The Arab occupation of Crete lasted for about a century and a half, from 823/828 to 961 AD. The epicentre of the Arab installation on the island was Chandax. Yet until the late 1980s, almost no material evidence of the Arab presence in the city had been found, except for a few bronze coins of the Emirate from various parts of the city and the remains of a small, crude agricultural building in Knossos, near the bank of the river Kairatos, which yielded coins and pottery (1971). The absence of settlement remains reinforced the notion that the Arab conquerors of Crete were basically pirates staying in shabby structures that disappeared without a trace.
The increase in rescue excavations and the deeper trenches for the construction of multi-storey buildings in the historic centre of the city began to reveal a completely different story. The first building remains with use in the Arab period were found in 1989 during the excavation of a plot at the junction of Arcoleontos and Koronaiou streets. These were two complexes of buildings with small blind rooms, of careful construction, probably workshop areas. The excavation yielded Arabic coins, a glass seal with an Arabic inscription, a richly decorated bowl, lamps and plain pottery. A few years later, in 1992, during a rescue excavation at the site of Castella, east of the church of St. Peter of the Dominicans, a section of a building of elaborate construction was uncovered, built on different levels, with an inner paved courtyard. On the floor of the courtyard luxuriously decorated vases, both glass and ceramic, and a wooden box with a metal cover containing hundreds of bronze coins of the emirs of Crete were revealed. The Castella find was the first indisputable material evidence of the existence of a flourishing Arab settlement in Chandax, confirming the sources’ testimony of villas with gardens and fountains.
In the years that followed, new parts of the settlement came to light in excavations in the streets of Almyrou, Vyronos, Vyronos & Thaleta, Lochagou Marineli, Papagiamali & Koronaiou and elsewhere, documenting that Chandax during the Arab occupation was densely populated, with well-built constructions often of large dimensions, which had strong walls, plastered with coloured mortars, inner courtyards, fountains and wells, water supply pipes, but also with extensive districts of workshops in which the exceptional artifacts that come to light during the excavations were produced. The town had a medieval-style urban fabric, with radially arranged streets, and appears to have developed in successive levels, following the slope of the natural terrain. Some of the buildings are possibly survivals or alterations of buildings of the early Byzantine period (7th-8th centuries) which were affected by the earthquake of 795 AD, with reuse of building material and marble architectural elements.
Finally, the early Byzantine fortification of the city seems to have been preserved and restored by the Arabs with the addition of a brown-coloured coating containing sheep’s or goat’s hair. A residue of the coating was preserved on the tower at Bendenaki. Its form and composition correspond to the description of Leo the Deacon (‘of earth and goat and sheep hair… quite compressed’) and is common in the fortresses of the Umayyads in Jordan and elsewhere.