Unfortunately for Constantinople, Alexios III's misgovernment had left the Byzantine navy with only 20 worm-eaten hulks by the time the Crusaders arrived.

Andronikos III reorganized the Byzantine navy ( consisted of 10 ships by 1332 ) and reformed the judicial system by forming a panel of four universal judges whom he designated " Universal Justices of the Romans ".

The defection of the commander of the Byzantine navy, megas doux Andronikos Kontostephanos, and the general Andronikos Angelos, played a key role in allowing the rebellious forces to enter Constantinople.

At this time the Theodosian Walls kept the city impregnable from the land, while a newly discovered incendiary substance known as " Greek Fire " allowed the Byzantine navy to destroy the Arab fleets and keep the city supplied.

Although the destructiveness of Greek fire is indisputable, it should not be seen as some sort of " wonder weapon ", nor did it make the Byzantine navy invincible.

Examples include the maritime republics of Genoa and Venice, Hanseatic League, and the Byzantine navy.

The expedition, Amalric's fourth, was the first with support from the Byzantine navy.

The title of " Grand Duke " ( megas doux ) was created by Alexios I Komnenos and was conferred upon the commanding admiral of the Byzantine navy.

Also, during his reign there was a temporary naval revival in which the Byzantine navy consisted of 80 ships.

By 1196, Isaac II had allowed the once powerful Byzantine navy to decline to only 30 galleys.

It provided the bulk of the Byzantine navy facing the new Arab fleets, which after the Battle of the Masts contested control of the Mediterranean with the Empire.

In Orthodox Russia too, when Peter I the Great assumed the Byzantine imperial titles Imperator and Autokrator, instead of the ' merely ' royal Tsar, the idea in founding the Russian Holy Synod was to put an end to the old Imperium in imperio of the free Church, by substituting the synod for the all too independent Patriarch of Moscow, who had become almost a rival of the Tsars — Peter meant to unite all authority in himself, over Church as well as State: through his Ober-Procurator and synod, the Emperor ruled his Church as absolutely as his army and navy through their respective ministries ; he appointed its members ( mostly bishops ) just as his generals ; and the Russian Government continued his policy until the end of the empire in 1917.

Boniface and Alexios discussed diverting the Crusade to Constantinople so that Alexios could be restored to his father's throne ; in return, Alexios would give them 10, 000 Byzantine soldiers to help fight in the Crusade, maintain 500 knights in the Holy Land, the service of the Byzantine navy ( 20 ships ) in transporting the Crusader army to Egypt, as well as money to pay off the Crusaders ' debt to the Republic of Venice with 200, 000 silver marks.

As Caliph, Muawiyah developed a navy in the Levant and used it to wage a war against the Byzantine Empire in the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara.

By 647, Muawiyah had built a Syrian army strong enough to repel a Byzantine attack and, in subsequent years, to take the offensive against the Byzantines in campaigns that resulted in the capture of Cyprus ( 649 ) and Rhodes ( 654 ) and a devastating defeat of the Byzantine navy off the coast of Lycia ( 655 ).

In the spring, the Byzantine navy destroyed the Arab fleets that had arrived with new provisions and equipment, while a Byzantine army defeated Arab reinforcements in Bithynia.

Before the end of 1098 Dagobert set out for the east with a lawless Pisan fleet, which made successful raids on Byzantine owned islands and skirmished with the Byzantine navy, before going on to Syria.

* Megas droungarios – Initially the commander-in-chief of the Byzantine navy, after the creation of the megas doux his lieutenant, in charge of the naval officers.

Unable to effectively respond to the Bulgarian campaign due to the engagement of their forces against the Arabs, the Byzantines convinced the Magyars to attack Bulgaria, promising to transport them across the Danube using the Byzantine navy.

In 917, a particularly strong Byzantine army led by Leo Phokas the Elder, son of Nikephoros Phokas, invaded Bulgaria accompanied by the Byzantine navy under the command of Romanos Lekapenos, which sailed to the Bulgarian Black Sea ports.

Traditionally, Bursa was famous for being the largest center of silk trade in the Byzantine and later the Ottoman empires, during the period of the lucrative Silk Road.

The city was the largest and wealthiest European city of the Middle Ages, and shared the glories of the Byzantine Empire, which was eventually reduced to the city and its environs.

Gol Gumbaz at Bijapur, Karnataka | Bijapur, has the second largest pre-modern dome in the world after the Byzantine Hagia Sophia.

The collection, among the world's largest, overviews Egyptian life spanning Ancient Egypt, the Middle Kingdom, the New Kingdom, Coptic art, and the Roman, Ptolemaic, and Byzantine periods.

* June 20 – A magnitude 6. 5 earthquake hits Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city, killing 45 people, injuring hundreds and damaging some of the city's Byzantine landmarks.

* Estimation: Ctesiphon, capital of the Sassanid Empire, becomes the largest city of the world, taking the lead from Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire.

* Estimation: Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, becomes the largest city of the world, taking the lead from Kaifeng, capital of China.

* Estimation: Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire becomes the largest city of the world, taking the lead from Merv in the Seljuk Empire.

* Estimation: Fes in the Almohad Empire becomes the largest city of the world, taking the lead from Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire.

* Estimation: Merv in the Seljuk Empire becomes the largest city of the world, taking the lead from Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire.

An important metropolis by the Roman period, Thessaloniki was the second largest and wealthiest city of the Byzantine Empire.

Thessaloniki passed out of Byzantine hands in 1204, when Constantinople was captured by the forces of the Fourth Crusade and incorporated the city and its surrounding territories in the Kingdom of Thessalonica — which then became the largest vassal of the Latin Empire.

Although not so refined as mosaics in Cefalù and the Palazzo dei Normanni, the cathedral interior nevertheless contains the largest cycle of Byzantine mosaics extant in Italy.

The Archbishop's Palace contains a Byzantine museum containing the largest collection of religious icons on the island.

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Russia remained the largest Orthodox nation in the world and claimed succession to the Byzantine legacy in the form of the Third Rome idea.

With effective Byzantine power weighted at the northeast end of this territory, the Bishop of Rome, as the largest landowner and most prestigious figure in Italy, began by default to take on much of the ruling authority that Byzantines were unable to project to the area around the city of Rome.

The largest single exodus occurred in the 1070s when a group of Anglo-Saxons in a fleet of 235 ships sailed for the Byzantine Empire.

The largest surviving Byzantine ivory panel ( 428 mm × 143 mm ), is a leaf from a diptych in the Justinian court manner of c. 525 – 50, which features an archangel.

Hungary was one of the Empire's largest and most powerful neighbours, and Margaret also had the benefit of high aristocratic descent, being related to the royal families of Kiev, the Holy Roman Empire, Italy, Provence, and earlier Byzantine dynasties.

They are among the largest groups among the very few survivors of the highly prestigious panel painting tradition of the classical world, which was continued into Byzantine and Western traditions in the post-classical world, including the local tradition of Coptic iconography in Egypt.

" The Byzantine text-type has by far the largest number of surviving manuscripts, many of them written in the newer minuscule ( lower case ) style and in Polytonic orthography handwriting, which had been invented in the 3rd century BC by Aristophanes of Byzantium but which took many centuries to catch on outside scholarly circles.

The three largest Eastern churches are the Byzantine Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church with 4. 3 million members ( 25 %), the Syriac Syro-Malabar Catholic Church at 3. 9 million faithful ( 23 %), and the Maronite Catholic Church of Lebanon with 3. 29 million faithful ( 20 %).

The most numerous and largest of mosques exist in, which obtained influence from Byzantine, Persian and Syrian-Arab designs.

The Empire of Nicaea was the largest of the three Byzantine Greek successor states founded by the aristocracy of the Byzantine Empire that fled after Constantinople was occupied by Western European and Venetian forces during the Fourth Crusade.