Imran Abdullah

Although Muslims rode the sea in the early migration of Abyssinia and the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, predicted in an honorable hadith that Muslims would ride the sea, Caliph Umar Ibn Al-Khattab preferred the desert ships over the ships of the seas, considering that the vast sea water is a natural fortress between him and his enemies.

The Caliph Al-Rashidi refused a request from the ruler of the Levant at the time, Muawiya bin Abi Sufyan, to ride the sea and respond to the Byzantine attacks on the coasts of the Levant, and to isolate the military commander, Ala bin Al-Hadrami, because he boarded the sea to fight the Persians, but the Mediterranean later became the field and the most active Maritime Front The different "Islamic caliphate" countries are, according to a book by Christophe Picard, professor of medieval history at the University of Paris.

Picard continued to focus on the Mediterranean with a specialized background across 13 books over the past twenty years, and in his book published in French under the title "Sea of ​​the Caliphs: the Mediterranean in the Islamic World in the Middle Ages," he recounted the adventures of Muslim sailors who competed with the Greek sailors And Latinos to control the Mediterranean since the seventh century AD.

He believes that by the time Christian forces seized trade routes in the 13th century AD, the Islamic identity had been formed during repeated confrontations across the "Sea of ​​Caliphs", and its coasts and waters witnessed the most difficult competition between the Christian and Muslim worlds, addressing changing Muslim perceptions of the Mediterranean and citing the position of the Caliph Omar bin al-Khattab and his military leaders forbade riding the sea.

The author notes that Islamic maritime law and jurisprudential and legal rules relating to ship possession and shipwreck developed on the shores of the western Islamic Mediterranean - specifically in Tunisia - as the main site of maritime commercial activity.

The book pointed out that the investments made by the Islamic State in the navy and port facilities, in commitment to jihad and in defense of the country, led to expansion and spread, explaining navigation techniques and tools and pilgrimage trips by sea and dealing with the official documents of commercial marine transport in the Islamic Mediterranean world.

Sovereignty over the sea
Picard points to the occurrence of early naval battles since the caliphate took control of Gaza and the coast of Bilad al-Sham, and the extension of Islamic sovereignty over the sea waters until the time of the decline of Islamic maritime superiority in the 12th century with the transformation of sovereignty over the sea to Italian cities.

In the first chapters of the book, the author discusses the Muslims removing the Byzantines from the Egyptian and eastern shores of the sea in the Levant, and he said that the initial strategy was to prevent the Orthodox Christians (Byzantines) from recovering the beaches from which they obtained the necessary supplies.

Muslims won the Byzantines in 34 AH in the battle of the same masts that took place in the Mediterranean, and soon the Islamic fleet took control of the Mediterranean islands, and Abd al-Malik bin Marwan the Umayyad Caliph established a naval base in Cartagena at a later time, while Muawiya bin Abi Sufyan and his men launched their attack The first is on Cyprus, the closest island in the Mediterranean to the shores of the Levant, which has become the gateway to Muslim domination of the Mediterranean.

Thus, the Mediterranean became a region of jihad of the caliphs with distinction after it was the Sea of ​​Rum, and the banner of this jihad was transferred from one succession to another across the eastern and western Mediterranean, and this was interrupted by periods of the Crusades and Italian cities controlling the waters of the sea and the Mediterranean islands.

The author says he returned to European sources, because Islamic sources do not separate all their battles and encounters in the Mediterranean, and instead tend to monitor only major victories, as he put it.

Strategies of the caliphs
The second section of the book deals with "Strategies of the Caliphs in the Mediterranean" from one era to the next and for three centuries of Islamic domination over the sea, including battles, ports, commanders, sailors, shipyards, and fortifications "Maritime".

The author provides a detailed historical picture of the Muslim ruling powers in controlling the Mediterranean, explaining how Christians were unable to compete with Islamic forces along the Mediterranean until the Italian navy appeared later.

He believes that the Islamic military strategy adopted a rule that the conquests of the Egyptian and Levantine coasts could not be preserved without developing a naval force capable of repelling the counter-attacks of their Byzantine opponents, before the front moved to the Mediterranean islands, the most important of which are Cyprus, Crete, Rhodes and Sicily, and was also subjected to an attempt to open Constantinople by sea in The time of the Ottomans.

Marine capabilities
Chapter 9 explains the follow-up of the Abbasids and the Umayyads in Andalusia to build maritime capabilities, and discusses the role of the Aghlabids in North Africa and the western part of the Mediterranean and "the maritime awakening of the Muslim West" (in Chapter X of the book).

He recounts how the Aghlabids built a strong naval fleet that controlled Sicily for almost a century, dominated southern Italy, and built a naval fleet base from African beaches to provide reinforcements and maintain power in Sicily.

The ninth century AD also witnessed Vikings attacks on Islamic coasts, which prompted the Umayyads in Andalusia to strengthen their port defenses and develop their naval forces, while the same century saw a remarkable growth in maritime traffic between Andalusia Cordoba and the Maghreb.

Competition and the economy
Picard in Chapter 11 reveals the astonishing end of Islamic jihad in the Mediterranean when Umayyad strategies in Andalusia and Fatimidism in North Africa turned into internal disputes and attempted to wrest the Abbasid caliphate, and the sea was divided between conflicting naval sovereignties.

Picard also discusses the economic implications of Islamic sovereignty over the Mediterranean, the enormous trade networks that formed thanks to the African Sahara gold, the lucrative Indian Ocean trade and the great economic prosperity in which Cairo became the capital of gold, and how the marine networks of competing Islamic empires facilitated the growth of trade.

Later on, the Italians took advantage of these networks and eventually formed a "12th century trade revolution" in Europe, according to the author's expression - the stage that was followed by European domination of the sea - despite the fact that the Almohads led a strong Islamic freedom that confronted the Italians and Catalans until the cuff turned after a battle The famous punishment that marked the turning point and end of the Almohads.