Monday, June 6, 2022

Ancient Technology

 From The Big Think:

When the Muslim fleet of the Umayyad Caliphate attempted to lay siege to the Byzantine city of Constantinople in 674, their ships were doused in flames. At first, the Muslims were not alarmed; fire was often used in naval warfare and could be put out easily with cloth, dirt, or water. This, however, was no ordinary fire. Once ignited, it could not be extinguished, and after the entire fleet had burned down, even the sea itself was set ablaze.

The Umayyad Caliphate met its doom at the hands of a new military invention known as Greek fire, Roman fire, liquid fire, or sea fire, among many other names. No recipe survives, but historians speculate it might have involved petroleum, sulfur, or gunpowder. Of the three, petroleum seems the likeliest candidate, as gunpowder didn’t become readily available in Asia Minor until the 14th century, and sulfur lacked the destructive power described by Arab observers.

However, what makes Greek fire so impressive is not the chemistry of the fire itself but the design of the pressure pump the Byzantines used to launch it in the direction of their enemies. As the British historian John Haldon discusses in an essay titled “‘Greek Fire’ Revisited,” researchers struggle to recreate an historically accurate pump that could have propelled its content far enough to be of any use during naval battles, where enemy ships may be dozens or even hundreds of meters removed from one another.  (Read more.)

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