Page "Greek fire" Paragraph 6

Greek fire proper, however, was developed in ca.

672, and is ascribed by the chronicler Theophanes to Kallinikos, an architect from Heliopolis in the former province of Phoenice, by then overrun by the Muslim conquests.

The accuracy and exact chronology of this account is open to question: Theophanes reports the use of fire-carrying and siphon-equipped ships by the Byzantines a couple of years before the supposed arrival of Kallinikos at Constantinople.

If this is not due to chronological confusion of the events of the siege, it may suggest that Kallinikos merely introduced an improved version of an established weapon.

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

Indeed, the 11th-century chronicler George Kedrenos records that Kallinikos came from Heliopolis in Egypt, but most scholars reject this as an error.

Kedrenos also records the story, considered rather implausible, that Kallinikos ' descendants, a family called " Lampros " (" Brilliant "), kept the secret of the fire's manufacture, and continued doing so to his day.