In the 670’s something was brewing in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Umayyad caliphate had built an impressive navy and was scoring victories at sea over the Roman empire. It looked like the Caliphate was ready to make a move against the Roman capital of Constantinople. But did they? Our sources tell us wildly different things. Was there a seven year siege? A four year siege? No siege at all?
Tune-in and find out how sassy Edward Gibbon, unreliable churchmen, and ambiguous fire ships all play a role in the story.
A map of Constantinople accurate to the 7th century
Works Cited
Brownworth, Lars. Lost to the West : The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization. 1st ed., Crown Publishers, 2009.
El-Cheikh, Nadia Maria. Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs. Distributed for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University by Harvard University Press, 2004.
Evans, Helen C., and Brandie Ratliff. Byzantium and Islam : Age of Transition 7th – 9th Century. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012
Haldon, John F. Byzantium in the Seventh Century : The Transformation of a Culture. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Haldon, John F. The Empire That Would Not Die : The Paradox of Eastern Roman Survival, 640-740. Harvard University Press, 2016.
Howard-Johnston, James. Witnesses to a World Crisis : Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Jankowiak, Marek. “The First Arab Siege of Constantinople”. In Zuckerman, Constantin (ed.). Travaux et mémoires, Vol. 17: Constructing the Seventh Century. Paris: Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance. pp. 237–320. 2013
Theophanes, et al. The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor : Byzantine and Near Eastern History, AD 284-813. Clarendon Press, 1997.