Fatimid navy

Fatimid navy
The Fatimid dynastic colour was white, a colour associated with Shi'ism and in symbolic opposition to Abbasid black. Red and yellow banners were associated with the Fatimid caliph's person.[1]
Dates of operation	909–1171
Allegiance	Fatimid Caliphate
Active regions	Mediterranean Sea, Nile, Red Sea
Ideology	Isma'ilism, Jihad
Opponents	Byzantine Empire, Abbasid Caliphate, Caliphate of Córdoba, Qarmatians, Republic of Genoa, Republic of Venice
Battles and wars	Arab–Byzantine wars in Sicily and the Levant, wars of expansion of the Fatimid Caliphate in North Africa, Crusades

The navy of the Fatimid Caliphate was one of the most developed early Muslim navies and a major force in the central and eastern Mediterranean in the 10th–12th centuries. As with the dynasty it served, its history is in two phases. The first was c. 909 to 969, when the Fatimids were based in Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia); the second lasted until the end of the dynasty in 1171, when they were based in Egypt. During the first period, the navy was employed mainly against the Byzantine Empire in Sicily and southern Italy, where it enjoyed mixed success. It was also in the initially unsuccessful attempts to conquer Egypt from the Abbasids and brief clashes with the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba.

During the first decades after the eventual Fatimid conquest of Egypt in 969, the main naval enemy remained the Byzantines, but the war was fought mostly on land over control of Syria, and naval operations were limited to maintaining Fatimid control over the coastal cities of the Levant. Warfare with the Byzantines ended after 1000 with a series of truces, and the navy became once more important with the arrival of the Crusaders in the Holy Land in the late 1090s.

Despite it being well funded and equipped, and one of the few standing navies of its time, a combination of technological and geographical factors prohibited the Fatimid navy from being able to secure supremacy at sea, or interdict the Crusaders' maritime lines of communication to Western Europe. The Fatimids retained a sizeable navy almost up to the end of the regime, but most of the fleet, and its great arsenal, went up in flames in the destruction of Fustat in 1169.