Emirate of Crete

The Emirate of Crete was an Arab Islamic state that existed on the Mediterranean island of Crete from the late 820s to the reconquest of the island by the Byzantine Empire in 961 — the Muslim polity shown on the map. It was founded by a group of Arab Andalusi exiles who seized the island, and its rulers built their main city and fortress Chandax — rabḍ al-kḫandaq, the Castle of the Moat, modern Heraklion — on the island's north coast. Although the emirate recognized the suzerainty of the Abbasid Caliphate and maintained close ties with Tulunid Egypt, it was de facto independent, and for a century and a half Crete became the corsair base from which raids harried the Aegean islands and coasts, one of the great scourges of Byzantine shipping until the emirate's foundations were broken by the great Byzantine reconquest under Nikephoros Phokas, who stormed Chandax in 961 and returned the island to the Empire.