'[26]
At first the fleet was manned by sailors drawn from the Phoenician
towns where nautical energy was not yet quite extinct; and later
the crews were recruited from Syria, Egypt, and the coasts of
Asia Minor. Ships were built at most of the Syrian and Egyptian
ports, and also at Obolla and Bushire on the Persian Gulf,' whilst
the mercantile marine and maritime trade were fostered and
encouraged. The sea-power thus created was largely artificial.
It drooped--as in similar cases--when the special encouragement
was withdrawn. 'In the days of Arabian energy,' says Hallam,
'Constantinople was twice, in 668 and 716, attacked by great
naval armaments.' The same authority believes that the abandonment
of such maritime enterprises by the Saracens may be attributed to
the removal of the capital from Damascus to Bagdad. The removal
indicated a lessened interest in the affairs of the Mediterranean
Sea, which was now left by the administration far behind. 'The
Greeks in their turn determined to dispute the command of the
sea,' with the result that in the middle of the tenth century
their empire was far more secure from its enemies than under the
first successors of Heraclius. Not only was the fall of the empire,
by a rational reliance on sea-power, postponed for centuries,
but also much that had been lost was regained. 'At the close of
the tenth century the emperors of Constantinople possessed the
best and greatest part' of Southern Italy, part of Sicily, the
whole of what is now called the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor,
with some parts of Syria and Armenia.
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