Leo III the Isaurian
Leo III saved Constantinople from the Arabs in 718 and started the war on religious images. He came from Germanikeia in Syria, spoke Arabic, and had been a diplomat and a general on the eastern frontier before seizing the throne in March 717 from a short-lived emperor in the middle of a run of coups. He had about five months before the siege. The Arab army under Maslama crossed into Thrace and the fleet closed the straits in August 717, and the siege ran for a year. Leo used Greek fire against the ships, an unusually severe winter destroyed the besiegers' camp and animals, Egyptian crews defected, and the Bulgars attacked the besiegers from the rear. The remnants left in August 718 and were wrecked in a storm on the way home. It is one of the most consequential defensive victories in European history. He then reorganised the provinces, reissued the law in a short Greek handbook called the Ecloga, and in 726 began removing images — reportedly starting with the Christ over the Chalke gate of the palace, which produced a riot in which the officials removing it were killed. His reasons are argued about: a genuine theological objection to idolatry, the influence of Muslim and Jewish practice, or an attempt to explain military defeat. The pope condemned it and Italy drifted out of imperial control. He died in 741, and his son enforced the policy far harder. The siege of 718 is worth setting beside Tours in 732, which gets far more attention in western accounts. An Arab conquest of Constantinople would have opened the Balkans and the Danube, and the empire that survived it went on absorbing the pressure for another seven centuries.
- Lived: 675 CE – 741 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader
