, the leader of the abandoned Byzantines, was killed. (See Appendix.) Obviously, this holy man should be identified with Sergius. Unfortunately, Theoctistus’ important siege of Handax is not illustrated in Skylitzes’ manuscript. 1 See J. H. Pryor and Elizabeth M. Jeffreys, The Age of the ΔΡΟΜΩΝ. The Byzantine Navy ca 500–1204 , Leiden — Boston 2006, especially pp. 488–489, 578; and J. Dimitroukas, Ναυμαχικά , Athens 2005, especially p. 260; Ibn al-Manqali, Ahkām , ed. M. ‘Abd al-Rāim, Cairo n.d., 34 (typewritten dissertation). 2 A. A. Vasiliev,“La dynastie d’Amorium 820–867”, in Byzance et les Arabes , I, Brussels 1935, 194–95; Makrypoulias, op. cit. 351, where there are references to all relevant Byzantine sources. 3 Vasiliev, op. cit., 195, note 1.