Battle of Chios (1319)

Battle of Chios
Part of the Latin campaigns against Turkish pirates
Date 23 July 1319 Location off Chios Result Hospitaller victory
Belligerents
Order of Saint John Lordship of Chios	Aydinids
Commanders and leaders
Albert of Schwarzburg	Mehmed Beg
Strength
31 ships	10 galleys 18 other ships
Casualties and losses
Unknown	22 ships sunk or captured

The Battle of Chios was a naval battle fought off the shore of the eastern Aegean island of Chios between a Latin Christian—mainly Hospitaller—fleet and a Turkish fleet from the Aydinid emirate.

Background

The collapse of Byzantine power in western Anatolia and the Aegean Sea in the late 13th century, as well as the disbandment of the Byzantine navy in 1284, created a power vacuum in the region, which was swiftly exploited by the Turkish beyliks and the ghazi raiders. Utilizing local Greek seamen, the Turks began to engage in piracy across the Aegean, targeting especially the numerous Latin island possessions. Turkish corsair activities were aided by the feuds between the two major Latin maritime states, Venice and Genoa.^[1] In 1304, the Turks of Menteshe (and later the Aydinids) captured the port town of Ephesus, and the islands of the eastern Aegean seemed about to fall to Turkish raiders. To forestall such a calamitous event, in the same year the Genoese occupied Chios, where Benedetto I Zaccaria established a minor principality, while in 1308 the Knights of Saint John (Hospitallers) occupied Rhodes. These two powers would bear the brunt of countering Turkish pirate raids until 1329.^[2]

Battle off Chios and aftermath

In July 1319, the Aydinid fleet, under the personal command of the Aydinid emir Mehmed Beg, set sail from the port of Ephesus. It comprised 18 galleys and 18 other vessels. It was met off Chios by a Hospitaller fleet of 24 ships and eighty Hospitaller knights, under the grand preceptor Albert of Schwarzburg, to which a squadron of one galley and six other ships were added by Martino Zaccaria of Chios. The battle ended in a crushing Christian victory: only six Turkish vessels managed to escape capture or destruction.^[3][4]

This victory was followed up by the recovery of Leros, whose native Greek population had rebelled in the name of the Byzantine emperor, and by another victory in the next year over a Turkish fleet poised to invade Rhodes.^[5] Nevertheless, the defeat off Chios could not halt the rise of Aydinid power. The Zaccarias were soon after forced to surrender their mainland outpost of Smyrna to Mehmed's son Umur Beg, under whose leadership Aydinid fleets roamed the Aegean for the next two decades, until the Smyrniote crusades (1343–1351) broke the Aydinid emirate's power.^[6]

References

1. İnalcık (1993), pp. 311–312
2. İnalcık (1993), p. 313
3. İnalcık (1993), pp. 313, 315
4. Luttrell (1975), p. 288
5. Luttrell (1975), pp. 288–289
6. İnalcık (1993), pp. 315–321

Sources

• İnalcık, Halil (1993). "The Rise of the Turcoman Maritime Principalities in Anatolia, Byzantium, and the Crusades". The Middle East & the Balkans Under the Ottoman Empire: Essays on Economy & Society (PDF). Indiana University Turkish Studies Department. pp. 309–341. ISBN 1878318047.
• Luttrell, Anthony (1975). "The Hospitallers at Rhodes, 1306–1421". In Hazard, Harry W. A History of the Crusades, Volume III: The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 278–313. ISBN 0-299-06670-3.