chandax (11. 404)

Whilst we had encountered in older texts the island metonymically the island referred to as Kandy, Candia, Kandiye or Candy we did not realise that this exonym and demonym had come from the above fortification that Arab mercantile traders from al-Andalus built during the Cretan Emirate period called ربض الخندق (rabḍ al-ḫandaq, “Castle in the Moat,” subsequently Hellenised as Χάνδαξ then Latinised as the above) not far from the Bronze Age archaeological site of Knossos. The Islamic outpost in the Mediterranean, falling on this day in 961 with the Byzantine reconquest of the Aegean, under the leadership of General Nikephoros II Phokas—later emperor—rebranding the main settlement as Μεγάλο Κάστρο (Megalo Kastro, “Big Castle”). The modern place name of Herakleion or Iraklion (Ηράκλειον) is a nineteenth century popular naming conceit after the sunken Port of Hercules at the mouth of the Nile in Egypt once unified under the Kingdom of Greece after a period of independence. The lost ancient namesake city of Heracleion, also called Thonis near Alexandria, was not itself rediscovered under six metres of water until 2009.