Greek fire

[5][6][7] The Graeco-Roman treatise Kestoi, compiled in the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD and traditionally ascribed to Julius Africanus, records a mixture that ignited from adequate heat and intense sunlight, used in grenades or night attacks: Automatic fire also by the following formula.

This is the recipe: take equal amounts of sulphur, rock salt, ashes, thunder stone, and pyrite and pound fine in a black mortar at midday sun.

Also in equal amounts of each ingredient mix together black mulberry resin and Zakynthian asphalt, the latter in a liquid form and free-flowing, resulting in a product that is sooty colored.

[8]In naval warfare, the Byzantine emperor Anastasius I (r. 491–518) is recorded by chronicler John Malalas to have been advised by a philosopher from Athens called Proclus to use sulfur to burn the ships of the rebel general Vitalian.

[12]The accuracy and exact chronology of this account is open to question: elsewhere, Theophanes reports the use of fire-carrying ships equipped with nozzles (siphōn)[13] by the Byzantines a couple of years before the supposed arrival of Kallinikos at Constantinople.

[15][16] The historian James Partington thinks it likely that Greek fire was not the creation of any single person but "invented by chemists in Constantinople who had inherited the discoveries of the Alexandrian chemical school".

"[30] In the 19th century, it is reported that an Armenian called Kavafian approached the government of the Ottoman Empire with a new type of Greek fire he claimed to have developed.

[36][37] The information available on Greek fire is indirect, based on references in the Byzantine military manuals and secondary historical sources such as Anna Komnene and Western European chroniclers, which are often inaccurate.

Then in this manner it meets the fire on the tip and catches light and falls like a fiery whirlwind on the faces of the enemies.At the same time, the reports by Western chroniclers of the famed ignis graecus are largely unreliable, since they apply the name to all incendiary substances.

[48] From the times of Isaac Vossius,[2] several scholars adhered to this position, most notably the so-called "French school" during the 19th century, which included chemist Marcellin Berthelot.

[49][50] This view has subsequently been rejected, since saltpeter does not appear to have been used in warfare in Europe or the Middle East before the 13th century, and is absent from the accounts of the Muslim writers – the foremost chemists of the early medieval world[51] – before the same period.

[66] There is also a surviving 9th-century Latin text, preserved at Wolfenbüttel in Germany, which mentions the ingredients of what appears to be Greek fire and the operation of the siphōns used to project it.

[2][67] Resins were probably added as a thickener (the Praecepta Militaria refer to the substance as πῦρ κολλητικόν, "sticky fire"), and to increase the duration and intensity of the flame.

[70] A 12th-century treatise prepared by Mardi bin Ali al-Tarsusi for Saladin records an Arab version of Greek fire, called naft, which also had a petroleum base, with sulfur and various resins added.

[71] An Italian recipe from the 16th century has been recorded for recreational use; it includes charcoal from a willow tree, saltpeter (sale ardente), alcohol, sulfur, incense, tar (pegola), wool, and camphor; the concoction was guaranteed to "burn under water" and to be "beautiful".

The Byzantine military manuals also mention that jars (chytrai or tzykalia) filled with Greek fire and caltrops wrapped with tow and soaked in the substance were thrown by catapults, while pivoting cranes (gerania) were employed to pour it upon enemy ships.

Anna Komnene gives this account of beast-shaped Greek fire projectors being mounted to the bow of warships:[78] As he [the Emperor Alexios I] knew that the Pisans were skilled in sea warfare and dreaded a battle with them, on the prow of each ship he had a head fixed of a lion or other land-animal, made in brass or iron with the mouth open and then gilded over, so that their mere aspect was terrifying.

And the fire which was to be directed against the enemy through tubes he made to pass through the mouths of the beasts, so that it seemed as if the lions and the other similar monsters were vomiting the fire.Some sources provide more information on the composition and function of the whole mechanism.

The Wolfenbüttel manuscript provides the following description:[67] ...having built a furnace right at the front of the ship, they set on it a copper vessel full of these things, having put fire underneath.

[80] These two texts are also the only two sources that explicitly mention that the substance was heated over a furnace before being discharged; although the validity of this information is open to question, modern reconstructions have relied upon them.

[86] The process of operating Haldon and Byrne's design was fraught with danger, as the mounting pressure could easily make the heated oil tank explode, a flaw which was not recorded as a problem with the historical fire weapon.

[87][88] In the experiments conducted by Haldon in 2002 for the episode "Fireship" of the television series Machines Times Forgot, even modern welding techniques failed to secure adequate insulation of the bronze tank under pressure.

[89] The portable cheirosiphōn ("hand-siphōn"), the earliest analogue to a modern flamethrower, is extensively attested in the military documents of the 10th century, and recommended for use in both sea and land.

[43] Subsequent authors continued to refer to the cheirosiphōnes, especially for use against siege towers; Nikephoros II Phokas also advises their use in field armies, with the aim of disrupting the enemy formation.