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

m 52 n Vassilios Christides In the present paper an attempt will be made to present two conspicuous cases which clearly demonstrate the importance of time and place in any exami- nation concerning piracy and especially the so-called medieval Arab piracy 1 . The first case is described by T. Bruce and it concerns the 11 th century taifa of Denia in Spain 2 . The second presented by the present author emerges through a scrutiny of a number of Byzantine sources which describe the Arab and Byzan- tine sea struggle in the Eastern Mediterranean during the middle of the 7 th –11 th centuries 3 . A comparison of these two diametrically opposite cases will dem- onstrate the great difference between the unscrupulous piratical actions and the application of certain violent maritime actions committed within the frame of naval warfare. The taifa of Denia kingdom in Spain, as T. Bruce has demonstrated in his erudite article, provides a vivid example of a small state which, abusing the le- gitimacy of the “maritime jihād” , engages itself in aggressive maritime actions inspired by the sole aim of plundering and enriching its economy. Bruce pro- vided a concrete number of Arabic sources in which it is clearly shown that at the turn of the 11 th century in the small Muslim taifa of Denia, which emerged from the disintegrated Cordovan caliphate, under its ruler Mujāhid al-‘Amiri and his son ‘Ali, a deliberate pursuit of piracy had been undertaken against the Italian maritime states of Pisa and Genoa 4 . Bruce’s argument that the rulers of the taifa of Denia used the maritime holy war ( jihād ) for legitimizing their il- licit maritime actions in order to support their weak economy seems valid, but his generalization and conclusion that such practices characterize the Islamic tradition in general cannot be accepted. While the taifa of Denia case offers a clear-cut example of aggressive maritime actions inspired solely by an unscrupulous spirit of plundering and thus they undoubtedly can be called piratical in their narrow literary sense, another case based again on the activities of the Arab naval power demon- strates that, in contrast to the piratical activities of the taifa of Denia, a series 1 See: Christides V. The Raids of the Moslems of Crete in the Aegean. Sea Piracy and Con- quest, in: Byzantion 51. 1981. P. 76–111; Byzantinoislamica: Piracy and Conquest in the Aegean (A. D. 800–961), in: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft . XXI. Deutscher Orientalistentag (Berlin 24–29 March 1980), Supplement V, Wiesbaden, p. 224–232. 2 Bruce T. Piracy as Statecraft: The Mediterranean Policies of the Fifth/Eleventh-Century Taifa of Denia, in: Al-Masāq 22.3 (2010), p. 235–248. 3 Christides, Arab-Byzantine Struggle in the Sea: Naval Tactics (7 th –11 th C. A.D.): Theory and Practice, in: Aspects of Arab Seafaring , ed. Y. Y. Al-Hijji and V. Christides, Athens 2002, p. 87–106; The Arab-Byzantine Struggle in the Sea in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Byzan- tium: History and Civilization , ed. Ewald Kislinger and Telamachos Loughis, forthcoming (in Greek). 4 Bruce T. Piracy as Statecraft: The Mediterranean Policies of the Fifth/Eleventh-Century Taifa of Denia (cf. note 3), p. 238–239.