Read The Great Arab Conquests Online
Authors: Hugh Kennedy
The Great Arab Conquests (13 page)
In general, however, conversion to Islam, or offering the opportunity for conversion to Islam, is not widely cited as a reason for fighting. More common is pride in Arabness and pride in the tribe. When Sa
c
d, the commander of Muslim forces in Iraq, wanted to urge his men to great deeds, he appealed to their Arab pride: ‘You are Arab chiefs and notables, the elite of every tribe and the pride of those who follow you.’
31
The speeches frequently contrast the austerity and honesty of the Arabs with the luxury and lying of the Persians. Pride in the achievements of the tribe remained an important motivating factor as it had in the
jhiliya
. This comes out most clearly in the poetry, such as this anonymous verse celebrating the achievements of the tribe of Tamīm at the battle of Qādisiya:
c
d, the commander of Muslim forces in Iraq, wanted to urge his men to great deeds, he appealed to their Arab pride: ‘You are Arab chiefs and notables, the elite of every tribe and the pride of those who follow you.’
31
The speeches frequently contrast the austerity and honesty of the Arabs with the luxury and lying of the Persians. Pride in the achievements of the tribe remained an important motivating factor as it had in the
jhiliya
. This comes out most clearly in the poetry, such as this anonymous verse celebrating the achievements of the tribe of Tamīm at the battle of Qādisiya:
We found the Banū Tamīm who were numerous
The most steadfast men on the field of battle.
They set out with a huge army in dense formation
Against a tumultuous enemy and drove them away, dispersed.
They are seas of generosity, but for the Persian kings, they are men
Like the lions of the forests: you would think they were mountains.
They left Qādisiya in glory and honour
After long days of battle on the mountain slopes.
32
Or this poem celebrating the role of Asad:
We brought to Kisra
b
horsemen from the sides of a high mountain
And he confronted them with horsemen of his own.
We left in Persia many a woman praying
And weeping whenever she sees the full moon.
We slaughtered Rustam and his sons
And the horses raised sand over them.
At the place of the conflict we left
Men who will never move again.
33
The delight in battle and slaughter come straight from the spirit of the pre-Islamic world. Individual glory and reputation remained important too. In one exhortation, the desire for paradise is combined with the old-fashioned desire for lasting fame in this world: ‘O Arabs, fight for religion and for this world. Hasten to forgiveness from your lord and to a garden whose breadth is as the heavens and the earth, prepared for the God-fearing ones. And if the devil tries to discourage you by making you think of the dangers of this war, remember the stories which will be related about you during the fairs and festivals for ever and ever.’
34
34
Desire for fame in this world was of course coupled with desire for wealth. One of the most consistent features of the early conquest narratives is the desire for booty and the delight in describing the riches that were obtained. The booty is usually described as money, portable goods and slaves; the acquisition of human booty was always important and in some areas, notably Berber North Africa, it seems to have been the dominant form of reward. Interestingly, given that these were pastoral people, animals are seldom mentioned, possibly because the warriors had largely abandoned their previous pastoral lifestyle. The concern for acquiring booty was matched by the concern for distributing it fairly. Many of these descriptions are no doubt didactic in turn and the fairness and justice with which it was done were certainly exaggerated, but the point remains valid.
The emerging Islamic state had the men, the military skills, the ideological conviction and the leadership to embark on a major campaign of expansion. Above all, the leaders of the new state were fully aware that it had to expand or collapse. For them there was only one possible course of action: conquest.
2
THE CONQUEST OF SYRIA AND PALESTINE
The lands of Syria and Palestine were all provinces of the Byzantine Empire, ruled from Constantinople. In 632, the year of Muhammad’s death, the Byzantines also ruled much of the Balkans, southern Italy and Sicily, and North Africa. Romans and Byzantines had ruled the lands of the eastern Mediterranean for 600 years without interruption. When the Roman Empire in the west collapsed in confusion and chaos during the course of the fifth century, the richer provinces of the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean continued to flourish. The imperial authorities in Constantinople continued to collect taxes, maintain a regular army and send governors to rule the provinces. While towns in the west declined into villages, the cities of Syria were still being embellished with broad straight streets, markets, baths and, above all, with churches.
In both town and country, the landscapes of Syria were dominated by the legacy of a thousand years of rule by Greek-speaking elites imbued with classical learning and sensibilities. The mighty ruins of pagan antiquity dominated cities like Palmyra, Heliopolis (Ba
c
albak), Gerasa (Jerash) and Petra, as they do today. Smaller towns and villages boasted colonnades and porticoes which reflected on a smaller, but not necessarily cruder, scale the forms of Graeco-Roman architecture.
c
albak), Gerasa (Jerash) and Petra, as they do today. Smaller towns and villages boasted colonnades and porticoes which reflected on a smaller, but not necessarily cruder, scale the forms of Graeco-Roman architecture.
The great temples of Palmyra and Ba
c
albak may still have dominated the towns in which they stood, but they were for the most part roofless ruins. In Gerasa the court of the great temple of Artemis was used for pottery kilns, so that the great paved piazza that surrounded the shrine of the goddess was converted to noisome industrial use, while the temple itself was closed and barred, the haunt of snakes and demons. The lands of Syria and Egypt were profoundly Christian. Christianity had, after all, been founded in these lands and it was in Antioch that the followers of the new religion were first called Christians. For the first three centuries after the coming of Jesus, Christians competed with other religions in the great bazaar of faiths in the Levant. There were Greek-speaking pagans who worshipped Zeus and Apollo, and Aramaic-speaking villagers who worshipped the same deity but called him Bel or Haddad after ancient gods who were already old when the Israelites first entered Canaan.
c
albak may still have dominated the towns in which they stood, but they were for the most part roofless ruins. In Gerasa the court of the great temple of Artemis was used for pottery kilns, so that the great paved piazza that surrounded the shrine of the goddess was converted to noisome industrial use, while the temple itself was closed and barred, the haunt of snakes and demons. The lands of Syria and Egypt were profoundly Christian. Christianity had, after all, been founded in these lands and it was in Antioch that the followers of the new religion were first called Christians. For the first three centuries after the coming of Jesus, Christians competed with other religions in the great bazaar of faiths in the Levant. There were Greek-speaking pagans who worshipped Zeus and Apollo, and Aramaic-speaking villagers who worshipped the same deity but called him Bel or Haddad after ancient gods who were already old when the Israelites first entered Canaan.
By the sixth century, however, Christianity was the majority religion in town and country, mountain and desert. There were important Jewish communities, especially in Palestine, and there were still regions and social circles in which classical paganism survived: men still made mosaics for the floors of their houses with images from the ancient legends and myths, though whether they still believed these or not is difficult to tell.
Christianity was also the religion of the governing imperial hierarchy, and this was significant for the shape of society. By the sixth century it would have been impossible for anyone who was not a Christian to hold an important government office. But the Christians of Syria were far from being a homogeneous group. During the sixth century, profound differences had emerged between different groups of believers. The main point of issue was the divinity of Christ and his incarnation: was Christ at one and the same time wholly human and wholly divine, or did he just have a single divine nature, his humanity on earth only appearing to be like ours? This apparently obscure theological debate aroused enormous passions because it reflected wider divisions in society. At the risk of greatly oversimplifying a very complex situation, it was generally the case that those who believed that Christ was wholly divine and wholly human (called Diophysites because they believed in two natures, or Chalcedonians, after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 where the doctrine was first adumbrated) were drawn from the Greek-speaking urban elites, while those who believed that Christ had only one, divine nature (Monophysites) were drawn from the Aramaic-speaking villages, the rural monasteries and the encampments of the Christian Arabs. There were regional variations too: in Palestine most of the Christians seem to have been Diophysites, while in northern Syria the two groups were probably more evenly balanced.
The imperial authorities were firmly Diophysite and regarded the Monophysites as subversives and heretics, persecuting them with intermittent ferocity. This meant that a significant proportion of the Christian population of Syria was alienated from the imperial government and would not necessarily see it as being in their interest to support the imperial church against outside invaders.
Until around 540 Syria had enjoyed a sustained period of prosperity and demographic growth. Everywhere villages were expanding and new lands along the desert margins were being brought under cultivation. From around 540, a century before the Muslim conquest, this happy picture began to change. In that year a new and vigorous strain of bubonic plague hit the entire area. The mortality was swift and terrifying. Towns, where the population was most dense, are likely to have been worst affected but villages too suffered as the epidemic spread. The people least affected were probably the nomads of the desert. The plague was spread by fleas living on rats. In the cities rats must have been as common as they are today; in the nomad camps there was little enough food for humans, never mind rodents, and no places for vermin to hide.
The plague returned with terrifying regularity throughout the remainder of the sixth century and into the seventh. In the absence of statistics, it is impossible to be certain of the impact it made on population levels. Historians estimate that the Black Death, the bubonic plague that ravaged the Middle East and western Europe in 1348-9, probably killed over a third of the population. There is no reason to think that the impact of the sixth-century plague was any less severe. Many of the once flourishing towns and villages of the area must have seemed empty and decaying. When the Muslim conquerors entered the cities of Syria and Palestine in the 630s and 640s they may have walked through streets where the grass and thorns grew high between the ancient columns and where the remaining inhabitants clustered in little groups, squatting in the ruins of the great palatial houses their ancestors had enjoyed.
Epidemic disease was not the only problem Syria faced during the second half of the sixth century. Relations between the Byzantine and Sasanian Persian empires were largely peaceful during the fifth and early sixth centuries. Both powers respected each other’s borders and their zones of influence in the Syrian desert to the south and the mountains of Armenia to the north. In the mid sixth century, however, large-scale and very damaging warfare erupted between the two great powers. The Sasanian monarchs invaded Byzantine territory on a number of occasions. In 540 they sacked the great capital of the east at Antioch and in 573 they conquered the important provincial capital at Apamea. On both occasions they returned with a large amount of booty and transported large numbers of the population to new cities in the Persian Empire.
If relations had deteriorated in the sixth century, they became much worse in the seventh. In the year 602, the emperor Maurice and his entire family were assassinated by mutinous soldiers. Some years before, the emperor had given refuge to the young and energetic Sasanian monarch Chosroes II when he had been temporarily driven from his throne. Chosroes now used the death of his benefactor as an excuse for launching a devastating attack on the Byzantine Empire. His armies won a series of spectacular victories. In 611 Persian armies invaded Syria, Jerusalem fell to them in 614 and in 615 the Persians reached the shores of the Bosporus opposite Constantinople itself. In 619 they took Alexandria and all of Egypt was in their hands.
The Byzantine recovery was the achievement of the emperor Heraclius (610-41). He had been governor of Byzantine North Africa but in 610 sailed to Constantinople with his provincial army to seize the throne from the brutal usurper Phocas. His reign had been dominated by the struggle with the Persians. After many years, when Persian armies had seemed unstoppable, Heraclius had turned the tables dramatically when he launched an attack behind the enemy lines in 624. In a move of great daring and brilliant strategic vision, he had led an army from the Black Sea coast of Turkey, through western Iran and northern Iraq, sacking the famous fire temple at Shiz and the palace of Chosroes at Dastgard. With the death of his arch-rival Chosroes II in 628 and the subsequent divisions among the Persians as they struggled to find a new ruler, Heraclius was able to make a peace that re-established the old frontier between the two empires along the Khābūr river. In 629 he negotiated the withdrawal of Persian soldiers from Syria and Egypt and set about restoring Byzantine rule in the newly recovered provinces. On 21 March 630 he enjoyed his greatest moment of triumph when he returned the relics of the True Cross, taken by the Persians, to Jerusalem.
Although the Persians had been decisively defeated, the conquest of Syria and Palestine had a very damaging effect on Byzantine power in the Levant. Apart from the bloodshed caused by the warfare, it seems that many of the Greek-speaking elite emigrated to the security of North Africa or Rome.
1
The fighting had been very destructive, especially in the towns, but perhaps more important was the loss of the tradition of imperial rule and administration. For most of the period of Muhammad’s mission, Syria and Palestine were ruled by the Persians, not the Byzantines, and it was not until 630, a couple of years before the Prophet’s death, that Byzantine control was re-established. Nonetheless, this control must have been very patchy, and there were probably many areas where Byzantine government hardly existed. Most younger-generation Syrians would have had no experience or memory of imperial rule, and no cause to be loyal to Constantinople. Even as Byzantine government was being slowly re-established, the religious differences that had divided Syria in the sixth century came to the fore again. The emperor Heraclius was determined to enforce religious conformity on a Christian population that in large measure rejected his doctrinal position.
1
The fighting had been very destructive, especially in the towns, but perhaps more important was the loss of the tradition of imperial rule and administration. For most of the period of Muhammad’s mission, Syria and Palestine were ruled by the Persians, not the Byzantines, and it was not until 630, a couple of years before the Prophet’s death, that Byzantine control was re-established. Nonetheless, this control must have been very patchy, and there were probably many areas where Byzantine government hardly existed. Most younger-generation Syrians would have had no experience or memory of imperial rule, and no cause to be loyal to Constantinople. Even as Byzantine government was being slowly re-established, the religious differences that had divided Syria in the sixth century came to the fore again. The emperor Heraclius was determined to enforce religious conformity on a Christian population that in large measure rejected his doctrinal position.
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