Secrecy, Technology, and War: Greek Fire and the Defense of Byzantium, 678-1204

Abstract

In 678, Constantinople was in extremis. For the fifth consecutive year, an Arab fleet, raised and dispatched by the great Caliph Muawija and based at the captured peninsula of Cyzicus, just south of Constantinople, was combining with an army before the European walls of the city to besiege the Byzantine capital. Seemingly powerless to drive off the newly established naval power of the Arabs, the Byzantines huddled within their walls and prayed. Their prayers were answered by a man named Kallinikos, a Greek architect or engineer who had recently escaped from his Arab conquerors in Syria in order, it is said, to bring a new and decisive invention to the Byzantines. He had invented what came to be called Greek fire, a napalm-like substance that burned in water and could be projected great distances from the bows of ships. Relying on his weapon, the Byzantines succeeded in driving off the Arab fleet and lifting the siege of Constantinople. The Arabs, for their part, encountered a killer storm in their flight for home and lost most of the remaining vessels that had not been scorched by Kallinikos and his fire.'