Fatimid navy
The navy of the Fatimid Caliphate was one of the most developed early Muslim navies and a major force in the central and eastern Mediterranean in the 10th–12th centuries. As with the dynasty it served, its history is in two phases. The first was to 969, when the Fatimids were based in Ifriqiya ; the second lasted until the end of the dynasty in 1171, when they were based in Egypt. During the first period, the navy was employed mainly against the Byzantine Empire in Sicily and southern Italy, where it enjoyed mixed success. It was also in the initially unsuccessful attempts to conquer Egypt from the Abbasids and brief clashes with the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba.
During the first decades after the eventual Fatimid conquest of Egypt in 969, the main naval enemy remained the Byzantines, but the war was fought mostly on land over control of Syria, and naval operations were limited to maintaining Fatimid control over the coastal cities of the Levant. Warfare with the Byzantines ended after 1000 with a series of truces, and the navy became once more important with the arrival of the Crusaders in the Holy Land in the late 1090s.
Despite it being well funded and equipped, and one of the few standing navies of its time, a combination of technological and geographical factors prohibited the Fatimid navy from being able to secure supremacy at sea, or interdict the Crusaders' maritime lines of communication to Western Europe. The Fatimids retained a sizeable navy almost up to the end of the regime, but most of the fleet, and its great arsenal, went up in flames in the destruction of Fustat in 1169.
Background: the Mediterranean in the early 10th century
Since the mid-7th century, the Mediterranean Sea had become a battleground between the Muslim navies and the Byzantine navy. Very soon after their conquest of the Levant and Egypt, the nascent Caliphate built its own fleet, and in the Battle of the Masts in 655 shattered Byzantine naval supremacy, beginning a centuries-long series of conflicts over the control of the Mediterranean waterways. This enabled the Umayyad Caliphate to launch a major seaborne attempt to capture Constantinople in 674–678, followed by another huge land and naval expedition in 717–718, that was equally unsuccessful. At the same time, by the end of the 7th century the Arabs had taken over Byzantine North Africa, and in, Tunis was founded and quickly became a major Muslim naval base. This not only exposed the Byzantine-ruled islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and the coasts of the Western Mediterranean to recurrent Muslim raids, but allowed the Muslims to invade and conquer most of Visigothic Spain from 711 on.A period of Byzantine supremacy at sea followed the failed sieges of Constantinople and the virtual disappearance of the Muslim navies, until the re-commencement of Muslim raiding activity towards the end of the 8th century, both by the Abbasid fleets in the East as well as by the new Aghlabid dynasty in Ifriqiya. Then, in the 820s, two events occurred that shattered the existing balance of power and gave the Muslims the upper hand. The first was the capture of Crete by a band of Andalusian exiles and the establishment of a piratical emirate there, which withstood repeated Byzantine attempts to reconquer the island. This opened up the Aegean Sea to Muslim raids and put the Byzantines on the defensive. Despite some Byzantine successes such as the Sack of Damietta in 853, the early 10th century saw new heights of Muslim raiding activity, with events like the Sack of Thessalonica in 904, primarily by the fleets of Tarsus, the Syrian coastal towns, and Egypt. The second event was the beginning of the gradual conquest of Sicily by the Aghlabids in 827. The Muslim landing on Sicily was soon followed by the first raids into the Italian mainland and the Adriatic Sea as well. In 902, the Aghlabids completed the conquest of Sicily, but their efforts to establish themselves in mainland Italy ultimately failed. Conversely, while the Byzantines repeatedly failed to stem the Muslim conquest of Sicily, they were able to re-establish their control over southern Italy.
Historical overview
The Fatimid dynasty claimed descent from Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad and wife of Ali, through Isma'il, the son of the last commonly accepted Shi'a Imam, Ja'far al-Sadiq. This claim was often disputed even by their contemporaries, especially the Sunnis. The secretiveness of the family before and the differing genealogies subsequently published by the dynasty itself further make it difficult for modern scholars to assess the exact origin of the dynasty. Whatever their true origin, the Fatimids were the leaders of the Isma'ili sect of Shi'ism, and they headed a movement which, in the words of the historian Marius Canard, "was at the same time political and religious, philosophical and social, and whose adherents expected the appearance of a Mahdi descended from the Prophet through Ali and Fatima". As such, they regarded the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate as usurpers and were determined to overthrow them and take their place at the head of the Islamic world. Their pretensions were not only ecumenical, but also universal: according to their doctrine, the Fatimid imam was no less than the incarnation of the 'world soul'.The history of the Fatimid navy follows that of the Fatimid Caliphate itself, and can be roughly divided into two distinctive periods: the first in 909–969, when the dynasty assumed control over Ifriqiya and fought in the Maghreb and Sicily, and the second in 969–1171, after its conquest of Egypt, followed by Palestine, much of Syria and the Hejaz. The latter period can again be divided in two sub-periods, with the arrival of the First Crusade in 1099 as the turning point.
Ifriqiyan period (909–969)
Political and strategic context
The Fatimids arrived to power in Ifriqiya. Their missionary activity in the area, begun by Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i in 893, bore fruit swiftly, and in 909, they overthrew the reigning Aghlabid dynasty, allowing the Fatimid leader to come out of hiding and declare himself imam and caliph as . Already in his inaugural proclamation, al-Mahdi claimed a mandate to "conquer the world to East and West, in accordance with God's promise, from sinful rebels". From the outset, Ifriqiya was thus seen only as a temporary abode, before the march east to overthrow the Abbasids. At the same time, the nascent Fatimid state was surrounded by enemies, necessitating the maintenance of a strong army, and—as the successors to the Aghlabid province of Sicily—a capable fleet as well. During the Ifriqiyan period, the Fatimids faced a major Muslim rival in the form of the powerful Umayyads of Córdoba in al-Andalus. However, in the words of the historian Yaacov Lev, "the enmity between the Fatimids and the Spanish Umayyads took the form of propaganda, subversion and war by proxy" rather than direct conflict, which occurred only once in the two states' history.The Fatimids' ideological imperative also coloured their relations with the main non-Muslim power of the Near East, the Byzantine Empire: as Yaacov Lev writes, "Fatimid policy toward Byzantium oscillated between contradicting tendencies; a practical policy of modus vivendi, and the need to appear as champions of the ". Inherent limitations were imposed by the weather and available naval technology, so that the early Fatimid conflicts with Byzantium in the region of southern Italy were shaped by geography: Sicily was close to the Fatimids' metropolitan province of Ifriqiya, while conversely for the Byzantines, southern Italy was a remote theatre of operations, where they maintained a minimal naval presence. This gave the Fatimids an advantage in the waging of prolonged naval campaigns, and effectively left the initiative in their hands.
The naval aspect of the war against the Byzantines features prominently in the poems of the celebrated Fatimid court poet Ibn Hani, who lauded the successful Fatimid challenge to Byzantine thalassocracy in the mid-10th century. Nevertheless, the Fatimids were interested more in raiding than outright conquest, and the fleets involved were small, rarely numbering more than ten to twenty ships. The Byzantines, on the other hand, preferred to deal with the Fatimids through diplomacy. On occasion they allied with the Umayyads of al-Andalus, but mostly they sought to avoid conflict by negotiating truces, even including the occasional dispatch of tribute. This approach allowed the Byzantines to concentrate on affairs much closer to home; thus, when the Emirate of Crete came under Byzantine attack in 960–961, the Fatimids limited themselves to verbal support toward the Cretan emissaries.
Organization
During the early centuries of Islam, the navies of the caliphates and the autonomous emirates were structured along similar lines. Generally, a fleet was placed under the command of a 'head of the fleet' and a number of officers, but the chief professional officer was the 'commander of the sailors', who was in charge of weapons and manoeuvres. Crews comprised sailors, oarsmen, worksmen, and marines for on-board combat and landing operations, including men charged with deploying incendiary substances.During the Ifriqiyan period, the main base and arsenal of the Fatimid navy was the port city of Mahdiya. Founded by al-Mahdi Billah in 916, the city made use of a pre-existing, Punic-built harbor carved out of the rock. Restored by the Fatimids, it offered space for thirty ships and was protected by towers and a chain across its entrance. The nearby arsenal could reportedly provide shelter for two hundred hulls.
Apart from Mahdiya, Tripoli also appears as an important naval base, while in Sicily, the capital Palermo was the most important base. Later historians like Ibn Khaldun and al-Maqrizi attribute to al-Mahdi and his successors the construction of vast fleets numbering 600 or even 900 ships, but this is obviously an exaggeration and reflects more the impression subsequent generations retained of Fatimid sea-power than actual reality during the 10th century. In fact, the only references in near-contemporary sources about construction of ships at Mahdiya are in regard to the scarcity of wood, which delayed or even stopped construction, and necessitated the import of timber not only from Sicily, but from as far as India.
The governor of Mahdiya—from 948/9 the post was held by the eunuch chamberlain and chief administrator Jawdhar—seems to have also entailed the supervision of the arsenal and naval affairs in general. A certain Husayn ibn Ya'qub is called and in the sources, but his exact role is unclear. He was clearly a subordinate of Jawdhar, but despite his title does not appear to have actively commanded the fleet, and his tasks were probably more related with administration or ship construction. Given the focus of Fatimid naval activities against the Byzantines in southern Italy, actual command of the fleet was apparently in the hands of the governor of Sicily.
The structure of the navy in the lower ranks is equally obscure. Based on the breakdown of the prisoners captured off Rosetta in 920, the crews appear to have been recruited in Sicily and the ports of Tripoli and Barqa, while the bulk of the fighting troops was composed of the Kutama Berbers—the main supporters of the Fatimid regime—and the Zuwayla, black Africans recruited into the Fatimid military. As Yaacov Lev comments, this may provide some insight into the generally poor performance of the Fatimid fleets in the early years of the regime: the Kutama were loyal but inexperienced at sea, while the crews, drawn from the maritime populations newly under Fatimid control, were politically unreliable. Furthermore, it appears that the quality of the naval crews suffered as recruitment into the navy was forcible and unpopular. It also tended to affect mostly the lower classes, among whom, as Lev summarizes it, "he navy was despised and naval service was regarded as a calamity".