Leo of Tripoli

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Leo of Tripoli was a Greek pirate serving Saracen interests in the early tenth century. Born in Greece to Christian parents, he later converted to Islam and took employment with his former captors as an admiral.

His first Arabic name was Ġulām Zurāfa, meaning "slave of Zurafa." He later took the name Rašiq al-Wardāmī, probably from the Greek Mardaïtes, meaning "from Attaleia."

On 31 July 904, Leo sacked Antâliya, either Attaleia or Salonika. In 907, gathering a fleet from Tarsus and Laodicea, he sailed up the Dardanelles and assaulted the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople. In May 912, Leo and his fellow Saracen pirate Damian of Tyre defeated Himerios, the logothete of the Drome, in retaliation for an attack on some Cypriot Arabs. Finally, in 924, the imperial navy annihilated Leo's fleet off Lemnos.

[edit] Sources

• Vasiliev, A. A. Byzance et les Arabes. 1960.
• Jenkins, R. J. H. Review of Muslim Sea-Power in the Eastern Mediterranean from the Seventh to the Tenth Century A. D. by Aly Mohamed Fahmy. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1. (1952), pp. 180-181. University of London.
• Jenkins, R. J. H. "The Supposed Russian Attack on Constantinople in 907: Evidence of the Pseudo-Symeon." Speculum, Vol. 24, No. 3. (Jul., 1949), pp. 403-406.
• Jenkins, R. J. H. "A Note on the 'Letter to the Emir' of Nicholas Mysticus (in Notes)." Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 17. (1963), pp. 399-401.