Loading ...Turning Points in History: The Battle of Yarmouk, Part 1 of 2
By Steven Brander/Arab America Contributing Writer
This series will explore moments in history in which the fates of civilizations and regions teeter upon a knife’s edge. Here, we will delve into those key moments in which the course of Arab history was incontrovertibly altered. This article covers the lead-up to one of the most significant, but under-known battles in the early years of the Rise of Islam, the Battle of Yarmouk. To continue on and read part two about the battle itself, click here.
Planting the Seeds
The Last Byzantine-Sassanian War
For the Romans, the majority of the decades preceding the Battle of Yarmouk were spent losing the latest in a series of wars with their archrival, the Sassanian Empire of Persia (now modern-day, Iran). The Romans had fallen to infighting and eventually civil war early in the conflict, meaning that their resources were split and focused internally as two factions sought the throne in Constantinople. The Sassanians under Khosrow II had made good use of the opportunity of a distracted and split Constantinople and seized most of the Romans’ eastern territories, including Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and even parts of Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) up to Chalcedon, a city directly across the Bosphorus from Constantinople.
At the conclusion of the Romans’ civil war, the victor Heraclius donned the purple, taking on the ultimate responsibility of attempting to save the Roman Empire from the ascendant Sassanians. The Roman military; however, was at this point a mess of mixed-together units displaced from their original territories. Decades of war in both the East and West had already depleted the military of manpower and skilled officers; the latest civil war had exacerbated this problem even further. The empire’s finances, too, were in shambles, especially following the loss of two of the wealthiest provinces, Syria and Egypt. The task now before the new basileus was Herculean in scope.
Heraclius set out first to fund this last-ditch effort by slashing administrative costs, raising taxes, melting down precious metals from monuments and churches (including the Hagia Sophia). Next, he consolidated what remained of the Roman military under a single command, likely believing that concentrating his numbers was his only hope to win a war that would likely require multiple consecutive victories.
Over the next several years, Heraclius’ campaign would first push east, then south, scoring multiple defeats against Sassanian forces, who were usually split for strategic and logistical flexibility. By maneuvering and positioning his army smartly, Heraclius almost always avoided facing multiple Sassanian columns simultaneously. This way the Romans outnumbered their opponents and were able to repeatedly beat Khosrow’s armies, and push farther south, threatening the Iranian heartland (modern-day Iraq).
In response, one of the Sassanian columns struck west to invest Constantinople directly with the aid of the longtime Roman enemies the Avars, along with assorted Slavic clients of the Avars. But due to the absolute superiority of the Roman Navy and the nigh-invincible Theodosian Walls, the Roman capital weathered the siege. The Avars, unable to sustain the siege after months of unsuccessful assaults, eventually pulled back. This first major test of Constantinople’s siege defenses would prove prescient as the city would go unconquered for nearly a millennium.
Following the successful defense of the capital, Heraclius initiated plans to extend his forces deeper into the Sassanian territory, while simultaneous attacks were waged on the Sassanian Empire’s eastern borders by the Romans’ newly-secured allies, a Turkic people referred to by Roman sources as the Khazars. With the momentum of multiple victories behind him, Heraclius penetrated into the Iranian heartland, defeating the last Sassanian field army in the area and even sacking one of Khosrow’s royal estates.
Though the Romans would never go on to take the Sassanian capital at Ctesiphon, the string of defeats eventually led to the overthrow and execution of the shahanshah Khosrow II. Over the next decade, the Sassanians would themselves devolve into several ruinous cycles of civil war and succession crises, leaving them an easy and preoccupied target for the rising Caliphate.
The Rise of Islam
At almost the exact same time, the Arabian peninsula was rapidly unifying under Muhammad and Islam. This new religious tide, by the end of Heraclius’ campaign, had swept through most of the region, consolidating a region that had yet to show any kind of unity in recorded history.
Following Muhammad’s death, his successor Abu Bakr briefly had to go to work putting down several other claimants to preserve what was still a delicate alliance in the Arabian peninsula.
With internal discord settled, at least for now, Abu Bakr turned to expand first towards Sassanian Persia, where Muslim armies under Khalid ibn al-Walid relatively easily swept aside the disorganized and unprepared Sassanians.
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