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Early medieval Europe (500–1000)Science and technology

Invention of Greek fire

Around 672, as the Umayyad fleets prepared to attack Constantinople, the Byzantines acquired a “sea fire” — according to Theophanes, the invention of Kallinikos, a refugee craftsman from Heliopolis in Syria. Probably petroleum-based and sprayed from pressurized siphons, it burned even on water; it helped to repel the Arab sieges and remained a state secret whose recipe is lost.

Date
c. 672year known, approximate
Place
Constantinopletoday: Istanbul, Turkey · Balkans and Anatolia
Participants
Callinicus of Heliopolis, Constantine IV, Byzantine Empire, Umayyad Caliphate
Threads
Early medieval Europe (500–1000)
Also known as
Greek fire; Греческий огонь; Sea fire; Морской огонь; Liquid fire; Жидкий огонь; Kallinikos; Каллиник

Incendiary mixtures of sulphur, pitch and naphtha had long been used in war — defenders threw such fire pots at Byzantine siege engines at Petra in 550–551 — but the new weapon was different. Theophanes the Confessor, writing in the early 9th century, reports that “Kallinikos, an artificer from Heliopolis”, fled to the Romans and devised a sea fire that set the Arab ships ablaze with their crews; his chronology points to about 672, though by other accounts Kallinikos fled around 668. Yet Theophanes also mentions fire-carrying ships with siphons a couple of years before Kallinikos’s supposed arrival, and the historian of chemistry J. R. Partington thought the weapon more likely the work of chemists in Constantinople, heirs to the Alexandrian tradition, than of a single inventor. Legends grew around it: Constantine VII told his son that the fire had been revealed by an angel to Constantine the Great and was to be made only for Christians.

Greek fire was a whole weapon system: a liquid heated and pressurized in a special apparatus and projected through a tube, the siphōn, from dromon warships, or thrown in grenades. Byzantine writers called it “sea fire”, “liquid fire” or “Roman fire”; it burned on water and could reportedly be put out only with sand, strong vinegar or old urine. Knowledge of its parts was divided among different specialists, and when the Bulgars took Mesembria and Debeltos in the early 9th century and seized 36 siphons and a supply of the liquid, they could not use them. Its composition is unknown: the old idea of saltpetre, an early gunpowder, has been abandoned, and most scholars think it was based on petroleum mixed with resins.

The fire helped to defeat the Arab fleets in the sieges of 674–678 and 717–718, destroyed rebel fleets in 727 and 821–823 and burned the ships of the Rus’ prince Igor in 941. It is still mentioned in the 12th century, but there is no reliable report of its use when the crusaders attacked Constantinople in 1203–1204, and the secret seems to have been lost.

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7th century

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): Greek fire
  2. Wikipedia (English): Callinicus of Heliopolis
  3. Wikipedia (Russian): Греческий огонь
  4. Wikipedia (Russian): Каллиник (инженер)
  5. The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor / transl. C. Mango, R. Scott. — Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
  6. Partington J. R. A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder. — Cambridge: Heffer, 1960.
  7. Pryor J. H., Jeffreys E. M. The Age of the ΔΡΟΜΩΝ: The Byzantine Navy ca. 500–1204. — Leiden: Brill, 2006.