초록 열기/닫기 버튼
From the 7th Century the Muslim Saracens invaded Byzantine territory in the Aegean Sea. They settled in Crete after 823, whereupon Abu Hsan of Cordova in Andalusia attacked Crete as he had been in dispute with the Caliph of the Omeiad Dynasty of Spain. Then, Crete came to be under the Saracen’s dominance for a century and a half until Nicephoros Phocas re-conquered Crete to encompass it in the Byzantine territory. In the 8th-10th centuries, the Saracens who had made a base in Crete spread farther around the Aegean Sea. Some of the authors of the Byzantine chronicles as well as modern scholars used to define the activities of the Saracens in the Aegean Sea as piracy, and justify the military campaign of the Byzantine Empire against them as legal activities to exterminate piracy. It is difficult, however, to conclude the Saracen’s advance into the Aegean Sea simply as piracy, and moreover as a cause for the antagonism among different religions or ethnicities. On the contrary, the Cretan aborigines tended to cooperate with the Saracens who came to attack or settle in Crete. Even if they preferred autonomy as much as possible, the Cretans used to demonstrate two opposing propensities. One was to adhere to the authority of the Byzantine Empire, which was shown among the upper class priests: the Orthodox Church was a means to connect the upper class Cretans to the aristocrats of Constantinople. The other was to resist the Byzantine Empire by helping the Saracens, which appeared among the common people. The existence of these two opposing propensities among the Cretans proves that the antagonism between the Saracens and the Byzantine Empire did not refer just to the competition for political and military hegemony, but also to the differences of the political, economic and social structures of which they were oriented to. The Byzantine Empire was sustained by bureaucratic administration, imposition of more or less heavy taxes against farmers or merchants, and the pursuit of political and military hegemony, while the Cretan people or Saracens were inclined to enjoy relatively more liberal livelihoods as farmers or merchants in juxtaposition to the authority of the Byzantine Empire.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
Saracen, Crete, Morea, Byzantine Empire, Muslim Orthodox Church
