Qualla: Emirate of Crete https://qualla.com/emirate-of-crete en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:30 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/3/8/emirate-of-crete-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Emirate of Crete https://qualla.com/emirate-of-crete Emirate of Crete: Introduction https://qualla.com/emirate-of-crete/ Photo credit Kyrvas at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0. Around 818, an uprising in the Córdoban suburb of al-Rabad was crushed by the emir al-Hakam I, and the surviving residents were ordered into exile en masse. Some made for Fez. Others, perhaps ten thousand strong, took to ships and went east. They surfaced in Alexandria and held the city for some years before an Abbasid general drove them out under the terms of an agreement that allowed them to leave with their families in forty ships. Their leader was a man named Umar ibn Hafs ibn Shuayb ibn Isa al-Balluti, known to history as Abu Hafs, and the place they decided to settle was an island they had raided before: Crete. The state they founded would last for 135 years.

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Image: Kyrvas at English Wikipedia | CC BY 3.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/3/8/emirate-of-crete-wp/sw38-emirate-of-crete-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Emirate of Crete: Refugees Who Built a Capital https://qualla.com/emirate-of-crete/ Photo credit Tango7174, CC BY-SA 4.0. It is worth pausing on what these people were. They were not invading conquerors in the abstract. They were exiles - men, women, and children whose city had cast them out, who had spent years moving between Mediterranean ports trying to find a place that would let them stay. The ...

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Image: Tango7174 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/3/8/emirate-of-crete-wp/sw38-emirate-of-crete-refugees-who-built-a-capital.mp3 0:06 2 full Emirate of Crete: An Ordered State and a Pirate's Nest https://qualla.com/emirate-of-crete/ Photo credit Unknown, 13th-century author, Public domain. Byzantine sources describe the emirate as a corsair's nest, a base from which Muslim raiders ravaged the Aegean coasts. They are not wrong. Cretan fleets did attack Euboea, the Cyclades, the Peloponnese, even the monasteries of Mount Athos. They worked with Syrian fleets that use...

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Image: Unknown, 13th-century author | Public domain

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/3/8/emirate-of-crete-wp/sw38-emirate-of-crete-an-ordered-state-and-a-pirates-nest.mp3 0:06 3 full Emirate of Crete: Christians, Muslims, and the Ones Who Stayed https://qualla.com/emirate-of-crete/ Photo credit Unknown, 13th-century author, Public domain. What happened to the Greek Christian population already on Crete when the Andalusians arrived has been debated for a thousand years. The traditional view, drawn from Byzantine polemic, is that they were either killed, enslaved, or forcibly converted. Muslim sources tell a more co...

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Image: Unknown, 13th-century author | Public domain

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/3/8/emirate-of-crete-wp/sw38-emirate-of-crete-christians-muslims-and-the-ones-who-stayed.mp3 0:06 4 full Emirate of Crete: The Reconquest and Its Cost https://qualla.com/emirate-of-crete/ Photo credit Unknown, 13th-century author, Public domain. Byzantine emperors tried to take Crete back for nearly a century and a half. Theoktistos got most of the island in 842 but had to abandon the campaign for political reasons in Constantinople, and the troops he left behind were slaughtered. An expedition under Himerios in 911 was ...

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Image: Unknown, 13th-century author | Public domain

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/3/8/emirate-of-crete-wp/sw38-emirate-of-crete-the-reconquest-and-its-cost.mp3 0:06 5 full