Product Code Database
Greek fire was an incendiary weapon system used by the Byzantine Empire from the seventh to the fourteenth centuries. The recipe for Greek fire was a closely-guarded state secret; historians have variously speculated that it was based on saltpeter, sulfur, or Calcium oxide, but most modern scholars agree that it was based on petroleum mixed with , comparable in composition to modern napalm. Byzantine sailors would toss loaded with Greek fire onto enemy ships or spray it from tubes. Its ability to burn on water made it an effective and destructive naval incendiary weapon, and rival powers tried unsuccessfully to copy the material.
In naval warfare, the Byzantine emperor Anastasius I () is recorded by chronicler John Malalas to have been advised by a philosopher from Athens called Proclus to use sulfur to burn the ships of the rebel general Vitalian.
Greek fire proper was developed in and is ascribed by the chronicler Theophanes the Confessor to Kallinikos (Latinized Callinicus), a Jewish architect from Heliopolis, in Syria, by then overrun by the Muslim conquests:
The accuracy and exact chronology of this account is open to question: elsewhere, Theophanes reports the use of fire-carrying ships equipped with nozzles (siphōn) by the Byzantines a couple of years before the supposed arrival of Kallinikos at Constantinople. If this is not due to chronological confusion of the events of the siege, it may suggest that Kallinikos introduced an improved version of an established weapon. The historian James Partington thinks it likely that Greek fire was not the creation of any single person but "invented by chemists in Constantinople who had inherited the discoveries of the chemical school". The 11th-century chronicler George Kedrenos records that Kallinikos came from Heliopolis in Egypt, but most scholars reject this as an error. Kedrenos also records the story, considered implausible by modern scholars, that Kallinikos' descendants, a family called Lampros, "brilliant", kept the secret of the fire's manufacture and continued doing so to Kedrenos' time.
Kallinikos' development of Greek fire came at a critical moment in the Byzantine Empire's history: weakened by its long wars with Sassanid Persia, the Byzantines had been unable to effectively resist the onslaught of the Muslim conquests. Within a generation, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt had fallen to the Arabs, who in set out to conquer the imperial capital of Constantinople. Greek fire was used to great effect against the Muslim fleets, helping to repel the Muslims at the first and second Arab sieges of the city. Records of its use in later naval battles against the are more sporadic, but it secured victories during the Byzantine expansion in the late 9th and early 10th centuries. Use of the substance was prominent in Byzantine civil wars, chiefly the revolt of the thematic fleets in 727 and the large-scale rebellion led by Thomas the Slav in 821–823. In both cases, the rebel fleets were defeated by the Constantinople-based central Imperial fleet through the use of Greek fire. The Byzantines also used the weapon to devastating effect against the various Rus' raids on the Bosphorus, especially those of 941 and 1043, as well as during the Bulgarian war of 970–971, when the fire-carrying Byzantine ships blockaded the Danube.
The importance placed on Greek fire during the Empire's struggle against the Arabs led to its discovery being ascribed to divine intervention. The Emperor Constantine VII (), in his book De Administrando Imperio, admonishes his son and heir, Romanos II (), never to reveal the secrets of its composition, as it was "shown and revealed by an angel to the great and holy first Christian emperor Constantine I" and that the angel bound him "not to prepare this fire but for Christians, and only in the imperial city". As a warning, he adds that one official, who was bribed into handing some of it over to the Empire's enemies, was struck down by a "flame from heaven" as he was about to enter a church. As the latter incident demonstrates, the Byzantines could not avoid capture of their secret weapon: the Arabs captured at least one fireship intact in 827, and the Bulgars captured several siphōns and much of the substance itself in 812/814. This was apparently not enough to allow their enemies to copy it (see below). The Arabs used various incendiary substances similar to the Byzantine weapon, but were never able to copy the Byzantine method of deployment by siphōn, and used catapults and grenades instead.
Greek fire continued to be mentioned during the 12th century, and Anna Komnene gives a vivid description of its use in a naval battle against the in 1099. The use of hastily improvised is mentioned during the 1203 siege of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, but no report confirms the use of Greek fire. This might be because of the general disarmament of the Empire in the 20 years leading up to the sacking, or because the Byzantines had lost access to the areas where the primary ingredients were to be found, or even perhaps because the secret had been lost over time.
Records of a 13th-century use of "Greek fire" by the Saracens against the Crusaders can be read through the Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville during the Seventh Crusade. One description of the memoir says "the tail of fire that trailed behind it was as big as a great spear; and it made such a noise as it came, that it sounded like the thunder of heaven. It looked like a dragon flying through the air. Such a bright light did it cast, that one could see all over the camp as though it were day, by reason of the great mass of fire, and the brilliance of the light that it shed."
In the 19th century, it is reported that an Armenians called Kavafian approached the government of the Ottoman Empire with a new type of Greek fire he claimed to have developed. Kavafian refused to reveal its composition when asked by the government, insisting that he be placed in command of its use during naval engagements. Not long after this, he was poisoned by imperial authorities, without their ever having found out his secret. Hrachia Adjarian. "Հայոց դերը Օսմանյան կայսրության մեջ" The. Banber Erevani Hamalsarani 1967; trans. in Charles Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 1800–1914, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, p. 64.
The information available on Greek fire is indirect, based on references in the Byzantine military manuals and secondary historical sources such as Anna Komnene and Western European chroniclers, which are often inaccurate. In her Alexiad, Anna Komnene provides a description of an incendiary weapon, which was used by the Byzantine garrison of Dyrrhachium in 1108 against the Normans. It is often regarded as an at least partial "recipe" for Greek fire:Scott, James Sibbald David (1868). The British army: its origin, progress, and equipment. p. 190.
At the same time, the reports by Western chroniclers of the famed ignis graecus are largely unreliable, since they apply the name to all incendiary substances.
In attempting to reconstruct the Greek fire system, the evidence from the contemporary literary references provides the following characteristics:
This view has subsequently been rejected, since saltpeter does not appear to have been used in warfare in Europe or the Middle East before the 13th century, and is absent from the accounts of the Muslim writers – the foremost chemists of the early Middle Ages world – before the same period. In addition, the behavior of the suggested mixture would have been very different from the siphōn-projected substance described by Byzantine sources.
A second view, based on the fact that Greek fire was inextinguishable by water (some sources suggest that water intensified the flames), suggested that its destructive power was the result of the explosive reaction between water and quicklime. Although quicklime was known and used by the Byzantines and the Arabs in warfare, the theory is refuted by literary and empirical evidence. A quicklime-based substance would have to come in contact with water to ignite, while Emperor Leo's Tactica indicates that Greek fire was often poured directly onto the decks of enemy ships,Leo VI, Tactica, XIX.67, transl. in although admittedly, decks were kept wet due to lack of sealants. Likewise, Leo describes the use of grenades,Leo VI, Tactica, XIX.63, transl. in which further reinforces the view that contact with water was not necessary for the substance's ignition. Zenghelis (1932) pointed out that, based on experiments, the result of the water–quicklime reaction would be negligible in the open sea.
Another similar proposition suggested that Kallinikos had discovered calcium phosphide, which can be made by boiling bones in urine in a sealed vessel.Colin McEvedy (1992), The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, New York: Penguin. On contact with water it releases phosphine, which ignites spontaneously. Extensive experiments with calcium phosphide also failed to reproduce the described intensity of Greek fire.
Consequently, although the presence of either quicklime or saltpeter in the mixture cannot be entirely excluded, they were not the primary ingredient. Most modern scholars agree that Greek fire was based on either crude or refined petroleum, comparable to modern napalm. The Byzantines had easy access to crude oil from the naturally occurring wells around the Black Sea (e.g., the wells around Tmutorakan noted by Constantine Porphyrogennetos) or in various locations throughout the Middle East. An alternate name for Greek fire was "Medes fire" (μηδικὸν πῦρ), and the 6th-century historian Procopius records that crude oil, called "naphtha" (in Greek: νάφθα náphtha, from Old Persian 𐎴𐎳𐎫]] naft) by the Persians, was known to the Greeks as "Median oil" (μηδικὸν ἔλαιον).Procopius, De bello Gothico, IV.11.36, cited in This seems to corroborate the availability of naphtha as a basic ingredient of Greek fire.
Naphtha was also used by the Abbasids in the 9th century, with special troops, the naffāṭūn, who wore thick protective suits and used small copper vessels containing burning oil, which they threw onto the enemy troops. There is also a surviving 9th-century Latin text, preserved at Wolfenbüttel in Germany, which mentions the ingredients of what appears to be Greek fire and the operation of the siphōns used to project it. Although the text contains some inaccuracies, it identifies the main component as naphtha. were probably added as a thickener (the Praecepta Militaria refer to the substance as πῦρ κολλητικόν, "sticky fire"), and to increase the duration and intensity of the flame. A modern theoretical concoction included the use of pine tar and animal fat.
A 12th-century treatise prepared by Mardi bin Ali al-Tarsusi for Saladin records an Arab version of Greek fire, called naft, which also had a petroleum base, with sulfur and various resins added. Any direct relation with the Byzantine formula is unlikely. An Isabella Cortese recipe from the 16th century has been recorded for recreational use; it includes charcoal from a willow tree, saltpeter (sale ardente), alcohol, sulfur, incense, tar (pegola), wool, and camphor; the concoction was guaranteed to "burn under water" and to be "beautiful".
As he the knew that the were skilled in sea warfare and dreaded a battle with them, on the prow of each ship he had a head fixed of a lion or other land-animal, made in brass or iron with the mouth open and then gilded over, so that their mere aspect was terrifying. And the fire which was to be directed against the enemy through tubes he made to pass through the mouths of the beasts, so that it seemed as if the lions and the other similar monsters were vomiting the fire.
Some sources provide more information on the composition and function of the whole mechanism. The Wolfenbüttel manuscript provides the following description:
...having built a furnace right at the front of the ship, they set on it a copper vessel full of these things, having put fire underneath. And one of them, having made a bronze tube similar to that which the rustics call a squitiatoria, "squirt," with which boys play, they spray it at the enemy.
Another, possibly first-hand, account of the use of Greek fire comes from the 11th-century Yngvars saga víðförla, in which the Viking Ingvar the Far-Travelled faces ships equipped with Greek fire weapons:
They began blowing with smiths’ bellows at a furnace in which there was fire and there came from it a great din. There stood there also a brass or tube and from it flew much fire against one ship, and it burned up in a short time so that all of it became white ashes...The account, albeit embellished, corresponds with many of the characteristics of Greek fire known from other sources, such as a loud roar that accompanied its discharge. These two texts are also the only two sources that explicitly mention that the substance was heated over a furnace before being discharged; although the validity of this information is open to question, modern reconstructions have relied upon them.
Based on these descriptions and the Byzantine sources, John Haldon and Maurice Byrne designed a hypothetical apparatus as consisting of three main components: a bronze pump, which was used to pressurize the oil; a brazier, used to heat the oil (πρόπυρον, propyron, "pre-heater"); and the nozzle, which was covered in bronze and mounted on a swivel (στρεπτόν, strepton). The brazier, burning a match of linen or flax that produced intense heat and the characteristic thick smoke, was used to heat oil and the other ingredients in an airtight tank above it, a process that also helped to dissolve the resins into a fluid mixture. The substance was pressurized by the heat and the use of a force pump. After it had reached the proper pressure, a valve connecting the tank with the swivel was opened and the mixture was discharged from its end, being ignited at its mouth by a flame. The intense heat of the flame made necessary the presence of heat shields made of iron (βουκόλια, boukolia), which are attested in the fleet inventories.
The process of operating Haldon and Byrne's design was fraught with danger, as the mounting pressure could easily make the heated oil tank explode, a flaw which was not recorded as a problem with the historical fire weapon. In the experiments conducted by Haldon in 2002 for the episode "Fireship" of the television series Machines Times Forgot, even modern welding techniques failed to secure adequate insulation of the bronze tank under pressure. This led to the relocation of the pressure pump between the tank and the nozzle. The full-scale device built on this basis established the effectiveness of the mechanism's design, even with the simple materials and techniques available to the Byzantines. The experiment used crude oil mixed with wood resins, and achieved a flame temperature of over and an effective range of up to .For a detailed description, cf. An interesting characteristic displayed during these tests was that, contrary to expectations due to the flame's heat, the stream of fire projected through the tube did not curve upwards but downwards, as the fuel was not completely vaporized as it left the nozzle. This fact is important because medieval galleys had a low profile, and a high-arcing flame would miss them entirely.
The Muslim navies eventually adapted themselves to it by staying out of its effective range and devising methods of protection such as felt or hides soaked in vinegar.
Nevertheless, it was still a decisive weapon in many battles. John Julius Norwich wrote: "It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Greek fire in Byzantine history."Norwich, John Julius (1991) Byzantium: The Apogee, London: BCA, p. 151
|
|
