LEO VI ARABUS? An Unknown Fragment from the Arabic Translation of Leo VI’s Taktika

The aim of this article is to introduce a hitherto unknown Arabic quotation from the military manual written originally in Greek under the name of the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI (886-912). This quotation is found in the fourteenth century Arabic military treatise At-tadbTrat as-sul~nTyya IT siyasat a~-~ana'i' al-J:tarbTyya written by a Mamlak high ranking officer, a "colonel" Ibn MankalT. Greek quotations and longer passages found in military manuals of the Arabs are of great importance. They allow a modern historian to evaluate Byzantine influence on Arab military thought and, moreover, occasionally give some ideas on medieval Arab military intelligence. 1


Introduction
Historians have traditionally pointed out that relations between Arabs and Byzantines predominantly consisted of constant wars. This image has not altered much in recent scholarship. This is generally due to the sources, which a modern historian nowadays has at his disposa1. 2 They contain frequent descriptions of military conflicts and exchanges of embassies, that overshadow cultural contacts between these two people. On the other hand, the • This article was first published in 1994 in the periodical "Macedonian Studies" (Austria). However, the publisher failed to send me the proof-galleys and I therefore was not able to correct the text accordingly. As a result the article appeared with many mistakes and, moreover without Greek and Arabic examples, which has forced me to consider this publication redundant. The present publication is correct and contains all the necessary examples. I have also consulted the scholarly literature published on this subject since that time and made necessary adjustments. I am grateful to the Institute of the Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy (St Petersburg Branch) and especially for the Curator of the Department of Manuscripts, Dr Margarita Vorobieva-Desiatovskaia for the kind permission to publish a fragment of the MS C 726 and Nigel Allan, who read the final version I A. G. Nedvetskii, Razvedka i kontrrazvedka v mamliukskom Egipte (po entsiklopedii al-Kalkashandi) http://nedvetsky.boom.rulbookslspies.htm, hereafter: Nedvetskii, Razvedka; N. Kourtakou, "Diplomacy and espionage: their role in Byzantine foreign relations 8 th _10 th centuries", Graeco-Arabica 6 (1995), p. 125-144.
2 See the authoritative compendium: A. A. Vasil'ev, Byzance et les Arabes, Bruxelles, 1935Bruxelles, -1950 texts, which describe the Arabs' use of Byzantine military stratagems are almost unknown. 3 Moreover, some of the sources contain information, which explicitly highlights the Arabs' scornful attitude towards Byzantine scientific and military achievements. 4 However, the Arabs did not entirely reject all the merits of their neighbours and enemies. Muslim intelligence was deeply interested in Byzantine administration, military equipment, and system of recruitment and borrowed everything they regarded worth while. 5 Traces of this interest can be seen in the scientific and military vocabulary used by medieval Arab authors, which to a great extent is based on the Greek and Byzantine military terminology.6 Direct information of how Arabs borrowed and consequently applied the achievements of their neighbours is rather limited. Sporadic information found in Byzantine sources allows us to suggest, that the Byzantines were trying to keep their military secrets, like the recipe of the famous "Greek fire", and did everything to prevent them being known to their enemies. 7 The Arabs certainly translated military manuals written in Greek and Persian. 8 However I did not come across any translations which have survived in complete form. Such translations (if they existed) were obviously rather rare, probably due to the fact that they were often made for "internal" use and therefore were not copied as frequently as translations from the Greek philosophical or medical texts.
V. Christides was the first to discover a few direct quotations from the Naumachika , ascribed to Leo VI in a military treatise (Al-alzkam fl fan al-qital fll-bafzr al-muliikfya wa rj-rjawabi! an-namiisfya) also composed by Ibn Manka1I. 9 A fragment, published in the present article has been found in another work by Ibn MankalI: At-tadblrat as-sul!anfyya fl siyiisat a~-~anii 'i' al-!zarbfyya. From this fragment one sees that the Byzantine way of manipulating the troops during combat was well regarded by a MamlUk high ranking officer several centuries after the death of the Byzantine military theoretician. A comparison of this fragment with the corresponding Greek source also sheds a additional light on the translation technique applied by the Arabs while translating technical literature from Greek during the medieval period. Greek text

The author and his work
The Arabic text of At-tadbfriit gives a direct reference to the title of a military treatise by Leo VI: Mariitib al-lJ,uriib. This title can only be translated as 'Tactics', since the Arabic root '-,ii.J traditionally corresponds to the Greek "t"a.crcrw and its derivatives. 19 No doubt, the title Mariitib al-lJ,urub is non other as a shortened version of the full title of the treatise, composed under the name of Leo VI: Twv tv 7tOAEp.mc:; "t"CXK"t"LKWV cruV"t"op.oc:; 7tCXpa.SOcrLc:;20, commonly known as Taktika. However, the actual text of the Taktika, at least the text published in the Greek Patrologia, does not contain any passage which directly corresponds to the Arabic text as cited above. Nevertheless, there are three paragraphs, where the fonnation of sixteen men (or zawg uz-zawg in Arabic) is mentioned. This is the reason, why the text under investigation should be carefully compared with all these paragraphs.
When the depth of formation is sixteen soldiers you can make the formation shallow or divide it, especially if you wish to stretch out the battle line with the purpose of encircling the enemy battle lines or make [your own formatioll} equal to that of the enemy.
The formation can also become deeper, i.e. doubled. Thus, when the depth of the formation is four men and you wish to double them and strengthen them for the assault, to the depth of the enemy formation, you should order "double the rows! .. 21 And the formation becomes eight men deep. If you wish to increase the depth to sixteen men, you should order again: "double the rows!" They then enter the same positions, one in front of another, and the depth becomes sixteen men.

Analysis
The paragraphs from the Leo VI's Taktika as cited above, when compared with the Arabic text of At-tadbfriit show that the Arab translator did not translate all of them, but prepared a kind of a digest. Here we have a type of "translation" from Greek into Arabic, when only the chief idea (or technical terms) were translated directly, while the the rest of the text was rendered quite freely, according to the interests of the author or, sometimes the tastes of the readers. This type of translation was not unusual. 22   Straipsnio tikslas -supažindinti su iki šiol buvusia nežinoma arabiška citata iš karybos sąvado, kurio originalas, parašytas graikų kalba, priskiriamas Bizantijos imperatoriui Leonui VI (886-912). Ši citata yra XIV amžiaus arabų karybos traktate At-tadbfriit as-sui!iinfyya Ji siyiisat a~-~anii 'i' al-~arbfyya, kurio autorius yra aukšto rango MarnJūkų valdininkas, "pulkininkas" Ibn Mankali. Arabų karybos sąvaduose aptinkamos graikiškos citatos ir ilgesnės ištraukos yra labai svarbios. Jos ne tik leidžia dabartiniams istorikams įvertinti Bizantijos įtaką arabų karybos minčiai, bet ir atskleidžia viduramžių arabų karybos laimėjimus. Įteikta 2004 m. kovo 8 d. 2S Christides, Warfare, p. 139 writes here: "We do not know the exact time the Arabic translation of Ibn al-Manqali (sie was made. Ibn al-Manqali simply mentions that he read it himself. Since he lived in the thirteenth century (sie) we can only place it some time between the tenth century (the time of its composition in Greek) and the thirteenth century.