The Great Arab Conquests (67 page)
Read The Great Arab Conquests Online
Authors: Hugh Kennedy
The success of the conquest was also aided by the succession disputes that paralysed the Byzantine state after the death of Heraclius in February 641. The power struggle at the Byzantine court seems to have been directly responsible for the otherwise inexplicable failure to mount an effective operation to defend Egypt. If Heraclius had been succeeded by a strong and energetic new emperor, the Byzantines might well have been able to mount a counter-attack in Syria or along the Mediterranean coasts, especially during the very disturbed period that followed the assassination of the caliph Uthmān in 656. The Muslims had a generation in which to consolidate their power and their hold over the lands won from the Byzantines.
Both great empires shared a common strength that was also, paradoxically, a weakness when things went wrong. In the Byzantine and Sasanian states, military power was heavily centralized, both depending on a professional army supported by state taxation. This was a comparatively new development. In the Byzantine Empire there had been
limitanei
, troops settled along the frontiers and given land and salaries to defend the borders of the empire. During the first half of the sixth century these were disbanded and replaced by the Ghassānid nomad allies of the Byzantines. After 582 these too were dispensed with and the empire relied on a standing field army for its defence. It seems that the Byzantines were completely unprepared for an attack from the desert. The
Strategikon
, the military manual of
c
. 600, gives instructions on how to fight Persians, Turks and Avars but never mentions the Arabs; clearly they were not considered to be a significant threat. Apart from the Arab allies, it looks as if few of the Byzantine soldiers who tried to defend the empire against the Muslim invaders were local to the area. They were either Greek speakers from other parts of the empire or Armenians. A similar evolution had taken place in the Sasanian Empire. In the first half of the sixth century the administration had been centralized by Chosroes I (531-79), who had established an imperial army paid from the receipts of taxation. Like the Byzantines in the same period, the Sasanians had decided that they no longer needed the services of the Lakhmid kings who had defended the desert frontier. Now it was only the army of the shahs which defended the state.
limitanei
, troops settled along the frontiers and given land and salaries to defend the borders of the empire. During the first half of the sixth century these were disbanded and replaced by the Ghassānid nomad allies of the Byzantines. After 582 these too were dispensed with and the empire relied on a standing field army for its defence. It seems that the Byzantines were completely unprepared for an attack from the desert. The
Strategikon
, the military manual of
c
. 600, gives instructions on how to fight Persians, Turks and Avars but never mentions the Arabs; clearly they were not considered to be a significant threat. Apart from the Arab allies, it looks as if few of the Byzantine soldiers who tried to defend the empire against the Muslim invaders were local to the area. They were either Greek speakers from other parts of the empire or Armenians. A similar evolution had taken place in the Sasanian Empire. In the first half of the sixth century the administration had been centralized by Chosroes I (531-79), who had established an imperial army paid from the receipts of taxation. Like the Byzantines in the same period, the Sasanians had decided that they no longer needed the services of the Lakhmid kings who had defended the desert frontier. Now it was only the army of the shahs which defended the state.
In many ways these developments can be seen as a sign of the increasing power and sophistication of government, but it paradoxically resulted in these apparently powerful states being unexpectedly vulnerable. If the imperial government was in disarray, if the imperial army was defeated in one major encounter, there were no forces of local resistance to take on the burden of defence. There were no town armies raised from local citizens, no peasant militia that could be called upon. It is significant that the areas where the Arabs encountered the most sustained resistance were areas like Transoxania, Armenia, the Elburz mountains and the Cantabrian mountains of northern Spain, places that had always been outside the direct rule of the empires and monarchies of the lowland areas. Here local people actively defended their homelands against the invaders.
There are indications from many areas conquered by the Muslims that the invaders benefited from internal tensions in the ancient empires, which meant that, in some cases, they were seen as liberators or at least as a tolerable alternative. Sometimes these tensions were religious: the Monophysite Christians of Egypt and northern Syria certainly had little reason to love the Byzantine authorities, although there is little evidence that they actually helped the invaders. The peasants of the Sawād of Iraq may well have felt relieved by the destruction of the Persian ruling class; the merchants and craftsmen of Sind are said to have cooperated willingly with the Muslims against the Brahmin military ruling class. In North Africa, the Berbers fought their battles against the invaders, made alliances with them, took service with them and left the Byzantines to their fate.
The subject communities did not develop a culture of resistance after the initial conquests. They complained about harsh and unjust governors but, as far as we can tell, no preachers or writers emerged to encourage active opposition to the new regime. The anti-Muslim propaganda from Christian sources resorts to apocalyptic literature in which a great emperor or hero figure from outside will come and deliver the Christian people. Meanwhile, all they can do is pray and keep steadfast in their faith. Their hostility to other Christians from different sects, and above all to the Jews, was always fiercer and more pressing than their hostility to the Arabs. None of the voices of the conquered was an incitement to take action to overthrow the new regime.
These internal events in the Byzantine and Sasanian empires were fundamental to the success of the Arab conquests. If Muhammad had been born a generation earlier and he and his successors had attempted to send armies against the great empires in, say, 600, it is hard to imagine that they would have made any progress at all.
The weakness of the existing political structures did not, by itself, guarantee the success of Arab arms. There were potent forces at work which made the Muslim forces much more powerful and effective than any Bedouin force had ever been before or was ever to be again.
Enough has already been said about the religious motivation of the invaders, the power of the idea of martyrdom and paradise as incentives in battle. This was combined with the traditional, pre-Islamic ideals of loyalty to tribe and kin, and admiration of the lone warrior hero. The mixture of the cultural values of the nomad society with the ideology of the new religion was formidable.
It must be remembered that the armies of the early Islamic conquests were exactly that - armies. They were not a mass migration of nomad tribesmen. They left their women and their flocks, their babies and their old people, at home, in tent or house. They were organized into groups and their commanders were appointed, usually after consultation, by the caliphs or governors. Only after victory had been achieved did their households join the warriors.
As we have seen, the Arab armies did not have access to new technologies that their enemies did not possess, nor did they overwhelm by sheer weight of numbers, but they did have some purely military advantages. The most important of these was mobility. The distances covered by Muslim armies in the conquests are truly astonishing. It is more than 7,000 kilometres from the furthest reaches of Morocco in the west to the eastern frontiers of the Muslim world in Central Asia. By contrast, the Roman Empire from Hadrian’s Wall to the Euphrates frontier was less than 5,000. All these areas were traversed and subdued by fast-moving Muslim armies. Much of the country in which they operated was barren and inhospitable, to be crossed only by hardy and resourceful people. Their armies moved without a supply train. It seems that the warriors carried their food with them and bought, stole or otherwise extracted supplies when these were exhausted. Both men and beasts were used to living off very little, the meagre diet of the Bedouin existence, and had experience of sleeping rough. Travelling by night, when the air was cooler and the desert stars bright enough to use for navigation, was an important part of desert life, and there are a number of conflicts recorded in the annals of the conquests in which the Arab armies showed their superiority at night fighting. This mobility meant that they could retreat into the desert, to take refuge, to regroup after a defeat or to take the enemy unawares.
The quality of leadership in the Muslim armies was clearly very high. The small elite of Hijazi city dwellers, mostly from the Quraysh and associated tribes, who provided the majority of the senior commanders, produced some extremely able men. Khālid b. al-Walīd in Syria, Amr b. al-Ās in Egypt and Sa
c
d b. Abī Waqqās in Iraq were all military leaders of distinction. In the next generation we can point to Uqba b. Nāfi in North Africa, Tāriq b. Ziyād and Mūsā b. Nusayr in Spain, Qutayba b. Muslim in Transoxania and Muhammad b. Ishāq al-Thaqafī in Sind as great commanders. The Arabic sources also talk a great deal about councils of war and commanders taking advice before deciding on a course of action. This is partly a literary fiction, designed to outline the possible military activity and emphasize the ‘democratic’ nature of early Muslim society, but it may be a genuine reflection of practice, whereby decisions were made after a process of consultation and discussion.
c
d b. Abī Waqqās in Iraq were all military leaders of distinction. In the next generation we can point to Uqba b. Nāfi in North Africa, Tāriq b. Ziyād and Mūsā b. Nusayr in Spain, Qutayba b. Muslim in Transoxania and Muhammad b. Ishāq al-Thaqafī in Sind as great commanders. The Arabic sources also talk a great deal about councils of war and commanders taking advice before deciding on a course of action. This is partly a literary fiction, designed to outline the possible military activity and emphasize the ‘democratic’ nature of early Muslim society, but it may be a genuine reflection of practice, whereby decisions were made after a process of consultation and discussion.
The effectiveness of the leadership may be in part a product of the political traditions of Arabian society. Leadership was passed down from generation to generation within certain families and kins, but within those groups any aspiring leader had to prove himself, showing his followers that he was brave, intelligent and diplomatic. If he failed, they would look for someone else. He also had to take account of the views and opinions of those he hoped to lead. Being someone’s son was never qualification enough. The astonishment of the Iranian queen mother that the sons of the great Qutayba b. Muslim did not inherit his position are an indication of the difference in culture between Iranian and Arab in this respect. Incompetent or dictatorial commanders were unlikely to survive for long. Ubayd Allāh b. Abī Bakra in Afghanistan and Junayd b. Abd al-Rahmān in Transoxania are among the few examples of failure in command; they lasted only a short time and were savagely excoriated by the poets, the political commentators of their time.
There were other features of the Muslim command structure which led to success. The sources lay continuous stress on the roles of caliphs and governors, particularly the caliph Umar I (634-44), in organizing and directing the conquests. It is quite impossible that Umar could have written all the letters about the minutiae of military operations that are ascribed to him, but these narratives may reflect the fact that there was a strong degree of organization and control from Medina and later from Damascus. There are very few examples of commanders disobeying orders, equally few of rebellions against the centre by commanders in distant fields and provinces. This is all the more striking because it contrasts with events in the contemporary Byzantine Empire, where the military effectiveness of the state was constantly undermined by rebellions of military commanders hoping to take the imperial crown. The way in which successful generals like Khālid b. al-Walīd, Amr b. al-Ās, Mūsā b. Nusayr and Muhammad b. Ishāq accepted their dismissal and quietly made their way back to the centre, often to face punishment and disgrace, is very striking.
A key element in the success of the conquests was the comparatively easy terms usually imposed on the conquered. Arab commanders were normally content to make agreements that protected the lives and properties of the conquered, including rights to their places of worship, in exchange for the payment of tribute and the promise that they would not help the enemies of the Muslims. Defeated defenders of cities that were conquered by force were sometimes executed, but there were few examples of wholesale massacres of entire populations. Demands for houses for Muslims to settle in, as at Homs, or any other demands for property, are rare. Equally rare was deliberate damaging or destruction of existing cities and villages. There is a major contrast here with, for example, the Mongols in the thirteenth century, with their well-deserved reputation for slaughter and destruction. Although we cannot be clear about this, it is possible that the Arabs were, initially at least, less demanding of the resources and services of the ordinary people than their Byzantine and Sasanian predecessors, and the taxes they imposed may actually have been lower. It is not until the end of the seventh century that we get complaints about oppressive tax gathering. It must also have been the case that for many of the conquered the Arabs seemed a one-season wonder, a massive raid that could be bought off this year and would probably never happen again: better to pay up and sign the necessary documents than risk having your city stormed, your men killed and your women and children sold into slavery.
The Arab Muslim troops began to settle in the newly conquered areas very soon after the conquests. When they did so, they were almost always separate from the local population. In Iraq they were concentrated in the three Islamic new towns, Kūfa, Basra and Mosul. Arab settlement in Egypt was initially confined to Fustāt, much of it built on open land; in Africa the main early Muslim settlement took place in the new town of Qayrawān, while in Khurasan the largest Arab settlement was in Merv, where a whole new quarter was developed outside the walls of the old Sasanian city. In Syria, the Arabs tended to settle in extra-mural suburbs of existing cities like Chalkis and Aleppo, rather than taking possession of properties in the centre. To a great extent this prevented the inevitable friction that would have arisen between the conquering army and local inhabitants if they had shared the same narrow streets and courtyards.
The Arab conquest was also dispersed geographically. The Arabs rode along the main routes, and they stormed or accepted the surrender of the main towns. But away from the highways, in the mountains and more remote valleys, there must have been many communities that never saw an Arab, who heard only weeks, months or even years later that they were no longer ruled by the emperor or the shāh. The mountains of Azerbaijan, the ranges at the south of the Caspian Sea, the hills of Kurdistan, the High Atlas of southern Morocco, the Sierra de Gredos in Spain were probably all places where Arab Muslims were seldom seen. It was only in the two or three centuries that followed the initial conquest that Muslim missionaries, merchants and adventurers entered these lands and began to spread the new religion and news about the new political authorities. There was no incentive for the people of these areas to resist the invaders, because the invaders simply bypassed them.
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