Battle of the Straits

Battle of the Straits
Part of the Arab–Byzantine wars
Map of the Arab–Byzantine naval conflict in the Mediterranean, 7th–11th centuries
Date early 965 Location Straits of Messina, Italy Result Decisive Fatimid victory
Belligerents
Byzantine Empire	Fatimid Caliphate Kalbid Emirate of Sicily
Commanders and leaders
Niketas Abalantes  (POW)	Ahmad ibn al-Hasan al-Kalbi
Casualties and losses
Heavy, ca. 1000 prisoners	Unknown

The Battle of the Straits (Arabic: waqʿat al-majāz) was fought in early 965 between the fleets of the Byzantine Empire and the Fatimid Caliphate in the Straits of Messina. It resulted in a major Fatimid victory, and the final collapse of the attempt of Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas to recover Sicily from the Fatimids.

The fall of Taormina to the Aghlabids marked the effective end of the Muslim conquest of Sicily, but the Byzantines retained a few outposts on the island, and Taormina itself threw off Muslim control soon after. In 909, the Fatimids took over the Aghlabid metropolitan province of Ifriqiya, and with it Sicily. The Fatimids (and after the 950s the Kalbid hereditary governors of Sicily) continued the tradition of jihad, both against the Christian strongholds in the northeast of Sicily and, more prominently, against the Byzantine possessions in southern Italy, punctuated by truces.

Following the Byzantine reconquest of Crete in 960–961, where the Fatimids, constrained by a truce with the Empire and the distances involved, were unable or unwilling to interfere, the Fatimids turned their attention to Sicily, where they decided to reduce the remaining Byzantine outposts: Taormina, the forts in the Val Demone and Val di Noto, and Rometta. Taormina fell to the governor Ahmad ibn al-Hasan al-Kalbi on Christmas Day 962, after more than nine months of siege, and in the next year his cousin, al-Hasan ibn Ammar al-Kalbi, laid siege to Rometta. The garrison of the latter sent for aid to Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas, who prepared a major expedition, led by the patrikios Niketas Abalantes and his own nephew, Manuel Phokas.

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