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It is preferable to hear the flatulence of camels, than the prayers of fishes.
Medieval Arab Proverb.
The Muslims had been the main players in the Mediterranean from the eighth to the eleventh century but new shipbuilding technologies were developed by the Italian maritime republics in the early twelfth century. A ship could be produced as a frame of ribs and spars, which was far faster than the laborious planking method that Egyptian ships continued to be built by. The deteriorating economy of Egypt, as well as a lack of raw materials, also precluded any chance of the Fatimids winning a naval arms race against the Pisans, Genoese and Venetians.
It also appears that, during this period, the Italians were better sailors than the Muslims. The Fatimids never developed a separate ministry for the upkeep of the fleet and, perhaps more importantly, for training captains. The fleet came under the diwan al-jihad, or department of war, and it was only much later when Saladin came to power in Egypt that a diwan al-ustal, or department of the navy, was created. Without an active admiralty, the navy lacked leadership and any esprit de corps. Contemporary Muslim writers consistently excuse the navy’s tardy arrival at the scene of fallen Muslim cities, but there is a detectable undercurrent in the chronicles that the Fatimid navy was lacking in courage. Low morale, low pay and the fact that rowers for the galleys were press-ganged and not volunteers were all likely causes. Generally the Fatimid navy would not sail in winter, unlike the Italians, and nature itself seemed to be against the Egyptians – the Mediterranean has a strong current that runs from west to east, along the African shore, which, along with prevailing winds largely from the north, made its eastern shores a constant danger to vessels of this period, none of which could tack into the wind. Under oar-power these ships could only make an average speed of about two knots (two nautical miles per hour) and the large crew of every galley had to be fed and supplied with water. No galleys of this period could stay at sea long enough or had sufficient offshore range to effectively patrol the open sea or effect a true naval blockade and thereby claim ‘ownership’ over the Eastern Mediterranean.
The loss of Cyprus and Crete to the Byzantines, and of Sicily to the Normans, before the First Crusade was launched severely restricted the ability of the Egyptian fleet to protect the Syrian coast but the Fatimids still maintained a concerted if onerous campaign to bring succour to their Syrian coastal cities until 1124.
The Genoese took Jaffa in 1103, and the Fatimid fleet harboured there scattered along the coast and brought relief to the besieged cities of Tyre and Acre. The beaching on the Palestinian coast of 25 ships in a storm and the capture of their 2,000 oarsmen in 1105 was a heavy blow to the navy, but it enjoyed success at Sidon in August 1108 against Baldwin’s attempts to take the city. The fleet was, however, trapped in Beirut’s harbour and badly mauled during the city’s fall in April 1110; it also failed to sail to Sidon’s rescue in December 1110.
As each of these Syrian ports fell to the Crusaders the Italian Republics’ stranglehold on the Eastern Mediterranean increased.