Before it fell for good to the Ottomans in 1453, the city of Constantinople successfully withstood something multiple sieges over its long history. Even the one successful siege, by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, wound up being rolled back when a restored Byzantine Empire supplanted the short-lived Latin Empire in 1261. At least one, and possibly two, of the more famous failed attempts to take the city were made by Arab armies under the Umayyad Caliphate. The first attempt may have been made in 674-678, when the Byzantines may have been saved by the advent of Greek Fire (a highly effective incendiary weapon, whose formula is still unknown, that was particularly destructive at sea, since it continued to burn even in water) which enabled them to destroy an Arab naval blockade of the city sometime in 677-678.
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